 |
| The On The Road scroll |
Jack Kerouac's original On The Road scroll is currently on display through April 15 at the National Park Service's Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Jack's hometown of Lowell, MA. Click HERE and scroll down for details. The museum is open daily from 12 noon to 5 P.M. and admission fees are listed at the NPS link above.
Be there or be square . . . .
 |
| John Clellon Holmes, Robert Creeley, Carl Solomon (L-R) |
There are a number of important insights into Jack Kerouac in this recently published interview with Kerouac biographer/Memory Babe author, Gerald Nicosia.
Click HERE.
 |
| My signed copy of the new & revised Memory Babe |
Today is Beat poet Gregory Corso's birthday (born March 26, 1930). Corso appeared in a number of Jack Kerouac's works: Yuri Gligoric in The Subterraneans; Raphael Urso in Book of Dreams and Desolation Angels (also as Gregory in the latter); and, Manuel in Beat Generation.
We remembered Gregory back on January 17 (click HERE).
You can read a bio and some of his poetry HERE.
Happy Birthday in Beat heaven, Mr. Corso.
What does that have to do with Kerouac, you ask? Well, Ginsberg was a central Beat character and friend of Jack's. That's a sufficient connection for our purposes.
 |
| Lawrence Ferlinghetti reading in front of City Lights |
 |
| Joanne Kyger |
My poet friend Charlie James died one year ago today. He had a good run, making it to 92. We used to write letters back and forth to communicate as he was a many hour drive away. The last time I saw him was in 2019 when we stopped in Poughkeepsie with the RV on our way to Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
He'd appreciate your reading some of his poetry in his honor today. You can read a sample on Amazon using the Look inside feature (click HERE). He wouldn't mind if you bought a copy, either. It did win the 18th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Award in the poetry category in 2011.
RIP, my friend. I miss you.
 |
| Cat lover and birthday boy, Jack Kerouac |
Our literary hero, Jack Kerouac, would have turned 100 years old today. He was born March 12, 1922 in the family home at 9 Lupine Road, Lowell, Massachusetts.
 |
| Jack Kerouac's birthplace: 9 Lupine Road in Lowell, MA (c) 2011 Rick Dale |
March 12, 1922, at five o'clock in the afternoon, in Lowell, Mass. was the day of the first thaw. I was born on the second floor of a wooden house on Lupine Road, which to this day sits on top of a hill overlooking Lakeview Avenue and the broad Merrimack River. From this house my mother, God bless her dear heart, lay listening to the distant roar of the Pawtucket Falls a mile away; she has told me all this. Besides of which it was a strange afternoon, red as fire; "noisy with a lyrical thaw," as I said in my fictions of the past, and that is to say the snow was melting so fast you could hear it in a million small streams under the vast snowy banksides crumbling just a little in their middles from the weight of the moisture. Pines dripped like the seasonal maple, made gum and gummy firsmells in the air. Great shoulders of snow dropped precipitous from their bleak wood. These descriptions are necessary at this point, for the following reason. (December 28, 1950 letter to Neal Cassady, Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956, 1995, Penguin Books, pp. 248-249)
Reminds me of the event my great friend Richard Marsh and I attended in June 2016 (click HERE). I'd go but I'm just not up for traveling right now.
An on-line event featuring a panel discussing whether Kerouac still matters is taking place this Sunday March 13 at 3 PM: https://www.politics-prose.com/event/book/pp-live-does-jack-kerouac-still-matter. It's being put on by the Politics and Prose Bookstore in D.C.
In Frisco, the last week, I visited Lamantia with Neal, he is living in the former stone small castle overlooking Berkeley Calif. he was reading "The Book of the Dead," was reclined in a sumptuous couch with furnishings and turned us on, three friends from Calif. U. dropped in, a psychology major who is apparently his Burroughs, a tall handsome owner of the house (who is somewhat the Jack K.) lounging on floor and sleeping eventually [. . . .] and a young eager intelligent kid who was like you; this was his circle, and of course he was being Lucien, they talked about psychology in terms of "I saw that damned black background to the pink again in yesterday's peotl," "Oh well (Burroughs), it won't hurt you for awhile" (both snickering). [. . . .] Lamantia showed me his poems about the Indian tribes on the San Luis Potosi plateau, I forget tribe name, they deal with his visions on Peotl and they, the lines are,arrangedlikethis, for effect, but morecomplicated. (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1940-1956, 1995, Penguin Books, p. 349)
Poet William Carlos Williams died on this date -- March 4 -- in 1963. Williams was Doctor Musial in Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. We wrote about Williams on his birthday in 2021, so you can click HERE for some details on this influential person in the Kerouac world, including his advice to Jack and Allen Ginsberg et al. along with one of his poems.
RHYTHMIC--It's prose answering the requirements mentioned by W. C. Williams, for natural-speech rhythms and words-- (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1940-1956, 1995, Penguin Books, p. 515)Rest In Poetry, Dr. Williams.
 |
| Rick Dale at Jack Kerouac' grave |
Jay Gaffney, a photographer from Jack Kerouac's hometown of Lowell, MA, is documenting what Jack's grave looks like in a photograph per day for a year. You can see his photographs to date HERE (https://7th-and-lincoln.com/blog/ -- note that this is the street address of Jack's grave in Edson Cemetery).
Jay is holding an exhibit of his work at the renowned Four Sisters Owl Diner in Lowell on March 12, Jack's birthday, from 7 - 9 PM.
Sebastian!
You magnificent bastard! I was just thinking about you, and all of a sudden, I feel
very Sebastianish,
very Bohemian!
very Baroque!
very GAY! (TURN!)
I was thinking, in a flash of glory, about all the things we've done!!!--and all the others we're going to do!
AFTER THE WAR, WE MUST GO TO FRANCE AND SEE THAT THE REVOLUTION GOES WELL! AND GERMANY TOO! AND ITALY TOO! AND RUSSIA!
For 1. Vodka
2. Love
3. Glory.
 |
| (L-R) William S. Burroughs, Lucien Carr, and Allen Ginsberg (for more photos see https://allenginsberg.org/2021/03/m-m-1/) |
Are you reading your Diamond Sutra daily like a good boy?--I got it divided into days--that is the best thing you'll ever read, it is the only thing ever written that has any value. The Bible is for shits. The Diamond Sutra is for ding-dong Buddha gongs. The words and the paper of this letter are emptiness, the words and the paper of this letter aint [sic]different from emptiness, neither is emptiness different from the words and the paper of this letter, indeed, emptiness is the words & the paper of this letter. (Jack Kerouac Selected Letters 1940-1956, 1995, Penguin Books, p. 564)
 |
| My copy of A Buddhist Bible |
I've been in a Buddhist frame of mind of late, and that passage rang out to me. If you're a Kerouac fan, you must have a copy of this book. It is the one of the only books he had to read during his time on Desolation Peak (we posted about this HERE). The Diamond Sutra starts on page 87 of my edition above. Happy reading...