Jack Kerouac, who died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven, is renowned as the father of the beat generation. His eighteen internationally acclaimed books -- including On the Road, Doctor Sax, The Subterraneans, and Lonesome Traveler -- were important signpost in a new American literature. Here, in Mexico City Blues, his only collection of poetry, his voice is as distinctive as in his prose; it roams widely across continents and cultures in a restless search for meaning and expression, giving the verse the unique qualities ...
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Jack Kerouac, who died in 1969 at the age of forty-seven, is renowned as the father of the beat generation. His eighteen internationally acclaimed books -- including On the Road, Doctor Sax, The Subterraneans, and Lonesome Traveler -- were important signpost in a new American literature. Here, in Mexico City Blues, his only collection of poetry, his voice is as distinctive as in his prose; it roams widely across continents and cultures in a restless search for meaning and expression, giving the verse the unique qualities found in America's most distinctive contribution to music.
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Kerouac wrote his volume of poetry "Mexico City Blues" during the summer of 1955 while living in Mexico City. During this time, he also wrote his sad and still underappreciated short novel, "Tristessa" Tristessa [TRISTESSA] [Paperback]. "Mexico City Blues" had a difficult history. Kerouac's friend, Lawrence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Press, rejected the book for publication in 1956. In 1959, Grove Press published the work. Then, in November, 1959, the poet Kenneth Rexroth published a devastatingly critical review titled "Discordant and Cool" in the New York Times. Rexroth wrote: "Mr. Kerouac's Buddha is a dime-store incense burner, glowing and glowering sinisterly in the dark corner of a Beatnik pad and just thrilling the wits out of bad little girls." Rexroth concluded his review with mocking irony: It's all there, the terrifyingly skillful use of verse, the broad knowledge of life, the profound judgments, the almost unbearable sense of reality.I've always wondered whatever happened to those wax-work figures in the old rubberneck dives in Chinatown. Now we know; at least one of them writes books."
For all its weaknesses, "Mexico City Blues" has survived its publication history and Rexroth's criticism. The book continues to be read, discussed, argued about, and taught. "Mexico City Blues" is a collection of 242 short poems, each of which is titled simply as a numbered "Chorus". Kerouac wanted to write poetry in the style of the jazz and bop music he loved; and in this he for the most part succeeded. He wrote at the outset of the book:
"I want to be considered a jazz poet
blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam
session on Sunday. I take 242 choruses;
my ideas vary and sometimes roll from
chorus to chorus or from halfway through
a chorus to halfway into the next."
The work is written free-style and spontaneously with Kerouac,as he says, frequently taking an idea from one chorus and following through into the next. (The dividing lines between some of the choruses thus frequently seem artificial and mask a continuity in the text.) As with all poetry, the choruses in "Mexico City Blues" work best when declaimed and read aloud. Remember the Beats of Kerouac's day, as these poems were recited in coffee-houses to bongos. In reading the book, I was able to recapture some of this by "surfing" and by finding examples of choruses either read skillfully or accompanied by piano, drum, or small combo. Reading aloud, alone or with music and rhythm, brings to life these choruses.
The choruses have many themes, of which Kerouac's interest at the time in Buddhism is one. Rexroth devalues severely Kerouac's insight into Buddhism, among other things. The poems include sequences about Kerouac's early life and his relationship to his parents and to his older brother Gerard who died at the age of 9 when Kerouac was 4. This death haunted Kerouac throughout his life. The choruses include meditations on death. There are poems about substance abuse which haunted Kerouac throughout his life and which undoubtedly played a role in the poems. There are choruses about Kerouac's life in Mexico, on the railroads, travelling around, and about much else.
"Mexico City Blues" is a long, erratic collection. Given the spontaneous method of writing and the circumstances under which it was written, much of the collection is indeed poor, ranting, almost unreadable, and deserving of Ferlinghetti's declination of the book and of Rexroth's criticism. At its best, there are some good poems here and a distinctive beat creative voice. I found that as I reread and thought about the book more of the choruses began to make sense. With many frustrating things in the collection, overall the book works.
Some of the individual choruses has become relatively well-known and anthologized. Here are a few passages from the work, among several, that seem to me characteristic and that I enjoy. In the conclusion of the 33d Chorus, Kerouac writes about himself:
"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"
The 234th Chorus is among the shortest in the collection and captures something of Kerouac's spiritual outlook. It reads in full.
"Holy poetry.
'All thinks are empty of self-marks'
'If it is space
that is perception of sight
You ought to know,
and if we were to substitute
One for the other, who'd win?"
Santiveda, St. Francis, A Kempis
Hara
A sinner may go to Heaven
by serving God as a sinner."
The last few choruses include Kerouac's tribute to jazz musician Charley Parker who had recently died and whose bop inspired Kerouac. In the 239th chorus, Kerouac said of Parker"
"The expression that says 'All is Well"
-- This was what Charley Parker
Said when he played, All is Well.
You had the feeling of early-in-the morning
Like a hermit's joy, or like
the perfect cry
Of some wild gang at a jam session
'Wail Wop' -- Charly burst
His lungs to reach the speed
Of what the speedsters wanted
And what they wanted
Was his Eternal Slowdown.
A great musician and a great
creator of forms
That ultimately find expression
In mores and what have you."
"Mexico City Blues" is a mixed collection that captures its author and an important American literary movement. Some of it will inspire. The book has been published several times since its initial printing. It is also included in a new Library of America volume of the "Collected Poems" of Kerouac.
![Mexico City Blues: [(242 Choruses]](https://www4.alibris-static.com/mexico-city-blues-242-choruses/isbn/9780802130600.gif)
