THE DAILY BEAT: Kerouac's Mexico City Blues cut-ups: bitchy wine

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Kerouac's Mexico City Blues cut-ups: bitchy wine

Cut-up from the 42nd and 43rd Choruses of Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues
("bitchy wine" caught our attention)

Today the students in my First Year Seminar (focused on Jack Kerouac) read aloud choruses from Mexico City Blues and then applied a Burroughsian cut-up method to their selections. Click here to see the result.

The pages aren't all oriented the same way so you'll have to use your PDF Rotate tool, but I think it's worth the effort. Most students cut-up two choruses into 8 segments with one horizontal and one vertical (navigating between whole words) cut per chorus and randomly pieced them back into two poems. They've identified the source by chorus number in case you want to see the originals. (We used the 1990 Grove Press edition.)

The checkmarks started out as a "vote for your favorite" activity but I don't think it came to fruition so don't put much stock in them.

If you take the time to read all of these, you may see some mad phrases worthy of "borrowing" for your own poetic inspiration, giving Jack credit, of course.

P.S. Kudos to my students for being good sports and going along with activities like this even when they are not directly tied to a "grade."

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Reviews of The Beat Handbook

Gerald Nicosia, author of the acclaimed Kerouac biography Memory Babe, said The Beat Handbook is "full of Jack's heart."

Jared Randall, author of the excellent book of poetry, Apocryphal Road Code, said this about The Beat Handbook: "Sometimes a book comes along at just the right time. In my wandering pack of experiences, I find they often do. Enter The Beat Handbook by Rick Dale."

Kenneth Morris, Kerouacian extraordinaire, said this:
"I just finished reading Rick Dale's beautiful utterance and call to action of Kerouac mind-set and zen sensibilities. It made me laugh and reflect on my own life and road I have naturally grooved into after absorbing the Kerouac canon. The road less traveled always had my name on it. And that has made all the difference. The Beat Handbook 100 Days of Kerouactions reaffirms the attitudes and ideology that made the Beats and Kerouac the important men of ideas that America (and the world) thirsted for, needed, and swallowed whole. Beautiful, absorbing, Top Ten whipsmart from my articulate, tender-hearted friend and fellow traveler. Highly recommended."