The following is an excerpt from a chapbook I made and distributed in ‘05. Printed in very limited quantities, and receiving even less critical acclaim, a friend of mine recently suggested that I re-read this. It’s been nearly four years since I last read it, and even with that distance, I found that I still liked it. Without further ado, I present the Introduction to an out-of-print chapbook called, “Sudden Beat Inspirations.”
I recently came to grips with the realization that I will never be, nor be considered, a Beat Writer. Never a Beat Poet, a Beat anything really. There’s that whole time issue, which I’m really not oblivious to, but more importantly is the voice issue. No matter whose name (and many people will disagree with me on this point) is on what’s traditionally accepted as Beat Literature, there is a very distinct voice— the voice of the Beat. I recently came to grips with the realization that the Beat voice is not my voice.
There is one story which is not included in this collection. Right now, I couldn’t even tell you the name of the story. It was the first story I ever wrote and it was about William S. Burroughs’ funeral. Really, from what I remember, the funeral was more of a backdrop to what was really going on. Gary Snyder was giving the eulogy, and some young boy walked up and spit onto the casket. When reprimanded by Mr. Snyder, the nameless boy replied that he meant no disrespect, but that the “seed” needed moisture to grow another one like him. Then the boy, whose description many people would recognize as a young Kerouac, stuck out his thumb and hitched a ride away from the funeral. The idea of the story is more pertinent to this collection than the story itself. Not only was it the first story I ever wrote, for no other reason than I felt like writing, but its significance would take me a long time to shake.
In one of my first English courses in college, I was granted a full pardon from writing anything for the entire semester. Not that I had supernatural writing skills which no one else possessed, much less comprehended, but because my professor recognized that I didn’t belong. Failing to complete (really, I never even started them) my first couple of assignments, I went out on a limb and showed him a copy of the aforementioned story about Burroughs’ funeral. He wasn’t impressed with what I wrote, but he was intrigued with what I chose to write about. He asked me about my topic choice, as it had nothing to do with any of the assignments, and as I began to stutter something, he cut me off and told me that he had someplace to be. As he walked away from me, he told me not to worry about coming to class for the rest of the week, but that he expected an answer e-mailed to him by noon, Friday. Being the eternal procrastinator (as I would prove time and again throughout the remainder of my college career) I ran to the campus computer lab around 11:30am on Friday and frantically began typing some gibberish about why I hadn’t written him sooner and how I’d just read Dharma Bums for the second time in a week (like I thought he might care) and how I suspected that my girlfriend was sleeping with this old lawyer guy she and I both knew (which was more annoying than heartbreaking) and that I just wanted to be able to live what I considered a Beat existence (whatever that means) and not have to worry about any of that shit because it was all about experience and that I wanted desperately to believe all that and just live my life like free-form verse, not concerning myself with rules or stanzas. Something I said worked, I was granted a full pardon from writing anything else for the entire semester.
Having written about the Beats so persuasively, I counted myself as part of their company. This belief lasted the better part of ten years. Not as productive as I would have liked, but entirely necessary.
College as a whole seemed to be a waste of time. Not that I wanted to enter the workforce, but I seriously contemplated following one of Kerouac’s routes of either joining the Merchant Marine (even though I had recently gotten out of the Navy), or traveling around the country, staying with friends and writing about my experiences. I had several dreams about hanging out with Kerouac, Cassady, Ginsberg, Snyder and a bunch of other guys who acted out the parts of their pseudonyms from the books and poetry of my literary heroes. A group of three of those dreams actually happened in sequence over a two week period. As difficult as it is to resume a dream, I did it twice, and all three dreams were centered around me hanging out with and talking to Kerouac. There were many peculiarities about this series of dreams, but the most poignant was Kerouac and I walking towards a crowd of cheering people on a hilltop and him reading to me, from a small back notebook, some line about a hawk in my house. I told him that all those people were waiting for him and he replied that they were not waiting for him. When I turned to him to ask what he meant, he had disappeared and I was engulfed by the crowd. I have had, and been told, many interpretations for that portion of the dream. At best, my own interpretations are arrogant. Other’s interpretations aren’t as flattering. Somewhere in the middle is way off target.
Few people believe (most don’t seem to care) that these dreams occurred a month before I picked up, or even heard of Kerouac’s Scripture of the Golden Eternity. Poem #22 ends with the lines: A hummingbird can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light. (Which I later learned was a reference to Henry Miller’s story, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird, which without being too ironizing, is a strange coincidence itself.)
One thing that Beat literature really opened my eyes to was the fact that there is significance in the mundane. Up until the point when I first read On the Road, literature seemed guilty of bypassing the mundane, or at best, treating it merely as a transition to the next sub-plot. Life to me wasn’t like that. The mundane was very real, very beautiful, worthy of significance, but in my youthful naivete, I never thought to damn the world and apply it myself. I had falsely assumed that since it wasn’t mentioned, the mundane was nothing more than mundane. Beat literature, and the lives I read about of the Beats, awakened me to Rilke’s advice to a young poet: If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. I was the young poet— I still am. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder, all of them were my Rilke; all of their poetry, all of their literature was a letter to me— it still is.
A lot of people in the academic world are experts at unearthing poetry from the mundane— as long as it is somewhere else. Discovering the poetry in one’s day to day affairs is much more difficult; in fact, it would seem damn near impossible from an academic standpoint. Finding fault with another is much easier to swallow than strict self criticism.
That’s not where I want to go. Aside from being guilty of the same thing (that’s the reason I am leaving that paragraph), it’s simply not the direction I envisioned, but it did serve as a good resting point. If my mind will allow— back on track.
I had this other professor, well, I didn’t actually take his class, I only went to see him about switching my major to English Literature— so he was a potential advisor, if anything. I had several poems I had written to a lot of girls who would never see them, a couple of lyrics to heart wrenching songs about why those girls would never see them, and my story about the funeral. I went to meet him with my snazzy little portfolio. My definition of “snazzy” was markedly different from his, a point he was very vocal about. Following his sermon, he handed me a book of his poetry, which he had recently published, and instructed that I learn to write like him if I ever wanted to make it as a poet. As I was leaving, I was told to photocopy “ten or so of [my] favorites and return the book promptly.” I left the book on his desk along with my decision to become an English Lit major. I kept my desire to write, but I let the haughty s.o.b. beat me— I trashed all of my poems. He may have been right about them, but I acted rashly, thinking I would just start a new slate. I still wish I had them just to see from where I came. I have been ridiculed to my face for things I have written since then, but I still have them. What I learned above all else was perseverance.
Beaten but not defeated was my obnoxious battle cry. With time, I began to understand what he was telling me: There are a lot of people out there who write; not all of them will get published. Some will. There is something to be learned from those who do, namely, how to get published. The how-to market is flooded with experts on the field of how to get published. If you can’t publish a book, why not publish a book on how to get published? There is some logic in there which temporarily escapes me. The real meat on board this train is that, as a beginning writer, you should find something similar to yours that has been published and go from there. I drew more similarities than were actually there, but if nothing else, I was inspired by Beat literature. Not only by the literature, but by the Beats themselves. It takes a hell of a talent to make hobo-ing sound appealing. Fortunately, I never followed the path that far, but I did recognize the sheer power of the people behind the literature.
I hoped that in learning about them, I would learn to be more like them. If I could do it without being the hobo, wandering, starving artist, so much the better! There is something to be said about one’s literary voice, and it is this: No matter how well you hone your impersonation skills, you will never be who you are not. For me, this marks my departure.
Not that I’ve given up trying to write like those who inspired me to put words together in an artistic way to say something that everyone knows but not everyone realizes. What I have given up is trying to be a Beat. I am not. I didn’t experience the disillusionment of the mediocrity which befell America after winning the second world war. I didn’t contribute to the creation of a literary genre that would not only define a generation but would serve as a model and influence generations for years to come. I could go on like this for some time, defining who the Beats are and who I am not, but that is not why I write, I’ve found. What I have found is that I am not a Beat anything. Much of my artistic make-up is heavily influenced by people who are, but I am someone else entirely. I was born in a different era from which most of the Beats came, I grew up experiencing situations that didn’t make sense to me, to those around me, and certainly wouldn’t register to the Beats, being that realistically they are, by and large, from my grandparent’s generation and have backgrounds representative of that era. Not only have I been blessed with the opportunity to read their works, but I have also been able to read those who came before them, and those who have been inspired by them since.
This collection can be read as a tribute to those who inspired me, as a childish quest to be something I am not, or, and I believe most accurately, the ambitious beginnings of an aspiring writer. Any of the above contexts will do, but the important thing to note is to acknowledge where you came from, but never lose sight of where you are going.
© 2005, n09XI—Furious Poet Press & Vagabond Lit
Dolmance, quite possibly a fictional extension of the once very real Marquis de Sade, spoke thus of religion: “Could religion best be described as the pact that binds a man to his Creator, and forces him to prove, by way of blind worship, his gratitude to that great Creator for his existence?”
I have a confession, one that is difficult to make. I was once an assassin. I killed without prejudice, assassinated without remorse. My victims were not full grown men, they were young boys. People are willing to forgive the slaughter of full grown men, but the annihilation of young boys is considered by most to be a cowardly, unholy act. It’s not a page of my history that makes me particularly proud, but now is the time for confession—I was a Ninja.
A dear friend of mine, wise in chaos and long in leg, sent me an anecdote about a technique for writers known as the Flower Paradigm. I only had to imbibe a few lines before realizing, this is spot on. My skin erupted in chill with the thought that someone somewhere knows me that well to send me such a shattering piece of self-psychosis masquerading as diagnosis. The Flower Paradigm breaks this writing life into four succulent personalities: Madman, Judge, Architect, and Carpenter. I list them in order as a spoiler for how each should be approached, but will describe each based on their actual weave of existence.