Lee Crase's Vagabond Lit

My imagination dances in shadows. It’s a slow dance that everyone is familiar with, but most people wouldn’t be caught doing in public. Not me– I dance loud, I dance insatiate, I dance ecstatic.

Today is the 54^th anniversary of the famous Six Gallery reading where Allen Ginsberg read Howl for the first time. Several other Poets read that night: Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Michael McClure, and Philip Lamantia citing the words of the freshly deceased Poet and friend, John Hoffman. A touching sentiment by Lamantia, but overlooked by the scholars of history more concerned with the new bard on the scene, Allen Ginsberg, who offers eulogic stanza to same deceased in the lines:

Kerouac was still two years shy of publishing his prose equivalent, On the Road, but was established and present with wild shouts of “Go man, go!” while passing a communal jug of wine around to the Poets and audience without discrimination.

I read in a lost interview, soiled by memory and want, that Ginsberg wound out the ecstatic breaths of Howl as a vehement repose to Joan Vollmer Adams, William S. Burroughs deceased wife by hyperbolic hand in a bloody game of William Tell. Joan visited Allen in a dream and asked about everyone’s happenings since her death. In a Poem titled, Dream Record: June 8, 1955 he begins this letter by recounting the dream through textual reconstructive summary. Howl is a weightier exposition of this theme.

This is the shadow in which I dance. Eighteen years before I out swam the other minions for the golden egg of hair-trimmed womb, Ginsberg included a line that seems to have been written specifically for me, and I don’t intend this greeting as a salutation of flattery:

Sometimes I think that Poetry was easier when I was younger and fresh to the cut. There weren’t all these ridiculous notions of elaborate rhyme scheme, or intentional free verse, or blatant emulation for the sake of frenzied expression. When I was younger I wrote Poetry for girls who had no interest in Poetry and even less interest in me. None of that mattered, because I was writing my little rhymed Poems and was insanely happy with my products. As I’ve encroached on my vagabond scholasticism, I’ve lost much of the appeal that coupled me with Poetry initially. Every Poem is a sloppy trace of someone else’s texts. There’s always a drive to be something that I am not. I am a Poet, I’ve known this for far to long to dismiss it because of several years of misguided hero worship. I am not a Beat Poet, nor am I a Romantic Poet, and certainly not classically trained, if such a moniker applies to Poets of flesh. I still write my Poems for people who don’t care anything about Poetry, even as they remain moderately amused that I would have such an ambition. I write much of my Poetry for the dead, wonder what so-and-so would think about this line, this choice of phrase, or the ordering of this stanza before or after this other one, and as a result, write dead Poetry.

I do crave an audience. What lunatic who dives into the textual abyss of Poetic nuance does not? What I have gained over the last however many years of adulation is that Poetry is not written on mirrors, rather Poetry is written through reflection. It’s a beautiful world, even when you feel like pissing on it.

© n07X Vagabond Lit