Let me first say that I sent an email off to the editor of this volume, Marilene Phipps-Kettlewell congratulating her on editing such a handy volume of the majority of Kerouac’s poetic works. Her introductory matter, “Jack Kerouac, in His Own Words” serves as a highly-original introduction to the author’s poetic corpus. Taken as a singular piece of text, it is a highly-illuminating piece of writing that perhaps serves its purpose better than a scholar trying to force the fluidity of Kerouac’s writing into a stiff academic context.
I don’t know what technically constitutes “collected” versus “selected” other than it sounds like the former serves to be comprehensive, while the latter more suited to label this current collection . . .
So what does the current volume have?
Mexico City Blues (242 Choruses) complete
The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
Book of Blues
Pomes All Sizes
Old Angel Midnight
Desolation Pops
Book of Haikus
Uncollected Poems
The “uncollected poems” reins in Scattered Poems from City Lights and those from Atop An Underwood edited by Paul Marion. It also includes “Sea” fromthe novel Big Sur wrongly titled “Ocean” on the copyright page.
The unpublished poems that are included are: “Alabama, May 11, 1944″; “God Didn’t Make the World for Satisfaction”; and “MindMatter.” We are also given “selections” from the Book of Psalms, which doesn’t exactly fulfill the promise of the book being “collected” poems.
What are we missing?
- The great poem from Some of the Dharma, “Strange Cemetery in Jamaica” is not included; my guess, just like LoA backed squeamishly out of including Visions of Cody in the “Road Novels” collection, they perhaps balked at Jack’s genius line, “PRETTY GIRLS MAKE GRAVES, Fuck you all.” The editor makes the editorial decision not to include anything from SotD, but this specific poem was written independent of the main work and then incorporated during the course of typing the original Dharma notebooks together.
- Washington DC Blues (1957)
- 4 Seasons Poem (1943)
- A Tone-Poem: New England (1943)
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “I had been driven there by her virtue.”)
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “It is not in my power to forget.”) (October 5, 1944).
- Holograph poem “Louie’s song to God.” Written on verso of Columbia Pictures Corporation Eastern Story Department. (1944)
- Holograph poem “The Moor of Myself – A sonnet.” (December, 1943)
- Holograph poem “On Hearing Beethoven’s Prometheus overture.”
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “The pansophist dreams of the perfect woman.”) (1944)
- Holograph poem “The Prisoner’s Song (Written in Bronx Jail) 1944.” (1944)
- Holograph four-line poem titled “A Tragic Sonnet.”
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “When summer which has lost my love . . .”) (Undated)
- Holograph poem, “The Wooing”
- a batch of poems included with some essays and journal entries and “erotic thoughts” “1944-45″ [43.18 at NYPL - Berg]
- Holograph poem, “La Belle Sourrire” & “Encore une foi”
- Holograph poem, “Mark me well, Natasha…”
- Holograph poem, “Shades of loneliness”
- Holograph poem, “”Full of Shellac”
- Typescript poem, “Neal is dead”
- Two holograph poems. “Morphinea” and “Ideas.” (December 1944)
- Holograph poem “Flee, my friend, into thy solitude!”
- Holograph poem “In Re Christians.” (Undated)
- Holograph poem “After the Storm.” (May 1, 1945)
- Holograph poem and notes. “I have returned from the Fars.” (1945?)
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “By and for itself . . .”) (1945?)
- Holograph poem. (Begins: “If all the world were love.”) (Undated)
- Holograph poem. (Begins: “The bottomless continental cracks of fjords as brooks, . ..”) (1947)
- Typescript poem “The Angels’s Harp.” “Denver.” (1949)
- Holograph poem. “Mysteries.” (1949)
- Holograph poem. “Poem #1.” (Begins: “The soul is dead.”) (Undated)
- Typescript poem “Anecdote.” (1960)
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “White story/story in white.”) (1960)
- Tearsheet poem. “Jack Kerouac. Sept. 16, 1961. Poem.” From ‘The Outsider,’ I, 2 (Summer, 1969).
- Typescript poem “Jimmy Durante.” (Undated)
- Holograph “Poem of 1956 N.J. Turnpike ‘Allen and Peter.’” (Undated)
- Holograph poem “English poem by Jack Kerouac (A Cornish descendant).” (Undated)
- “Jack Kerouac: Sept. 16, 1961, Poem.”
- Holograph poems. “Poem 43, Poem 44, Poem 45, Poem 46.” (Undated)
- Typescript poem “Saturday afternoon window.” [Stapled to blank second leaf.] (1953)
- Typescript poem, revised. “Junk by William Lee – John Kerouac.” (February 22, 1953)
- Typescript poem “Sitting under tree number two.” (1955)
- Typescript poem. (Begins: “Tathata is Essence Isness.”) holograph note “Originally prose.” (July 25, 1955)
- Typescript poem “Later Mexico City (1956) – (Poems written on morphine) – Washington DC (1956).”
- Holograph poem “Pure Mahoun Blues.” (1957)
- Holograph poem “I Strike At That Snake Heart That Hurt my Family.” (1957)
- Holograph poem, untitled. (Begins: “You, beautiful, don’t pose at me . . .”) (1957)
So much for making good and assembling Kerouac’s vast poetic output in between two covers.
Walt Whitman collection includes all of the various formative incarnations of Leaves of Grass at the current length of Kerouac’s Collected Poems, before also adding Whitman’s prose works pushing the page count well past 1300 pages.
