Buddhism-inspired poetry - UPDATED 4-11-21

 

Jacob Rabinowitz, whose book -- Blame it on Blake: a memoir of dead languages, gender vagrancy, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Corso & Carr -- we reviewed HERE in May 2019, has had two poems published in BUDDHIST POETRY REVIEW (click HERE). Check them out.

The connection to Jack Kerouac? Jack studied and knew a lot about Buddhism, referencing it frequently in his works. Four of his books are specifically about or are heavily influenced by Buddhism: Some of the Dharma; Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha; The Scripture of the Golden Eternity; and, The Dharma Bums (my favorite Kerouac work).  And that's not counting Desolation Angels, which has lots of Buddhist themes. The only book he took with him for 2+ months on Desolation Peak was Dwight Goddard's A Buddhist Bible and Jack had a practice of re-reading sections of "The Diamond Sutra" daily. That's according to John Suiter in Poets on the Peaks, but Thomas Holloway pointed out in a comment that Jack references in Desolation Angels another book he had up there, The God That Failed (see comment below). So it may be that Jack had more than A Buddhist Bible at hand. Maybe A Buddhist Bible was the only book he took with him, but there were other books awaiting him that had been left there by previous occupants? What do you think?

UPDATE 4-11-21

I've learned since posting this (never too old to learn) that Jack had a number of books at his disposal on Desolation Peak. How they got there is a mystery to be solved. Below is a list of books he had up there:

1. A Buddhist Bible by Dwight Goddard (ed.)

2. A John Barrymore biography (Good Night, Sweet Prince)
3. Devils in Baggy Pants by Ross Carter
4. A Kathleen Norris novel (title?)
5. The God That Failed
6. A "cowboy book" (title?)
7. A medical book (title?)
8. A synopsis of Shakespeare's plays (Tales from Shakespeare ed. by Charles and Mary Lamb)