ACL 305- Writing according to a Feeling: Ice Cubes

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR MY ACL STUDENTS AT HALIÇ

Dear Students,

I asked you to e-mail me for your absenteeism, however, this is getting beyond control.
Let us reverse this. Please write your excuse on a white paper in a formal way. And when I get your letter I will correct it on the uni system.
Be aware 3 tardies equals 1 absenteeism.

best
gh

ACL 109 - Olympos: God and Goddesses Prezi

“...like that star of the waning summer who beyond all stars rises bathed in the ocean stream to glitter in brilliance.” ― Homer, The Iliad

Mimmo Jodice, http://www.mimmojodice.it/en/

Examples for Homeric Hymns Intro

VIII. TO ARES

(1-17) Ares, exceeding in strength, chariot-rider, golden-helmed, doughty in heart, shield-bearer,

Saviour of cities, harnessed in bronze, strong of arm, unwearying, mighty with the spear, O defence of

Olympus, father of warlike Victory, ally of Themis, stern governor of the rebellious, leader of

righteous men, sceptred King of manliness, who whirl your fiery sphere among the planets in their

sevenfold courses through the aether wherein your blazing steeds ever bear you above the third

firmament of heaven; hear me, helper of men, giver of dauntless youth! Shed down a kindly ray from

above upon my life, and strength of war, that I may be able to drive away bitter cowardice from my

head and crush down the deceitful impulses of my soul. Restrain also the keen fury of my heart

which provokes me to tread the ways of blood-curdling strife. Rather, O blessed one, give you me

boldness to abide within the harmless laws of peace, avoiding strife and hatred and the violent fiends

of death.

IX. TO ARTEMIS

(1-6) Muse, sing of Artemis, sister of the Far-shooter, the virgin who delights in arrows, who was

fostered with Apollo. She waters her horses from Meles deep in reeds, and swiftly drives her allgolden chariot through Smyrna to vine-clad Claros where Apollo, god of the silver bow, sits waiting

for the far-shooting goddess who delights in arrows.

(7-9) And so hail to you, Artemis, in my song and to all goddesses as well. Of you first I sing and

with you I begin; now that I have begun with you, I will turn to another song.

X. TO APHRODITE

(1-3) Of Cytherea, born in Cyprus, I will sing. She gives kindly gifts to men: smiles are ever on her

lovely face, and lovely is the brightness that plays over it.

(4-6) Hail, goddess, queen of well-built Salamis and sea-girt Cyprus; grant me a cheerful song. And

now I will remember you and another song also.

XI. TO ATHENA

(1-4) Of Pallas Athene, guardian of the city, I begin to sing. Dread is she, and with Ares she loves

deeds of war, the sack of cities and the shouting and the battle. It is she who saves the people as they

go out to war and come back.

(5) Hail, goddess, and give us good fortune with happiness!

XII. TO HERA

(1-5) I sing of golden-throned Hera whom Rhea bare. Queen of the immortals is she, surpassing

all in beauty: she is the sister and the wife of loud-thundering Zeus, – the glorious one whom all the

blessed throughout high Olympus reverence and honour even as Zeus who delights in thunder.

XIII. TO DEMETER

(1-2) I begin to sing of rich-haired Demeter, awful goddess, of her and of her daughter lovely

Persephone.

(3) Hail, goddess! Keep this city safe, and govern my song.

XIV. TO THE MOTHER OF THE GODS

(1-5) I prithee, clear-voiced Muse, daughter of mighty Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods and men.

She is well-pleased with the sound of rattles and of timbrels, with the voice of flutes and the outcry of

wolves and bright-eyed lions, with echoing hills and wooded coombes.

(6) And so hail to you in my song and to all goddesses as well!

XV. TO HERACLES THE LION-HEARTED

(1-8) I will sing of Heracles, the son of Zeus and much the mightiest of men on earth. Alcmena

bare him in Thebes, the city of lovely dances, when the dark-clouded Son of Cronos had lain with

her. Once he used to wander over unmeasured tracts of land and sea at the bidding of King

Eurystheus, and himself did many deeds of violence and endured many; but now he lives happily in

the glorious home of snowy Olympus, and has neat-ankled Hebe for his wife.

(9) Hail, lord, son of Zeus! Give me success and prosperity.

XVIII. TO HERMES

(1-9) I sing of Cyllenian Hermes, the Slayer of Argus, lord of Cyllene and Arcadia rich in flocks,

luck-bringing messenger of the deathless gods. He was born of Maia, the daughter of Atlas, when she

had made with Zeus, – a shy goddess she. Ever she avoided the throng of the blessed gods and lived

in a shadowy cave, and there the Son of Cronos used to lie with the rich-tressed nymph at dead of

night, while white-armed Hera lay bound in sweet sleep: and neither deathless god nor mortal man

knew it.

(10-11) And so hail to you, Son of Zeus and Maia; with you I have begun: now I will turn to

another song!

(12) Hail, Hermes, giver of grace, guide, and giver of good thing.

for more: https://www.platonic-philosophy.org/files/Homeric%20Hymns.pdf

ACL 359 Postmodern Lit: From Modern to Postmodern Western Philosophy

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR HALIC UNI

Dear Students,

ACL 109 Mythology will be held in class A 304, Mondays
ACL 305 American Poetry I. will be held in class C 504, Mondays
ACL 359 Postmodern Lit will be held in class C 403, Tuesdays

pls always check your attendances at the uni-system and follow the changes that our research assistant Elif posts on the system, too.
best
gh

Mythology ACL 109: Prezi Presentations

Material for Postmodern Lit ACL 359: 1.10.2019 Ursula Le.Guin Short Stories

Kanin Hisao

Dear Students,
Please read "Schrödinger's Cat":
https://www.saintjoehigh.com/ourpages/auto/2013/3/26/55689937/Schrodinger_s%20Cat.pdf
and "She Unnames Them":
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Mail/xmcamail.2013_01.dir/pdf4gQ1dofjT0.pdf
and "Postmodern Anarchism in the Novels of Ursula K. Le Guin":
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/lewis-call-postmodern-anarchism-in-the-novels-of-ursula-k-le-guin

best
gh

American Poetry I ,ACL 305: Material for 30.09.2019

                            Pilgrims going to church, George Henry Boughton

Huswifery

By Edward Taylor

Make me, O Lord, thy Spining Wheele compleate.

Thy Holy Worde my Distaff make for mee.

Make mine Affections thy Swift Flyers neate

And make my Soule thy holy Spoole to bee.

My Conversation make to be thy Reele

And reele the yarn thereon spun of thy Wheele.

Make me thy Loome then, knit therein this Twine:

And make thy Holy Spirit, Lord, winde quills:

Then weave the Web thyselfe. The yarn is fine.

Thine Ordinances make my Fulling Mills.

Then dy the same in Heavenly Colours Choice,

All pinkt with Varnisht Flowers of Paradise.

Then cloath therewith mine Understanding, Will,

Affections, Judgment, Conscience, Memory

My Words, and Actions, that their shine may fill

My wayes with glory and thee glorify.

Then mine apparell shall display before yee

That I am Cloathd in Holy robes for glory.

 

 Upon Wedlock, and Death of Children

By Edward Taylor

A Curious Knot God made in Paradise,

      And drew it out inamled neatly Fresh.

It was the True-Love Knot, more sweet than spice

      And set with all the flowres of Graces dress.

      Its Weddens Knot, that ne're can be unti'de.

      No Alexanders Sword can it divide.

The slips here planted, gay and glorious grow:

      Unless an Hellish breath do sindge their Plumes.

Here Primrose, Cowslips, Roses, Lilies blow

      With Violets and Pinkes that voide perfumes.

      Whose beautious leaves ore laid with Hony Dew.

      And Chanting birds Cherp out sweet Musick true.

When in this Knot I planted was, my Stock

      Soon knotted, and a manly flower out brake.

And after it my branch again did knot

      Brought out another Flowre its sweet breath’d mate.

      One knot gave one tother the tothers place.

      Whence Checkling smiles fought in each others face.

But oh! a glorious hand from glory came

      Guarded with Angells, soon did Crop this flowere

Which almost tore the root up of the same

      At that unlookt for, Dolesome, darksome houre.

      In Pray're to Christ perfum'de it did ascend,

      And Angells bright did it to heaven tend.

But pausing on't, this sweet perfum'd my thought,

      Christ would in Glory have a Flowre, Choice, Prime,

And having Choice, chose this my branch forth brought.

      Lord, take't. I thanke thee, thou takst ought of mine,

      It is my pledg in glory, part of mee

      Is now in it, Lord, glorifi'de with thee.

But praying ore my branch, my branch did sprout

      And bore another manly flower, and gay

And after that another, sweet brake out,

      The which the former hand soon got away.

      But oh! the tortures, Vomit, screechings, groans,

      And six weeks fever would pierce hearts like stones.

Griefe o're doth flow: and nature fault would finde

      Were not thy Will, my Spell, Charm, Joy, and Gem:

That as I said, I say, take, Lord, they're thine.

      I piecemeale pass to Glory bright in them.

      In joy, may I sweet Flowers for Glory breed,

      Whether thou getst them green, or lets them seed.

 

Upon a Spider Catching a Fly

By Edward Taylor

Thou sorrow, venom Elfe:

      Is this thy play,

To spin a web out of thyselfe

      To Catch a Fly?

            For Why?

I saw a pettish wasp

      Fall foule therein:

Whom yet thy Whorle pins did not clasp

      Lest he should fling

            His sting.

But as affraid, remote

      Didst stand hereat,

And with thy little fingers stroke

      And gently tap

            His back.

Thus gently him didst treate

      Lest he should pet,

And in a froppish, aspish heate

      Should greatly fret

            Thy net.

Whereas the silly Fly,

      Caught by its leg

Thou by the throate tookst hastily

      And 'hinde the head

            Bite Dead.

This goes to pot, that not

      Nature doth call.

Strive not above what strength hath got,

      Lest in the brawle

            Thou fall.

This Frey seems thus to us.

      Hells Spider gets

His intrails spun to whip Cords thus

      And wove to nets

            And sets.

To tangle Adams race

      In's stratigems

To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base

      By venom things,

            Damn'd Sins.

But mighty, Gracious Lord

      Communicate

Thy Grace to breake the Cord, afford

      Us Glorys Gate

            And State.

We'l Nightingaile sing like

      When pearcht on high

In Glories Cage, thy glory, bright,

      And thankfully,

            For joy.

"If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that" -Nick Cave

https://thehiggsbosonblues.tumblr.com/, nick cave and susie bick

Still Another Day: I

Pablo Neruda - 1904-1973

Today is that day, the day that carried

a desperate light that since has died.

Don't let the squatters know:

let’s keep it all between us,

day, between your bell

and my secret.

Today is dead winter in the forgotten land

that comes to visit me, with a cross on the map

and a volcano in the snow, to return to me,

to return again the water

fallen on the roof of my childhood.

Today when the sun began with its shafts

to tell the story, so clear, so old,

the slanting rain fell like a sword,

the rain my hard heart welcomes.

You, my love, still asleep in August,

my queen, my woman, my vastness, my geography

kiss of mud, the carbon-coated zither,

you, vestment of my persistent song,

today you are reborn again and with the sky’s

black water confuse me and compel me:

I must renew my bones in your kingdom,

I must still uncloud my earthly duties.

“We're all golden sunflowers inside.” ― Allen Ginsberg

American Poetry I: ACL 305 for the lecture on 23.09.2019

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

[Meditations Divine and Moral]” 

― Anne Bradstreet, The Works of Anne Bradstreet

Eleven Songs of Poems by Anne Bradstreet, Movement 9 & 10 by James Kallembach

Prologue

BY ANNE BRADSTREET

To sing of Wars, of Captains, and of Kings, 

Of Cities founded, Common-wealths begun, 

For my mean Pen are too superior things; 

Or how they all, or each their dates have run, 

Let Poets and Historians set these forth. 

My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth. 

But when my wond’ring eyes and envious heart 

Great Bartas’ sugar’d lines do but read o’er, 

Fool, I do grudge the Muses did not part 

‘Twixt him and me that over-fluent store. 

A Bartas can do what a Bartas will 

But simple I according to my skill. 

From School-boy’s tongue no Rhet’ric we expect, 

Nor yet a sweet Consort from broken strings, 

Nor perfect beauty where’s a main defect. 

My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, 

And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, 

‘Cause Nature made it so irreparable. 

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet-tongued Greek 

Who lisp’d at first, in future times speak plain. 

By Art he gladly found what he did seek, 

A full requital of his striving pain. 

Art can do much, but this maxim’s most sure: 

A weak or wounded brain admits no cure. 

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue 

Who says my hand a needle better fits. 

A Poet’s Pen all scorn I should thus wrong, 

For such despite they cast on female wits. 

If what I do prove well, it won’t advance, 

They’ll say it’s stol’n, or else it was by chance. 

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild, 

Else of our Sex, why feigned they those nine 

And poesy made Calliope’s own child? 

So ‘mongst the rest they placed the Arts divine, 

But this weak knot they will full soon untie. 

The Greeks did nought but play the fools and lie. 

Let Greeks be Greeks, and Women what they are. 

Men have precedency and still excel; 

It is but vain unjustly to wage war. 

Men can do best, and Women know it well. 

Preeminence in all and each is yours; 

Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours. 

And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies, 

And ever with your prey still catch your praise, 

If e’er you deign these lowly lines your eyes, 

Give thyme or Parsley wreath, I ask no Bays. 

This mean and unrefined ore of mine 

Will make your glist’ring gold but more to shine. 

Before the Birth of One of Her Children

BY ANNE BRADSTREET

All things within this fading world hath end,   

Adversity doth still our joyes attend; 

No ties so strong, no friends so dear and sweet,   

But with death’s parting blow is sure to meet.   

The sentence past is most irrevocable,   

A common thing, yet oh inevitable. 

How soon, my Dear, death may my steps attend,   

How soon’t may be thy Lot to lose thy friend,   

We are both ignorant, yet love bids me   

These farewell lines to recommend to thee,   

That when that knot’s untied that made us one,   

I may seem thine, who in effect am none.   

And if I see not half my dayes that’s due, 

What nature would, God grant to yours and you;   

The many faults that well you know I have   

Let be interr’d in my oblivious grave;   

If any worth or virtue were in me,   

Let that live freshly in thy memory   

And when thou feel’st no grief, as I no harms,   

Yet love thy dead, who long lay in thine arms. 

And when thy loss shall be repaid with gains   

Look to my little babes, my dear remains.   

And if thou love thyself, or loved’st me,

These o protect from step Dames injury. 

And if chance to thine eyes shall bring this verse,

With some sad sighs honour my absent Herse;   

And kiss this paper for thy loves dear sake, 

Who with salt tears this last Farewel did take.

A Letter to her Husband, absent upon Publick employment

BY ANNE BRADSTREET

My head, my heart, mine Eyes, my life, nay more, 

My joy, my Magazine of earthly store, 

If two be one, as surely thou and I, 

How stayest thou there, whilst I at Ipswich lye? 

So many steps, head from the heart to sever 

If but a neck, soon should we be together: 

I like the earth this season, mourn in black, 

My Sun is gone so far in’s Zodiack, 

Whom whilst I ’joy’d, nor storms, nor frosts I felt, 

His warmth such frigid colds did cause to melt. 

My chilled limbs now nummed lye forlorn; 

Return, return sweet Sol from Capricorn; 

In this dead time, alas, what can I more 

Then view those fruits which through thy heat I bore? 

Which sweet contentment yield me for a space, 

True living Pictures of their Fathers face. 

O strange effect! now thou art Southward gone, 

I weary grow, the tedious day so long; 

But when thou Northward to me shalt return, 

I wish my Sun may never set, but burn 

Within the Cancer of my glowing breast, 

The welcome house of him my dearest guest. 

Where ever, ever stay, and go not thence, 

Till natures sad decree shall call thee hence; 

Flesh of thy flesh, bone of thy bone, 

I here, thou there, yet both but one. 

Postmodern Lit ACL 359: For the Lecture on 24.09.2019 PLS PRINT OUT

Dear Students,

Please read 1. From Modern to Postmodern Western Philosophy by Linn, Ray
A Teacher's Introduction to Postmodernism. NCTE Teacher's Introduction Series. Reading the first part will be enough to understand the philosophy of Postmodern Literature. However, if you print the part 1 out you can underline it.
You can find the link here: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED397451.pdf

Prezi for Postmodern Lit ACL 359

For Postmodern Lit ACL 359- C403

GLASS CANDY "NAKED CITY" (Unreleased)

Howl

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,   

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

III

Carl Solomon! I’m with you in Rockland

   where you’re madder than I am

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you must feel very strange

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you imitate the shade of my mother

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you’ve murdered your twelve secretaries

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you laugh at this invisible humor

I’m with you in Rockland

   where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I’m with you in Rockland

   where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I’m with you in Rockland

   where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I'm with you in Rockland

   where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you scream in a straightjacket that you’re losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I’m with you in Rockland

   where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha

I’m with you in Rockland

   where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb

I’m with you in Rockland

   where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

I’m with you in Rockland

   where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won’t let us sleep

I’m with you in Rockland

   where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls’ airplanes roaring over the roof they’ve come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself    imaginary walls collapse    O skinny legions run outside    O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here    O victory forget your underwear we’re free

I’m with you in Rockland

   in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

 

San Francisco, 1955—1956

[Click here to read “A Footnote to 'Howl”]