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    Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses
    Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses
    Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses
    Ebook263 pages2 hours

    Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses

    By Jack Kerouac

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    One of the renowned Beat writer’s most formally inventive books, Mexico City Blues is Jack Kerouac’s essential work of lyric verse, now reissued following his centenary celebration

    Written between 1954 and 1957, and published originally by Grove Press in 1959, Mexico City Blues is Kerouac’s most important verse work. It incorporates all the elements of his theory of spontaneous composition and his interest in Buddhism. Memories, fantasies, dreams, and surrealistic free association are lyrically combined in the loose format inspired by jazz and the blues. Written while Kerouac was living in Mexico City, and with references to William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Bill Garver, this exciting book in Kerouac’s oeuvre is an original and moving epic of sound, rhythm, and religion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGrove Press
    Release dateDec 1, 2007
    ISBN9780802195685
    Mexico City Blues: 242 Choruses
    Author

    Jack Kerouac

    Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) es el novelista más destacado y emblemático de la Generación Beat. En Anagrama se han publicado sus obras fundamentales: En el camino, Los subterráneos, Los Vagabundos del Dharma, La vanidad de los Duluoz y En la carretera. El rollo mecanografiado original, además de Cartas, la selección de su correspondencia con Allen Ginsberg, y, con William S. Burroughs, Y los hipopótamos se cocieron en sus tanques.

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    • 2/5
      “I want to be considered a jazz poet blowing a long blues in an afternoon jam session on Sunday.” Says the author himself!The result is this book, with 242 choruses, or poems. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of Kerouac's poetry. And this collection was no exception. Just not for me, I guess.

    Book preview

    Mexico City Blues - Jack Kerouac

    MEXICO CITY BLUES

    Other Works by Jack Kerouac

    Published by Grove Press

    Dr. Sax

    Lonesome Traveler

    Satori in Paris and Pic (one volume)

    The Subterraneans

    MEXICO CITY BLUES

    Jack Kerouac

    Copyright © 1959 by Jack Kerouac

    All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 1001 orpermissions@groveatlantic.com

    Published simultaneously in Canada

    Printed in Canada

    First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: January 1959

    First Grove Atlantic paperback edition: June 1970

    This Grove Atlantic paperback edition: March 2023

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

    ISBN 978-0-8021-6244-1

    eISBN 978-0-8021-9568-5

    Grove Press

    an imprint of Grove Atlantic

    154 West 14th Street

    New York, NY 10011

    Distributed by Publishers Group West

    www.groveatlantic.com

    MEXICO CITY BLUES

    MEXICO CITY BLUES

    NOTE

    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.

    1st Chorus

    Butte Magic of Ignorance

    Butte Magic

    Is the same as no-Butte

    All one light

    Old Rough Roads

    One High Iron

    Mainway

    Denver is the same

    "The guy I was with his uncle was

    the governor of Wyoming"

    Course he paid me back

    Ten Days

    Two Weeks

    Stock and Joint

    Was an old crook anyway

    The same voice on the same ship

    The Supreme Vehicle

    S. S. Excalibur

    Maynard

    Mainline

    Mountain

    Merudvhaga

    Mersion of Missy

    2nd Chorus

    Man is not worried in the middle

    Man in the Middle

    Is not Worried

    He knows his Karma

    Is not buried

    But his Karma,

    Unknown to him,

    May end –

    Which is Nirvana

    Wild men

    Who kill

    Have Karmas

    Of ill

    Good men

    Who love

    Have Karmas

    Of dove

    Snakes are Poor Denizens of Hell

    Have come surreptitioning

    Through the tall grass

    To face the pool of clear frogs

    3rd Chorus

    Describe fires in riverbottom

    sand, and the cooking;

    the cooking of hot dogs

    spitted in whittled sticks

    over flames of woodfire

    with grease dropping in smoke

    to brown and blacken

    the salty hotdogs,

    and the wine,

    and the work on the railroad.

    $275,000,000,000.00 in debt

    says the Government

    Two hundred and seventy five billion

    dollars in debt

    Like Unending

    Heaven

    And Unnumbered Sentient Beings

    Who will be admitted –

    Not-Numberable –

    To the new Pair of Shoes

    Of White Guru Fleece

    O j o!

    The Purple Paradise

    4th Chorus

    Roosevelt was worth 6, 7 million dollars

    He was Tight

    Frog waits

    Till poor fly

    Flies by

    And then they got him

    The pool of clear rocks

    Covered with vegetable scum

    Covered the rocks

    Clear the pool

    Covered the warm surface

    Covered the lotus

    Dusted the watermelon flower

    Aerial the Pad

    Clean queer the clear

    blue water

    AND THEN THEY GOT HIM

    The Oil of the Olive

    Bittersweet taffies

    Bittersweet cabbage

    Cabbage soup made right

    A hunk a grass

    Sauerkraut let work

    in a big barrel

    Stunk but Good

    5th Chorus

    I am not Gregory Corso

    The Italian Minnesinger –

    Of the Song of Corsica –

    Subioso Gregorio Corso –

    The Haunted Versemaker

    King

    Of Brattle Street.

    In streets of snow

    He wove the show

    And worried in tunnels

    And mad dog barked

    KIND KING MIND

    Allen Ginsberg called me

    William Burroughs

    Is William Lee

    Samuel Johnson

    Is Under the sea

    Rothridge Cole parter

    Of Peppers

    Is Numbro

    Elabora

    If you know what I

    p a l a b r a

    6th Chorus

    This Thinking is Stopped.

    Buddha’s Secret Moonlight: – is

    the Ancient Virtue of laying up

    and thinking happy & comfortable

    thoughts – This, which modern

    Society has branded Loafing, is

    made available to people now

    apparently only by junk.

    Self depends on existence of other

    self, and so no Solo Universal Self

    exists – no self, no other self,

    no innumerable selves, no

    Universal self and no ideas

    relating to existence or non-

    existence thereof –

    The Greatest, Who Has Undertaken

    to Comfort Innumberable Beings

    The Kind One

    The Art-of-Kindness Master

    The Master of Wisdom

    The Great Ferryman

    The Great Vehicle Being

    7th Chorus

    He Who is Free From Arbitrary Conceptions

    of Being or Non-Being

    The Genius of the Elephant

    The Destroyer of Elephant-Trainers

    by Death

    The Destroyer of Elephants by Death

    The Destroyer of Death

    The Destroyer and Exterminator

    of Death

    Exterminator of Being and Non-Being

    Tathagata

    The Essence Master

    The Womb

    The Manifestor

    Man’s Made Essence

    Essence’s Made Man

    The Maker of Light

    The Destroyer of Light

    8th Chorus

    Mysterious Red Rivers of the North –

    Obi Ubang African Montanas

    of the Gulchy Peary

    Earth –

    Lakes of Light – Old Seas –

    Mississippi River, Chicago,

    the Great Lakes –

    The Small Rivers like Indiana,

    the Big Ones

    Like Amazon.

    Joliet flew.

    Alma, the River of Snowy Love

    – Amida, of Brightest

    Perfect

    Compassion

    The Tamiyani Trail across

    the Everglades –

    Ai la ra la

    la rai la ra –

    Singing breasts of women

    of earth receiving

    Juicy Rivers – red earth

    9th Chorus

    We’re all taking short cut

    Through Death Valley

    The Volcanic Mountains

    And the Lizard Ice

    And the Lice of Sand

    – Lhasas of Weedblack

    Cock Rock Philtrite –

    Redwoods so Huge

    They climb passes by God –

    The Giant Angels

    In the Washington D C Blue Sky

    – – The Heroines of Cathedral

    Fellaheen Mexico –

    Commenting on the Great Cities

    of the World,

    The Blue Marvel of New Orleans

    (land a swamps)

    Ingers had done windows

    with penal Australia

    too – pear Attantisatasa

    the Central Essential

    Indy Portuga

    coit

    10th Chorus

    The great hanging weak teat of India

    on the map

    The Fingernail of Malaya

    The Wall of China

    The Korea Ti-Pousse Thumb

    The Salamander Japan

    the Okinawa Moon Spot

    The Pacific

    The Back of Hawaiian Mountains

    coconuts

    Kines, balconies, Ah Tarzan –

    And D W Griffith

    the great American Director

    Strolling down disgruntled

    Hollywood Lane

    –  to toot Nebraska,

    Indian Village New York,

    Atlantis, Rome,

    Peleus and Melisander,

    And

    swans of Balls

    Spots of foam on the ocean

    11th Chorus

    Brown wrote a book called

    The White and the Black

    N a r c o t

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