Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses by Jack Kerouac (1994)

Being perfectly too serious, Kerouac's idea of spontaneous writing does not work nearly quite so well when writing poetry than it does when Kerouac busts out his mostly American adventures in prose. Oh ho ho, it's still good, still enjoyable: I enjoy it. Thing is, see, a lot comes across as meaningless drivel, don't ever read this book straight through, you'll get angry and tell yourself lies, you like it less than you do, and cetera. (Happened with me--currently glimpsing through 2 weeks later and digging this stuff more and more.) There's an end and at it Kerouac's poetry just didn't compare to his fellow beats; Corso, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Brautigan, Kaufman, Snyder, (probably not Orlovsky--Idon'tknow--,) left him in the dust. He always sez he was scared of reading this stuff out loud. (Why do I mention that?) There were parts had me groaning most loudly: his cheesy grade school attempts at rhyming I couldn't understand the point of. The best parts? I have a thing for the Beats' Buddhism, so whenever the word bodhisattva or similar pop up I got kinda excited here in my seat and my appreciation came back up to normal.

Here's one I find pretty hep, the 33rd chorus of 242:

A vast cavern, huh?
I stop & jump to other field
And you wander around
Like Jap prisoners
In Salt Lake Cities
Under San Francisco's Sewage disaster.
"An explorer of souls
and cities --"
"A lowdown junkey" --
"Who has discovered
that the essence of life
is found only in the poppy plant

with the help of odium
the addict explores
the world anew
and creates a world
in his own image
with the help of Madame
Poppy
I'm an idealist
who has outgrown
my idealism
I have nothing to do
the rest of my life
but do it
and the rest of my life
to do it"*

If you can't dig that, you can't dig the 244 pages of poetry within Meheeco City Blues. Not the best stuff, but good. Nothing truly memorable, nothing to memorize and sing with soft love in the ears of a young woman who probably doesn't even like poetry anyway so what the fuck. If ever I come galloping across more Kerouac poetry, I'll pick it up gladly, especially if it's called the Scripture of the Golden Eternity or Pomes All Sizes, but ahhh not much effort'll be going into these hunts, no sir. Give me another Dharma Bums! or Desolation Angels! or Lonesome Traveler! or yes! even On the Road!

F.V.: Sixty percent.

*LT won't allow me to re-create the structure of the poem, which does hurt it a bit, trust me.

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