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Home , Deliberate Prose, Glassworks (composition), Howl, Howl and Other Poems, Hydrogen Jukebox, Iron Horse (poem)

See the guide in color online at www.skylightmusictheatre.org Audience Guide music theatre

2013-2014 is the fascinat- Part one Our 55th Season ing result of the collaboration between •Song #1: Issue 4, March 2014 avant-garde composer “Lightning’s blue glare fills the Oklahoma plains” IN THIS ISSUE and Beat poet . Glass •Song #2: Iron Horse and Ginsberg met by chance at St. “Who’s the enemy, year after year?” Mark's bookshop in New York in 1988. •Song #3: Jahweh and Allah Battle Glass had just been asked to perform “Jahweh with Atom Bomb” at a benefit for the Vietnam Veteran •Song #4: Consulting I Ching smoking pot Theater, and asked Ginsberg to join listening to sing Blake him. At the performance, Ginsberg “That which pushes upward” read his poem WICHITA VORTEX •Song #5: Marijuana Notation SUTRA to music composed by Glass. “How sick I am!” Enthusiastic about the prospect of •Song #6: Patna-Benares Express further collaboration, Glass and “Whatever it may be whoever it may be” Ginsberg embarked on the project Last night in Calcutta which became HYDROGEN JUKEBOX. “Still night the old clock ticks” •Song #7: To P.O. The duo envisioned a theatrical por- “The whitewashed room,” trait of from the '50s to the •Song #8: Last Night in Calcutta '80s. The libretto is a selection of Gins- “...And the vast starry space-” berg poems that range in content from •Song #9: Crossing Nation highly personal poems to his reflection “Under silver wing” on social issues: the anti-war move- Over Again ment, the sexual revolution, drugs, “Grey clouds blot sunglare, mountains float Eastern philosophy and environmental west, plane” awareness; all issues that seemed Going to Chicago "counter-cultural" in their day. “22,000 feet over hazed square vegetable plant” •Song #10: : Pt II “I’m an old man now, and a lonesome man in In an interview, Ginsberg said this of but not afraid” Poetry of the title: “[It] comes from a verse in Allen Ginsberg the poem : ‘...listening to the Part two crack of doom on the hydrogen juke- •Song #11: Howl: (Section II) Music by box...’ It signifies a state of hyper- “What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed trophic high-tech, a psychological open their skulls and ate up their brains and Philip Glass state in which people are at the limit of imagination?” their sensory input with civilization's •Song #12: Manhattan Thirties Flash This production is generously military jukebox, a loud industrial roar, “Long stone streets inanimate...” sponsored by or a music that begins to shake the •Song #13: Cabin in the Rockies bones and penetrate the nervous sys- “Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea” tem as a hydrogen bomb may do •Song #14: Nagasaki Days VI: Numbers in someday, reminder of apocalypse.” Red Notebook “2,000,000 killed in Vietnam” •Song #15: To Aunt Rose In partnership with the The work was originally staged using six vocal parts to represent six arche- “Aunt Rose-now-might I see you” typal American characters- a waitress, •Song #16: The Green Automobile a policewoman, a businessman, a “If I had a green Automobile” priest, a mechanic and a cheerleader. •Song #17: Violence A version of the piece first appeared at “Mexicity drugstore table, giant,” AUDIENCE GUIDE the 1990 American Music Theater CIA Dope Calypso “Richard Secord and Oliver North” Research/Writing by Festival in Philadelphia; the premiere Justine Leonard and Deanie Vallone of the finished work was given at the •Song #18: Nagasaki Days IV for ENLIGHTEN, Spoleto Festival in South Carolina “I walked outside and the bomb’d” Skylight Music Theatre’s later that same year. A Washington •Song #19: Ayers Rock/Uluru Song Education Program Post reviewer praised the work for its “When the red pond fills fish appear” "fully focused, deeply communicative •Song #20: Throw out the Yellow Edited by Ray Jivoff and artistically integrated concept." Journalists of Bad Grammar 414-299-4965 “Out! Out! into the Buddhafields” [email protected] The Washington Times called HYDRO- GEN JUKEBOX "a meeting of two Song #21: Father Death Blues “Hey, Father Death, I’m flying home” www.skylightmusictheatre.org unmistakably American sensibilities." HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

The The Beat Generation was a group of At the same time, the American Tran- American post-World War II writers scendental Movement of the nine- who came to prominence in the 1950s, teenth century was an inspiration for as well as the cultural phenomena that the politics of the Beats. Henry David they both documented and inspired. Thoreau was revered as a symbol of Central elements of "Beat" culture protest. It was the Beats, in fact, who included rejection of established stan- played a large role in rehabilitating dards, innovations in style, experimen- Thoreau’s reputation and elevating his tation with drugs, alternative book WALDEN to the status that it sexualities, an interest in Eastern reli- holds today. gion and a rejection of materialism. The original members of the Beat After World War II (1939-1945), Ameri- Generation used a number of different can lifestyles and attitudes changed. drugs, including alcohol, marijuana, The world was forever changed after benzedrine, morphine and later witnessing the Holocaust and the nu- psychedelic drugs including peyote clear bombing of Hiroshima. The and LSD. Much of this usage was Servicemen's Readjustment Act of "experimental," in that they were 1944, known as the GI Bill of Rights, initially unfamiliar with the effects of gave veterans one year of unemploy- these drugs. They were inspired by ment compensation, financial assis- almost antiseptic formalism of the intellectual interest, as well as simple tance for job training and education early twentieth century Modernists. hedonism. Claims that some of these and low-interest loans to buy homes They fashioned a literature that was drugs could enhance creativity, insight and businesses. This aid helped more straightforward and expressive or productivity were quite common. nearly one-quarter of the population than anything that had come before. and stimulated the economy. The publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Allen Ginsberg's HOWL (1956), William HOWL in 1956 marks a turning point in After 1945, marriage rates soared, and S. Burroughs's NAKED LUNCH (1959) both Beat literature and American liter- there was a sharp rise in the birthrate, and 's ON THE ROAD ature in general. The long-form poem known as the Baby Boom, which (1957) are among the best known is intended to be read aloud, almost created a generation that reshaped examples of Beat literature. Both chanted, a sort of return to an oral tra- the American family and culture for HOWL and NAKED LUNCH were the dition that had been neglected in liter- decades to come. The average family focus of trials that helped to ature for a long time. The content of had a ranch or split-level house, a car, liberalize publishing in the United the poem raised eyebrows, and and 2.5 children. States. sparked an obscenity trial which chal- lenged the definition of pornography in These years also saw a reappraisal of The “founders” of the Beat Generation America. Ginsberg won, and the judg- conventional society. Just as the post- met at in the early ment more or less ensured that poetry war economic boom was taking hold, 1940s. Writers Jack Kerouac and Allen and fiction would from then on be im- students in universities were beginning Ginsberg formed the core of this initial mune to the kind of censorship that to question the rampant materialism of group. It was Kerouac who coined the still plagued other genres of art. their society. The Beat Generation was term “Beat Generation”. The adjective a product of this questioning. They "beat" could mean "tired" or "beaten With HOWL, Ginsberg takes the saw runaway capitalism as destructive down," but Kerouac appropriated the reader/listener on a tour of the under- to the human spirit and antithetical to image and altered the meaning to side of America. There are drug- social equality. In addition to their dis- include the connotations "upbeat," addicts, drifters, prostitutes and satisfaction with consumer culture, the "beatific," and the musical association swindlers. There is a visceral rage Beats saw the stifling prudery of their of being "on the beat." against the system that requires con- parents’ generation and the taboos formity. Foul language, slang, drug against frank discussions of sexuality The Beat Generation pulled from a use and criminality are common as unhealthy and possibly damaging variety of source materials to construct throughout the work . All of these to the psyche. their particular vision of literature and things were shocking in the 1950s. culture. Several of the originators cite The Beat Generation developed a Romantic poets such as Percy Bysshe The Beat Generation was never a reputation as new bohemian hedo- Shelley and as major in- large movement in terms of numbers, nists, who celebrated non-conformity fluences on their work. Interspersed but in influence and cultural status and spontaneous creativity. In the with their Romantic influences were they were more visible than any other world of literature and art, the Beats surrealist and absurdist tendencies. artistic movement of the time. stood in opposition to the clean, HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

Among the leading voices of the Beat both lesser known and established Generation was William Burroughs poets to the mainstream. (1914-1997). His novel, NAKED LUNCH is a difficult and even terrifying novel, An important influence on the Beat and readers continue to be drawn to it Generation was William Carlos for its innovative style and use of lan- Williams (1883-1963), an American poet guage. Burroughs embodied the spirit closely associated with modernism of reckless abandon of the Beat Gen- and . He was also a pediatri- eration. For instance, in cian who "worked harder at being a Mexico City, on a drunken spree, Bur- writer than he did at being a physi- roughs accidentally shot his first wife, cian," but excelled at both. Jane Vollmer, in the head. The only reason he was in Mexico was to avoid Williams' major poetry collections are possible imprisonment in the United SPRING AND ALL (1923), DESERT MUSIC States. AND OTHER POEMS (1954), PICTURES FROM BRUEGHEL AND OTHER POEMS His greatest contribution to literary (1962) and PATERSON (1963). One of technique was what he called the his most anthologized poem is This is mensely. Censorship as a force for “cut-up,” a form which borrowed more Just to Say (below), an example of the controling public discourse ended. from collage and cubism than tradi- Imagist movement's style. tional linear narrative. The disregard Perhaps more importantly, the Beats for narrative mirrored Burroughs’ I have eaten propelled discussions of ecology and the plums mental state, as he struggled with that were in environmentalism into the mainstream. alcohol and drug addictions. the icebox Before the 1950s, environmentalism and which as it is understood today did not really you were probably exist. The Beat Generation’s infatua- saving for breakfast tion with Native American and Eastern Forgive me philosophies contributed to the gene- they were delicious sis of modern environmental ethics, at so sweet and so cold least as a byproduct. Modern poetry underwent a relaxation of structure Williams had a significant influence on and style that basically allowed for many of the American literary move- anyone to express themselves in ments of the 1950s, including the Beat whatever fashion they chose. movement, the Renais- sance, the Black Mountain school and The Beat Generation faded from view the New York School. His most impor- as quickly as it appeared. Quickly tant mentorship was with fellow New stepping into the void were the beat- Jersey poet Allen Ginsberg. niks. Despite the similar sounding names, the had very little in Criticism of the Beat Generation’s common with the Beats. Instead of a No Beat Generation novelist garnered aesthetics and behavior came from movement and an ideology, the beat- more attention and adulation than many corners of society. The aca- niks represented little more than a Jack Kerouac (1922-1969; above) and demic community derided the Beats fashion. Specifically, the was none of their personal lives were more as anti-intellectual and unrefined. the laid-back, poetry-reading, goateed filled with conflict and crippling depres- Mainstream America was horrified by man, usually dressed in black. sion. His single greatest success was their sexual and drug references. ON THE ROAD, a philosophical travel The hippie movement of the 1960s narrative which blends stream of Politicians such as Joseph McCarthy also owes a great debt to the Beats. consciousness, drug visions and identified elements of Beat ideology as However, the counterculture hippies observations into a generational state- Communist and a threat to the nation’s generally lacked the intellectual back- ment that resonates to this day. security. The Beat Generation’s rela- ing that the Beats earned in the 1950s. tively short time in the cultural spotlight The Beat Generation was more edu- The elder statesman of the Beat Gen- could be attributed to the amount of cated and sophisticated than they eration was the poet Lawrence scorn heaped upon them. seemed at first glance. Their artistic Ferlinghetti (born 1919). Ferlinghetti was rebellion was calculated, and informed in the Navy during World War II and The Beat Generation made a lasting with an understanding of what came settled in San Francisco after the war, impact on the structure of modern before them. He opened the , American society. With Ginsberg’s a hub of Beat Generation literati and HOWL, the notion of what was accept- started a publishing business, bringing able literature was broadened im- HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

Allen Ginsberg later became the influence for some of lishment” that he turned his back on Ginsberg’s famous poem, HOWL. welcomed him into the fold with open arms. Burroughs got involved in criminal be- havior, dealing stolen goods and nar- Starting in the mid-1960s, Ginsberg cotics and he was soon addicted to traveled a great deal. One of the most opiates. His guide to the criminal un- important destinations for him was derworld was small-time criminal and India, and the culture there helped drug-addict . The form the foundation of Ginsberg's fu- Beats were drawn to Huncke, con- ture interest in and practice of Bud- vinced that he had a worldly knowl- dhism and Krishnaism, themes that edge unavailable to them from their also resurface continually in his work. largely middle-class upbringings. His bibliography is extensive, including Ginsberg was arrested in 1949 when (1956), the police attempted to pull him over AND OTHER POEMS (1961), while he was driving with Huncke, in a (1963), THE car filled with stolen items Huncke FALL OF AMERICA: POEMS OF THESE Allen Ginsberg (1926 -1997) was an planned to fence. Ginsberg crashed STATES (1973) which won the National American poet and the central figure the car and escaped on foot, but left Book Award in 1974, of the Beat Generation. He was born incriminating notebooks behind. He (1978), WHITE SHROUD POEMS: 1980- Irwin Allen Ginsberg in Newark, N.J. to was given the option to plead insanity 1985 (1986) and : a Russian-Jewish Communist mother, to avoid a jail term, and was commit- 1952-1995 (2000). Many of his private Naomi Livergant, and an American- ted for 90 days to . journals and letters have been pub- Jewish Socialist father, Louis Gins- lished in collections. He also won berg. The conflict between his parents' In 1955, Ginsberg completed his numerous awards during his lifetime, political beliefs gave Ginsberg a sharp poem, HOWL, now considered to be and gave countless readings across awareness of politics at an early age. one of the greatest works of American the world. literature. The poem draws on much of Though Jewish by heritage, Ginsberg, Ginsberg's experience with the Beat On April 5, 1997 Ginsberg died of liver and his older brother, Eugene, were poets, mental institutionalization, drug cancer in his New York apartment raised without religion. Ginsberg’s addiction, homosexuality and Bud- surrounded by friends and family. His mother was frequently institutionalized dhism. The rhythm of the poem is last poem, THINGS I'LL NOT DO with what we now know as paranoid strongly influenced by the language of (NOSTALGIAS), was written less than a schizophrenia. Ginsberg’s memories the American street. week before his death. of her illness and of visiting her in hos- pitals pervades much of his writing, Ginsberg's first reading of the poem at including the famous poem, KADDISH. The Six Gallery in San Francisco He also wrote extensively about his marked his “metamorphosis from a youthful homosexual fantasies that quiet, brilliant bohemian scholar…to became fodder for some of his most epic vocal bard,” and made him a notorious poetry. significant figure in the San Francisco Renaissance. It was during this time In his application to Columbia Univer- that Ginsberg met , who sity, he wrote that, if admitted, he would become his lifelong partner. would dedicate his life to helping the working class. In 1943 Ginsberg Ginsberg was hugely influential in the started at Columbia in a pre-law creation of the Beat Generation, hav- course. Ginsberg soon befriended ing been a necessary force driving , a self-proclaimed “intel- many of his friends, including Bur- lectual.” Through Carr, Ginsberg met roughs and Kerouac, to successful some of the most influential figures in publication. his life: William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. By the 1960s, Ginsberg’s work be- came less explosive and he no longer In the beginning of 1945, Ginsberg had the energies that fueled him to lived with Burroughs, Kerouac and produce his earlier work. He spent their friends, and the group's increas- much of this time as a visiting scholar ingly dangerous drug-induced lifestyle at numerous universities. The “estab- HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

Composer Philip Glass Philip Glass has had an extraordinary In 1964 Glass and Akalaitis moved to works for opera and for choreogra- and unprecedented impact upon the Paris where he studied under phers Alvin Ailey and Jerome Robbins. musical and intellectual life of our legendary teacher Nadia Boulanger, He also collaborated again with Robert times. A prolific composer, he has writ- who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Wilson on another opera, CIVIL WARS: ten operas, musical theatre works, Thomson and Quincy Jones. In Paris, A TREE IS BEST MEASURED WHEN IT symphonies, concertos, solo works he was hired to transcribe the work of IS DOWN. and a wide variety of chamber music. Indian sitar virtuoso and composer Three of his film scores have been Ravi Shankar and in the process Other works that followed include THE nominated for Academy Awards. discovered the techniques of Indian VOYAGE, commissioned by the Metro- His music and his approach to creat- music. Glass set out on a tour of North politan Opera; ORPHÉE, a chamber ing it are thoroughly modern, even rev- Africa, Central Asia, and India and the opera based on the film by Jean olutionary, making him one of the most Himalayas. The culture there affected Cocteau; THE MARRIAGES BETWEEN provocative, successful and controver- him more than artistically; to this day ZONES THREE, FOUR AND FIVE with sial composers of his generation. he is a practicing Buddhist. author Doris Lessing; HEROES SYM- PHONY, written for choreographer Born in in 1937, Glass dis- When he returned to New York in 1967 Twyla Tharp and based on the music covered music in his father's radio he began applying eastern techniques of David Bowie and Brian Eno; and a repair shop. In addition to servicing to his own work with his newly formed film score for the movie , radios, Ben Glass carried a line of – seven musi- directed by Martin Scorsese, for which records and, when certain ones sold cians playing keyboards and a variety he received both a Golden Globe poorly, he would take them home and of woodwinds, amplified and fed Nomination and an Academy Award play them for his three children, trying through a mixer. nomination for Best Score. In 1999, to discover why they didn't appeal to Glass won the Golden Globe Award customers. These happened to be Much of his early work was based on for Best Score for the movie THE recordings of the great chamber the extended reiteration of brief, ele- TRUMAN SHOW. works, and the future composer gant melodic fragments that wove in became familiar with Beethoven, and out of an aural tapestry. The new Glass continues to compose. He pres- Schubert, Shostakovich and other musical style that Glass was evolving ents lectures, workshops and solo music then considered "offbeat." was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” keyboard performances around the Glass himself never liked the term and world, and continues to appear regu- Glass began playing the violin at six preferred to speak of himself as a larly with the Philip Glass Ensemble. and became serious about music composer of “music with repetitive He was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre when he took up the flute at eight. structures.” des Arts et des Lettres by the French During his second year in high school, government in 1995 and has been he enrolled at the University of By 1974, he had composed a large awarded honorary degrees from Chicago, where he supported himself collection of new music, including Brandeis University, The University of with part-time jobs waiting tables and MUSIC IN 12 PARTS, a 4-hour summa- the Arts in Philadelphia and The State loading airplanes at airports. He ma- tion of his new music. In 1976, his al- University of New York in Buffalo. jored in mathematics and philosophy, liance with the visual arts prompted and continued studying music. collaboration with Robert Wilson, the painter, architect and leader in the After graduating at age 19, determined world of avant-garde theatre, in the to become a composer, he moved to creation of . New York and attended the Juilliard One of Glass' best known works, the 4 School. By then he had abandoned hour epic is now seen as a landmark the 12-tone techniques he had been in 20th century music-theater. The en- using in Chicago and preferred Ameri- thusiastic reception of these works no can composers like Aaron Copland doubt helped him gain some important and William Schuman. attention.

At the age of 25, Glass won the Ford Glass followed these works with other Foundation Young Composer's Award, theater successes. a school-based composer-in-resi- (1980), is based on the life of Gandhi dence job that based him in Pitts- sung in Sanskrit. In 1982, he released burgh. During this time he met and . It consisted of short later married his first wife, the actress/ pieces and was mixed specifically to director JoAnne Akalaitis, whose take advantage of a new consumer connection to theatre would later be electronic device called The Walkman. influential in Glass' work. Glass continued composing numerous HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

Selected Poems from the Libretto: Act 1 SONG #1 Iron Horse SONG #6 Patna-Benares Express OVER DENVER AGAIN Lightning's blue glare fills Oklahoma plains, Whatever it may be whoever it may be Gray clouds blot sunglare, the train rolls east The bloody man all singing all just mountains float west, casting yellow shadow on grass However he die plane softly roaring over Denver- Twenty years ago He rode on railroad cars Neal dead a year- approaching Texas He woke at dawn, clean suburb yards, I saw sheet lightning in the white light of a new universe fit boardinghouse for the homosexual cover Heaven's corners He couldn't do any different messenger's alleyway Lila a decade back Feed Storage Elevators in gray rain mist, He the skeleton with eyes before the Atombomb. checkerboard light over sky-roof raised himself up from a wooden bench Denver without Neal, eh? same electric lightning South felt different Denver with orange sunsets & follows this train looking at the fields and palm trees giant airplanes winging silvery to Apocalypse prophesied- no money in the bank of dust San Francisco- the Fall of America no nation but inexpressible gray clouds watchtowers thru red cold planet light, signaled from Heaven- before sunrise when the Earth Angel's dead Ninety nine soldiers in uniform paid by the lost his identity cards in his wallet the dead material planet'll revolve robotlike Government to Believe- in the bald rickshaw by the Maidan & insects hop back and forth between ninety nine soldiers escaping the draft for in dry Patna metallic cities. an Army job, Later stared hopeless ninety nine soldiers shaved waking from drunken sleep GOING TO CHICAGO with nowhere to but where told, dry mouthed in the RR station 22,000 feet over Hazed square ninety nine soldiers seeing lightning flash— among sleeping shoeshine men in loincloth Vegetable planet Floor a thousand years ago on the dirty concrete Approaching Chicago to Die Ten thousand Chinese marching on the Too many bodies thronging these cities or flying over Earth another 40 years plains now to die-Indifferent, and Afraid, that the all turned their heads to Heaven at once to bone-shattering bullet see the Moon. Still night. The old clock Ticks, be the same as the vast evaporation-of- An old man catching fireflies on the porch half past two. A ringing of crickets phenomena Cancer at night awake in the ceiling. The gate is locked Come true in an old man's bed. watched the Herd Boy cross the Milky Way on the street outside--sleepers, mustaches, to meet the Weaving Girl... nakedness, but no desire. Many chimneys smoldering, How can we war against that? city flats virus-linked along Delaware bays How can we war against that? Time sits solid in the four yellow walls. under horizon-smog- Too late, too late No one is here, airplane drifting black vapor-filaments the Iron Horse hurrying to war, emptiness filled with train whistles above Wilmington-The iron habitations too late for laments & dog barks, answered a block away. endless from Manhattan to the Capitol. too late for warning- Poe! D'jya prophesy this Smogland, I'm a stranger alone in my country again. SONG #9 Crossing Nation this Inferno, Under silver wing Didja Dream Baltimore'd Be Seen From SONG #5 Marijuana Notation San Francisco's towers sprouting Heaven by Man Poet's eyes Astounded in How sick I am! thru thin gas clouds, the Fire Haze, carbon Gas aghast! that thought always comes to me Tamalpais black-breasted Blasts rip Newspaper Gray Mannahatta's with horror. above Pacific azure mid day Air Spires, Is it this strange for everybody? Berkeley hills pine-covered below- Plane roar over cloud, Sunlight on blue But such fugitive feelings Dr. Leary in his brown house scribing fleece-mist, have always been my métier. Independence Declaration I travel to die, fellow passengers silk-drest Baudelaire-yet he had typewriter at window & cocktailed burn oil NY to Chicago- great joyful moments silver panorama in natural eyeball- Blasting sky with big business, staring into space, billion bodied Poetry Commerce, looking into the middle distance, Sacramento valley rivercourse's Chinese all Revolution & Consumption, contemplating his image in Eternity. dragonflames licking green flats north- Manufacture 8c Communication They were his moments of identity. hazed Bombburst, vegetable pie, rubber donut It is solitude that State Capitol metallic rubble, sex accessory 8c brilliant TV Jetplane produces these thoughts. dry checkered fields CIA Joke Exorcism Fart Mantra It is December to Sierras-past Reno, Pyramid Lake's or electronic war Laos to AID gestapo train- almost, they are singing blue Altar, pure water in Nevada sands' ing in Santo Domingo Christmas carols brown wasteland scratched by tires equally masscare grass, exhaust flower in front of the department stores down the power in coal factory smokedust block on Fourteenth Street. HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

Selected poems from the libretto: Act 2 Note about SONG #11 SONG #18 Nagasaki Days IV Moloch is an ancient Ammonite god, asso- I walked outside & the bomb'd ciated with a particular kind of child sacrifice dropped lots of plutonium by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of all over the Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus There weren't any buildings left just as a form of idolatry. “Moloch” is used in SONG #16 The Green Automobile iron skeletons HOWL to refer to a something demanding If I had a Green Automobile groceries burned, potholes open to a costly sacrifice. I'd go find my old companion stinking sewer waters in his house on the Western ocean. There were people starving and crawling Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! across the desert SONG #12 Manhattan Thirties Flash I'd honk my horn at his manly gate, the Martian UFOs with blue Long stone streets inanimate, repetitive inside his wife and three Light destroyer rays machine Crash cookie-cutting children sprawl naked passed over and dried up all the dynamo rows of soulless replica Similitudes on the living room floor. waters brooding tank-like in Army He'd come running out Charred Amazon palmtrees for Depots to my car full of heroic beer hundreds of miles on both sides Exactly the same exactly the same exactly and jump screaming at the wheel of the river the same with no purpose but for he is the greater driver. grimness We'd pilgrimage to the highest mount SONG #19 Ayers Rock/Uluru Song & overwhelming force of robot obsession, of our earlier Rocky Mountain visions When the red pond fills fish appear our slaves are not alive laughing in each other's arms, When the red pond dries fish disappear. & we become their sameness as they sur- delight surpassing the highest Rockies, Everything built on the desert crumbles to round us—the long stone streets and after old agony, drunk with new years, dust. inanimate, bounding toward the snowy horizon Electric cable transmission wires swept crowds of executive secretaries alighting blasting the dashboard with original bop down. from subway 8:30 a.m. hot rod on the mountain The lizard people came out of the rock. bloodflow in cells thru elevator arteries & we'd batter up the cloudy highway The red Kangaroo people forgot their own stairway glands to typewriter where angels of anxiety song. consciousness, careen through the trees Only a man with four sticks can cross the Con Ed skyscraper clock-head gleaming and scream out of the engine. Simpson Desert. gold-lit at sun dusk. We'd burn all night on the jackpine peak One rain turns red dust green with leaves. seen from Denver in the summer dark, One raindrop begins the universe. forestlike unnatural radiance When the raindrop dries, worlds come to SONG #14 Nagasaki Days VI: illuminating the mountaintop: their end. Numbers in Red Notebook childhood youthtime age & eternity Sitting on a tree stump with half cup of tea, would open like sweet trees SONG #21 Father Death Blues sun down behind mountains— in the nights of another spring 1. Hey Father Death, I'm flying home Nothing to do. and dumbfound us with love, Hey poor man, you're all alone Not a word! Not a Word! for we can see together the beauty of souls Hey old daddy, I know where I'm going Flies do all my talking for me— hidden like diamonds 2. Father Death, Don't cry any more and the wind says something else. in the clock of the world, Moma's there, underneath the floor Fly on my nose, like Chinese magicians can Brother Death, please mind the store I'm not the Buddha, confound the immortals 3. Old Auntie Death Don't hide your bones There's no enlightenment here! with our intellectuality Old Uncle Death I hear your groans In the half-light of dawn hidden in the mist, 0 Sister Death how sweet your moans A few birds warble in the Green Automobile 4. 0 Children Deaths go breathe your under the pleiades. which I have invented breaths An hour after dawn imagined and visioned Sobbing breasts'll ease your Deaths I haven't thought of Buddha once yet! on the roads of the world Pain is gone, tears take the rest walking back into the retreat house. more real than the engine 5. Genius Death your art is done on a track in the desert Lover Death your body's gone purer than Greyhound and Father Death I'm coming home swifter than physical jetplane. 6. Guru Death your words are true Teacher Death I do thank you For inspiring me to sing this Blues 7. Buddha Death, I wake with you Dharma Death, your mind is new Sangha Death, we'll work it through 8. Suffering is what was born Ignorance made me forlorn Tearful truths I cannot scorn 9. Father Breath once more farewell Birth you gave was no thing ill My heart is still, as time will tell. HYDROGEN JUKEBOX

In 1982, Allen Ginsberg published a summary of "the essential effects" of the Beat Generation: •Spiritual liberation, sexual "revolution" or "liberation." •Liberation from censorship. •Demystification and/or decriminalization of cannabis and other drugs. •The evolution of rhythm and blues into rock and roll as a high art form, as evidenced by the Beatles, , Janis Joplin and other popular musicians influenced in the fifties and sixties by Beat generation poets' and writers' works. •The spread of ecological consciousness, the notion of a "Fresh Planet." •Opposition to the military-industrial complex, as emphasized in writings of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. •Attention to what Kerouac called a "second religiousness" developing within an advanced civilization. •Return to an appreciation of idiosyncrasy as against state regimentation. •Respect for land and indigenous peoples and creatures, as proclaimed by Kerouac in his slogan from ON THE ROAD: "The Earth is an Indian thing."

Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside his City Lights Bookstore, San Francisco, 1956 Costume designs by Jason Orlenko

Ferlinghetti wrote at the time, "It is not radio station chose not to air the the poet but what he observes which poem in its news story commemorat- is revealed as obscene. The great ing the decision, fearful of massive obscene wasters of HOWL are the sad FCC fines that would have effectively wastes of the mechanized world, lost shut down the station. Station WBAI among atom bombs and insane instead posted the poem online, out of nationalisms." the reach of the FCC. Since its founding in 1920, the ACLU has opposed censorship in all its In 1997, Ferlinghetti joined our case, ACLU Legislative Counsel Marv John- forms. From books and radio to film, Reno v. ACLU, which held that Internet son said at the time, "A radio station television, and the Internet, we have speech is entitled to full First Amend- cannot possibly celebrate the First consistently fought to make sure ment protection. It was relevant to Amendment by being forced to gag its Americans have the right to say, think, HOWL because, in his words, "This announcers and point to a website. read, and write whatever they want, new law to censor the Internet would HOWL captured the essence of a soci- without fear of government reprisal. have a chilling effect on the First ety on the brink of explosion, and the Amendment. It's upsetting and it's HOWL obscenity decision marked a Legendary Beat poet and publisher also un-American. HOWL was judged forward march toward greater free had the fore- not obscene in a landmark trial, but speech. If the FCC and our lawmakers sight to contact the ACLU before we fear that the book could now be at want to repeat the repression of the publishing Allen Ginsberg's poem risk again, 40 years later.” 1950s, they should remember that HOWL, anticipating the possibility it even then the country was inching to- would be censored. Sure enough, in On the 50th anniversary of a court ward more freedom, not less." 1957, U.S. Customs officials seized ruling that deemed Allen Ginsberg’s the books, stating, "You wouldn't want HOWL not obscene, the ACLU Learn more about the ACLU and its your children to come across it." lamented an ironic reversal of First Wisconsin affiliate at aclu.org and Amendment rights. A New York public aclu-wi.org. HYDROGEN JUKEBOX