Bob Holman

Big Praise! Big Poem! for Big Sur! & Jack Kerouac


I. Praise the Sea of Sound that Starts the Poem that Starts the Book Praise the Cabin and Praise the Delicious Dashes that Lash the Words to Prose!

SPLOSH SPLAWRSH (p.240)
Okey dokey booky wooky -- poem
Bout to begin in Ferlinghetti's Big Sur cabine cabin
- Oh, scuse me, I mean Monsanto's and Wait. Why
Poem? Cuz this hear Praise Poem, sea! and Jack wrote Big Sur poem
First! --- Talkin Ocean sound poem, big Mister Trosh
(p. 232)!
The moogrus big clunk of it right there with its slaverous lips of foam (p. 15)
Ur-text from which springs novel Poem key to Book (Praise the Book!) Poem
Put it at end of book so no one gets scared off Poem
Here in Hear this Praise Poem gotta getta good start
Begins with actual bedarvling (p. 220) sound collage goop "Sea" poem- "Jack" poem -
All the books in cabin Prose all rucksack books Prose
Big Sur itself writ all prosey chapters ahh! glorious delicious dashes --
That'd be prose of nonsentenced speech ties thought bomb nuggets
Lashed and dashed and dashed and crashed smashed together untied tongue licks
Praise!

II. Praise Writing That's Speech!

Sheer honesty of it
All poem meta-morphs into prose never loses poem heart
Glorious nowness never alters -
"To read" means "you speak"
With Jack while he speaks with you
Palavar chatter natter converse through clattering Big Sur
Which is just the ocean speaking anyway darling
As I sing Jaybird praises the halelluded End o' Book Era,
Same as Daddy Whitman, too
Pre- Internet populace grasp democratization interactivity
But speaking writing, heralding, halelujah that'll do!
Talking directly through sweet dry ink -- a Printer, a Railroader-
Poem in prose drag -
Jack the Walking Book

III. Praise the Aging of Jack and the Conflicts It Causes! Praise the Characters as They Are Introduced! Praise Neal's Girlfriends!

Jack Jack Jack - Duluoz -
Name you be known as Jack in Big Sur the Book
Sweet terrible mournful hornful book Book
Here Praise Book - see it open hear it closed - break-down Book
Lab reports on journey to madness symbol by crazy event Book -
Grow up Book- now you famous now what book you write? Book
All over America high school and college kids thinking Jack Duluoz is 26 and on the road all the time hitch hiking while he's really 40 and bored and jaded (p.5)
Can'st thou change, St Jack? Would'st thou? Must'st thou?
Psychoanalize your girlfriend, "Girlfriend by Cody" - spoze
We call Billie your girlfriend in Big Sur? - yessirree, some hot scenes, well!
And the parade of visitors helping you be alone
Irwin/Allen In New York just loving you
As you Descend into Hell

IV. Praise Healing Solitude of Cabin! Praise Mentioning All Things! Praise Another Book That Is Poem-based! Praise Foreshadowing the Break-down!

The Hell of Other People you betcha,
Just singing Sartre/Camus ain't got nothing on you
A donde es mi sockiboos? (p.39)
Surely the tenderest light: (Chapters 5-9) the week you spend alone lone lone
And no more people
A long way from the Beat generation in the rain forest (p.26)
You and bacon of slab and mouse mouse and of course Alf the Sacred Burro
Not to mention - what not to mention? Ah!
Lovely charming handsome Buddha infinite stretch of not not mentioning
Mentioning everything simply to go on mentioning golden
Moment's peaceful float flow Zalarambaala! Fitzool!
And all other sounds that pop poem say, Hey!
Pale Fire ! -Nabakov! -
Fiction creation - so -- I unzip Praise structure into poetry when Jesus, Jack -- Your prose Rears like the poemiest poetry that never poemed a prose dream!
All the while cataloguing, observing, analyzing your fall
Into deepest abyssabus
Sleeplessless loony night rampage sweats -

V. Praise Stopping the Break-down! Praise Writing as a Spiritual Task!

Stop it!
I want to cry out like Billie
To just Love and you say Love yourself might as well in that as you say Hate's too easy -
As far as love goes, "I wanta be chased for eternity till I catch her" (p. 130)
So - where are we getting ahead to as ususal -- it's you and Nabakov alright
Now who knows what you thought of him you gorgeous Canuck hunk football daddio
In lumberjack shirt and raincoat you paid 40 for and never wore (p. 34)
Is it same one Prof Depp pays ten thousand simoleys for but that's later but listen, Nab
Akov Pale Fire too and also a novel based on a poem,
Praise Poem for All Ur Text of Novel Is Poem, Praise!
Pale Fire leads off with poem (into the creaky critiquey detail)
Is all about interpreting
Your Big Sur as I've mentioned -- Praise the mentioning! -
Poem concludes book -- is sound construct and (Big Point if you listen, listen now:)
RESISTS INTERPRETATION which is one why I put it all in Poem Construct
Praise Poem Construct! as we trip madly through the ineffable moment
Like Neal (Dean/Cody) who couldn't WRITE it you know so busy living the Pure
Purer and the Holy Holy why bother scratch a surface with a scribble
But God you say what a writer he'da a been (p. 130) and Jack Jack it's you, Praise you
You were doing what Neal couldn't (write it)
And Vlad couldn't (live it)
(Except for those damn butterflies)
Only the American Best do what you and Walt do - unfolding book
To a scroll the book as a medium for voice - Reader, Earster, hear inner dharma
Bum singinginging sans artifice sans all Nabakovian stratega so sheer
Genius we can't even see
Transparent strategy of unconsciousness
Revealing sheer joy of now moment a direct hit to the vein

VI. Praise the Road Stretching Out Is a Vein! Praise the Form of the Praise Poem! Praise the Passing of the Beat Generation!

PopZapSnareRollWallopBassCaroomTrumpBoom Diddlybaytaramayamanamamama
Oh Yes! Jack greatest perf po spoken word artiste ---
No Rehearsals!
Like some fantastic Jerry Southern singer in a night club who steps up to the
Mike in the spotlight in Las Vegas but doesn't have to sing, just talk,
To make men sigh and wonder (p. 146)

Who gets a Praise Poem who praise a get poem who poem?
Papa Susso Gambian griot says Praise those who touch a poet spot
Make the poem happen hot inside like you're talking to yourselve's self
Praise the Praise Poem, form straight from Orality to Sing You!
And he (Papa) has a job doing this! Gets paid! (Praise Papa!)
Or, the question, how I get write poem as you Jack wrote poem, so
Thanks to you-- Praise you--become you
And now that I am and this seems so strange older than you ever were
Woowie still you out front lead me to who I am
Now how I be man poet human beaner am now
Now that your gang's all dead Allen/Irwin and Wm Burroughs and dear Gregory Whalen hangs in there and Snyder's going strong so too McLear/McClure
"Whose poetry is really like a black hawk" you say (p. 132) and he shows up
With a real black hawk, too!

VII. Praise Another Poem in Book Praise McClure's "Dark Brown"!

Appears so beautiful gig-figuringly in there with his Dark Brown
Just republished (Penguin, 2000) "See what you mean, Jack"
And your fictional critique ("the most fantastic poem in America," p.95) makes it
Atop Michael's gorgeous Hollywood Billy the Kid mug cover blurb
So though you couldn't get it published in Europe (strange phone call to Monsieur
Gaullimard's butler, p. 161) 1960
You do get poem published forty years later - Praise you, Blurbaciousizer!
Oh man how jazzy the prenoun's pronounce
The pronoun bounce
Or as Pedro Pietri says, Jack, how do your eggs like you? -
And he won't even speak to me anymore!!
Ah Poets!!

VIII. Praise Reemergence of Oral Tradition as Writ by Jack!

Praise Poem for Jack for Big Sur End of Road
Passing of Beat Generation Reemergence Oral Tradition
Via Papa Susso and the Internet?
Not to mention (yes! To Mention!)
Pull My Daisy, spontaneous monologous soundtrack
Jack predicting what happens next
Filling in all voices of "the Marx Brothers"
(As they were called on Buffalo Poetics listserv "poetry on film" thread yesterday) - Groucho being Allen & Chico is Gregory, and who Harpo?
Why the frenchified horn man himself Mr David Amram! Live!
On this website! Link now! In Daisy he trades in harp de Harpo
For French horn de Sharpo waving madness as he does To This Day
He just emails me - this is how we do the Kerouac 2001 gig - Instanter!
As Olson commandeth in "Projective Verse" - See (dig?), I'd emailed Amram
For twenty words or less (got to! Due to David's Continuum Verbum,
His Being Simply Medium for the Ongoing Tale!)
Intro for you - and I quote -- which means cut & paste: --
"Jack remains the primary scource to tell the tales of the dreamers of my era.
He was our reporter."
Count em, Baby Pops, 'tis a perfect 19 words, under 20,
Amram swings in form inform! Praise Music Measures!

IX. Praise Misogyny! Praise Unknowingness of Innocence Era! Praise Homoeroticism, Conscious or Un-! Praise the Parent Jack could not become!

Dreamer's streamer dreams the biggest one in all Kerouac: Big Sur (pp 206-211)
Extending on y on Jack responsible for every detail hellnightmarish middle
Class horror couplings and from behind yet!
"Both man and woman sit facing the same direction and somehow there's contact Because you can see all their feathery rainbow behinds slowly dully monotonously Fornicating on the dumbslopes" (p. 208) more homoerotc twinge hmm I mean
Sends me tumbling Dante Jack in the Praise it's not unquestioning
Jack wake up Jack stuck in his age Jack you pig human pig
Can even make for bad writing: for every swan-rich neck you lose there's
another ten waiting, each one ready to lay for a lemon" - ouch! (p.166)
Jack who cannot outgrow the son can never be parent
Where's the Father to the boy,
Billie's little boy Elliott,
Who will just tell Billie, no,
Your kid is great,
Let's play games go for walk throw ball go fishing
Attend to him a bittybit
And after he falls asleep then we'll fuck our brains out Billie Mommy
Thin sexy blonde sex instead
Her four-year old boy pulling at his Mommy -
"No Don't do it Billie don't do it Billie don't do it Billie" (p. 188)
"She being on top indication of exactly how helpless and busted down
I've become and here it is only 4 in the afternoon" (p. 190) -
She rides you and that makes you weak cummon Jack
To be the fuckEE stead of fuckER - oh Sad Jack Macho Sadness- and the boy angel
Men can be really angelic friends and not be homosexual and not fight over girls (p. 135)
The inexpressibly nervously sad delight of love
Don't let no old fogies tell you otherwise, and on top of that nobody in the world even Ever dares to write the true story of love, it's awful (p.147)

And they're shouting and tearing at each other and Billie's beating Elliott and saying She'll kill him and herself both, and Jack steps back,
"Even so Alf the Sacred Burro is in the yard waiting for someone to give him an apple" (p. 188)

XI. Praise Those Who'd Use Kerouac as a Wild Beat Role Model Even as Jack Tries to Move Beyond that Aspect Himself!

Ron Blake new Chet Baker singer with the tiresome hipster approach (p.56)
Who stays over after the crew goes back to Monterey
Young wannabe I identify with- for whom beatnik Jack had to live the life you'd writ Build up that old resentment stead of saying what must be said, Hey, my Son, Sweet Talented Kideroo, I'm olde now and you want to party with me and Dean in On the Road You go on your own road, now, you see -
Don't hang harangue with me while looking for who I was while me
Looking for who I am now-I'm still on the Road,-- The Golden Path!
You finally tell (p. 115) him that Jack but driving yourself (Neal! Neal's the Driver!) Crazy first -- and him, that boy -- where are ye now, Youth?
Retired from some civil service job as stock broker managing drugstore at the mall -

XII. Praise the Beats and the Word Beat! Praise Joe Gould and the Protobeats and Other Unnameabled Bohos!

Praise to Oral Tradition as Passed on by Beatnik and Pre!
Joe Gould's Oral History of the Universe - protobeatnik - Jack!
You write big generous Beatnik word all over Big Sur,
But Allen went to grave divorcing himself from hype of -nik lingual
Construct - We were the Beats! He'd roar -
Not Herb Caen's teasing put-down (was it gentle?) -
'Twas Joe Gould ur-Boho said If one person were to write down everything he hears
That would be History of the Universe --
Joe's big project - Be Center of Universe -
As we all are, especially poets and artists- Jack's unreel of the mind and moment
Being Individual (All) Center Perfect -
So, ahem, anywho - Narcissisississima
Prof Seagull Joe Gould talked his book up it got written up in Time magazine no mean Feat for a poet to this day and then two profiles in the New Yorker
The second of which when Prof Mitchell
'Twas Joseph Mitchell found Old Joe Gould out -
Revealed that there Was No Book that the Talk was All -
Segue back to OT oral tradition my writing this poem under griot-influence to
Praise you, Jack!
For Actually Writing!
So we can pass it along like this
If I do not get sued for ripping off your characters not paying a royalty
For saying I too think of old Dean Moriarty

XIII. Praise the Father, the Son, and the Holy Hubba Hubba!

Because are you my father, as Cody reminds you of your dad (p. 135)
(Page references so maybe not get sued)
Filling all his pockets with Racing forms
And papers and pencils and going on some serious mission in the night
With ultimate seriousness as tho going on the last trip of them all
But it always ends up being a hilarious menaingless Marx borthers adventure
Which gives Jack even more reason to love him and his father too - and what I love
Is the detail of the Racing forum and the sweet hyperbole generality of
The last trip of them all and how it brings love for Neal and his dad too that umbrella
Love that seems to include me and even more so because of the Marx Brothers reference
(Buffalo Poetics listserv see above (link))
Right here right now today Jack --
You never fessed up to Jan paternity -- not in any real way
She dying into that tiny coffin hole -
Ginsberg did not "go to the grave," Bob!
- But Jan, me, no dada, pops
- No Blame -
Who has a father in this world?
Dean did
Allen's father Louis a poet -
You give world the book and a dead cat named Tyke left home with Mother
Seems the most important clue the start of the Descent, Mr Dante,
The child you left behind with Mama -
Not analyze but Praise
The Existence of Your Oral History of the Universe

XIV. Praise the Symbols that Lead to the Break-down!

Slowly dropping in the symbols
- The goofy eerie walk you make in dead of night
Over under through crashing Big Sur waves
- Led by the Sound of it -
The Sound will become your Pale Fire
Birth and Purity
Specter of Consciousness
Whole Hole "Sea" as in
- Hey, it's night, do you see? -
Where are we?

Well we're not on 3rd Street China Basin railroad yard
No not in Bolinas no
Always pushing the road a lil bit further till we end up smackdab floating in the Pacific - No we're in Monterey, direction towards evil that is LA
Where you never made it - No, we're in the middle of your poem, "Sea," see? -
Symbols we can count em
- First and foremost the ocean yes, mentioned -
Not only sound but the rising smell of iodine, of Death
And what's in the ocean but old car wreck of a missed the curve
Plummeted the air that drowned -
All the greatest drivers in the universe lined up and WOE!
I mean like wow we're over the cliff man - far out -and that's it
The End of On the Road
-- Jack, we call it Off the Road -
Then let's see, hmm, more symbols -- death of cat
(Name's Tyke! that explains all) -
Floating otter corpse
NO RIDES as you hitchhike to Monetery
Death of goldfish (sitting in chair till it's pointed out "you broke it")
And creek is poisoned with turpentine and!
- So we got these Death by water images flashing
And the only place to sleep is down by the creekside
Under vast lugubrious fullmoon
- Don't forget Alf the Holy Burro! -
- And the cigarette is a mouthful of death (p. 202)
and he remembers his cat for the first time in three hours (203)
Can you see what I'm driving at here
- Drive drive drive that symbol home
He's done irreparable harm ("Garradarable narm! Yells the creek)" (p. 211)
- Even a Cross yet! (p. 204)
- and don't forget the blackbirds at Tyke's funeral!
(And add Mouse Death)

And the final hole
That Billie will dig the size of a child
To bury who Jack
Jack Owl Hoo Hoo

XV. Praise the Pataphysicians!

Hey speaking of dada and symbol and all
How about the dig at Pataphysics (p 118): yell contemptuously in the moonlight
"'T'sa'n intellectual excuse for facetious joking…peculiarly attractive to
Certain shallow types" - that'd be me, Jack
And even contradicting with Joyce references and "word games" (p. 182)
- Not bad enough Lawrence gotta become Monsanto
(My Saint? Or one of first corporate giants?)
- But his Jarry book comes under attack - Back, Jack!
Intellectuals make good lovers, daddio…
Apollinaire - Sam Beckett - how shallow
Hallowed be thy to love Ubu and Jarry…
Sure James Joyce is fine but Pataphysics is a loser, hmmm…

XVI. Praise the Break-down!

Praise the dashes of page spread 162-163!
The world held together by Dash!


XVII. Praise Be Unto the Words of Jack!

One fast move or I'm gone (p. 7)
Well, it's Coltrane knowing that next note in "Oleo"
- To find it you gotta go there --
Man yes to write this book he's got to shed the skin of fame,
Those lizard togs ---

Columbus reading Kerouac:
"Hmm…I've just discovered America through this guy's voice"
And Burroughs writes The Stranger (p. 8) in his Beat cosmology
(Hey! I'm goofing on you, Tytell!)…
Edmund Spenser gets a nod (p. 12) affrayed as in frayed by (like?) a whip…

Quick! What's first book Jack reads in Big Sur?
--Why it's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, of couse, --
As his own Hyde comes to life
"Ending the last elegant sentences at dawn" (p. 20)…
But we cheer on assessment of Hesse Steppenwolf "stupid and senseless"
How much more useful are those "ten cent copper pot scourers"
(p. 31 - you go, Jack!)

"Worth the telling only if I dig deep into everything"
--He talks to himself so we all (including he himself) can overhear… --
Telling the whole story complete with
Polite Emily Dickinson flies
And how you dry a lantern mantle in the sun
Instead of with paper towels

We see Jack doing quotidian chores decked out in his plaid shirt
One loudmourth funny Buddah nonstop yakyak
Sewing in cabin, he becomes his Mother
Sit on curbstones, the hell with the hot lights of Holywood (24)

Jack had facility -
He could remember a moment without stopping the moment he was in/he was sharing With us so he had the event the memory of it and the now Hello simulteneity thing Happening which is the lamb of hell lambchop for sure (p. 101)

(Rehearsing for the Steve Allen show! What a story!)
Jack does not rehearse he drinks
And then he aces in one take
If you don't believe me just watch the tape

Allow me to stay here, I only want peace - and the local spirits answer yes, the Mountains answer yes so who's to say no?
And this only weeks after falling on his head in the Bowery and--- hey!
Site of the soon-to-be Bowery Poetry Club
And how much milk does a bluejay take from your mug?
Why a miffle, a miffle of milk d'accord (p. 38)…
Write a letter to Coaly Rustnut and sign it Runty Onenut (40)…

The ethical dilemmas of living alone in a borrowed cabin such as
You can't poison your pal the mouse but you can't let your host know so
You just leave the cover off the rat poison on the top shelf…
Only to return to find your mouse pal dead whatever did you do?…
(Add to "symbols" section)

The clean azzhole joke!!!
Only Beatniks wash their asses nice and clean

And The Big Goof withGeroge
As they separate and keep each other's consciousness as they put distance between
But still dance together cavort send semaphore signals strange bird noises
The endless list of connections as men will be boys and can never separate
What is distance anywy but time (p. 81-2) the stupider or rather the more unexpectedly Insaner sillier brighter it is the better (98)


And Dean excuse me Cody yasss dropping in says of Billie (p. 194) "she has a gone little Body that's all I can say and in bed she is by far the first and only and last possible Greatest everything you dig"

Kerouac as he says it of himself and I quote p. 63
The sadness of it all is that the world hasn't any chance to produce say a writer
Whose life could really actually touch all this life in every detail like you always say, Some writer who could bring you sobbing thru the bed fuckin bedcribs of the moon to see It all even unto the goddamned last gory detail of some dismal robbery of the heart

It's like endless poems everywhere, haranguing him till dawn about Buddhism -
Some Buddhist (p. 72)…!

It's always fun to have a good driver and a bottle and dark glasses on a fine sunny afternoon going somewhere interesting, and all the good conversations as I said (p. 75)

Who stays awake to watch you sleep -
Only Jack does that
- Watching Jack watch Jack sleep, what a goof -
That and all other subconscious glurbs (p.93)…
City street drunk in the Boweries of the world (p. 111)…
(Club, see above)

Praise Grace Praise Greatness of Nothingness
Oh the Total Linked Website of
Walk to the Sea with you Jack Jackie Jack Wily Jack this Praise Poem
For the Website all You
The Way the Mind Works Just Keeps On
Like On the Road ha
Our Neverdo Buddha waiting forever for us on Monsanto's porch
We got the wine McLear's got the poem Ha
The fishing pole and the flour and beans
We're all a litttle rusty tickle c'mon out and play Jack
Come surf your site with us today
Driving all the way into sunset

These are the crazy words of mine (120)…
'These roads don't move, you're the one that moves"…

What a getaway (85)

That kind of day, perfect …everywhichwhere…starmooched firmament…

And let all know those who know Jack
The Mantra of Jack
Praise Song for Jack
Quite simply that
"I believed in what I saw"