Scattered Poems

by Jack Kerouac

The new American poetry as typified by the SF Renaissance (which means Ginsberg, me, Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, McClure, Corso, Gary Snyder, Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen, I guess) is a kind of new-old Zen Lunacy poetry, writing whatever comes into your head as it comes, poetry returned to its origin, in the bardic child, truly ORAL as Ferling said, instead of gray faced Academic quibbling.

the discipline of pointing out things directly, purely, concretely, no abstractions or explanations, wham wham the true blue song of man.

As James Longenbach writes in The Art of the Poetic Line, “Line has no identity except in relation to other elements in the poem, especially the syntax of the poem’s sentences. It is not an abstract concept, and its qualities cannot be described generally or schematically. It cannot be associated reliably with the way we speak or breathe. Nor can its function be understood merely from its visual appearance on the page.” Printed books altered our relationship to poetry by allowing us to see the lines more readily. What new challenges do electronic reading devices pose?

Start my arden Gate my shades, Silk my garden Rose my days,

Milk my mind & make me cream drink me when you’re ready

Child, Dog,—listen: go find your soul, Go smell the wind, go far.

Go find God in the nights, the clouds too. When can it stop this big circle at the skull oh Neal; there are men, things outside to do.

I’ll be long robed & long gold haired in the famous Greek afternoon of some Greek City

what is left of a man and all his pride but bones?

I demand that the human race ceases multiplying its kind and bow out I advise it

And sometimes I’ll cackle, sometimes pray, sometimes cry, eat & cook at my little stove in the corner “Always knew it anyway,” I’ll say And one morning won’t get up from my mat

and with joy you realize for the first time “Thinking’s just like not thinking— So I don’t have to think any more”

You’re really sipping When your glass is always empty.

There go the birds, flying west a moment. Who’s going to ever know the world before it goes?

Takes a runaway train to Paris without a ticket, the miraculous Mexican Brakeman throws him off the fast train, to Heaven, which he no longer travels because Heaven is everywhere—

Cairo for the summer, bitter lemon wind & kisses in the dusty park where girls sit folded at dusk thinking nothing—

his body servant 8 years in the African Frenchman’s Hell, & it all adds up to nothing, like Dostoevsky, Beethoven or Da Vinci— So, poets, rest awhile & shut up: Nothing ever came of nothing.

Don’t use the telephone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

Jazz killed itself But dont let poetry kill itself

Useless, useless, the heavy rain Driving into the sea.