Eureka again! Ginsberg's bricks discovered in Grand Street (Stuck Inside of Mobile)
Dylanetics
Yesterday something caught my eye -- Miles says that Ginsberg wrote a
poem about some laborers he observed from the window of his hotel room
in Denver in 1947 (he was in town to visit Neal Cassady). It's called
"The BRICKLAYER'S Lunch Hour," and Ginsberg called it his first
"mature" poem. On-line research reveals that the hotel in question is
located at the corner of 10th Avenue and GRANT STREET in Denver.
I contended just a few days ago that the "neon-madmen-climb" image in
the final stanza of Stuck Inside of Mobile is probably derived from the
famous "Beat-madmen-as-colored-fireworks" image in Jack Kerouac's On
the Road, referring specifically to Ginsberg and Cassady.
So I find it remarkable, to put it mildly, that the *immediately
preceding* line looks like a thinly veiled reference to an important
early poem that Ginsberg composed while visiting Cassady. ("Now the
bricks lay on Grand Street" = "Now the bricklayer's on Grant Street" or
something like that.)
How would Bob have known about this in February 1966? Well, Bob was
hanging out daily with Ginsberg on the west coast just two months
before (December 1965), so they would have had opportunities to talk
about it. Poet to poet, now that Ginsberg ("Shakespeare in the
alley") had been lionized at the International Poetry Convocation in
London (June 1965). (Of course, they had met in 1963, so Ginsberg
could have told Bob the story on a number of earlier occasions.)
Although Ginsberg wrote "The Bricklayer's Lunch Hour" in 1947, he
published it in 1961 as part of his collection "Empty Mirror." Fresh
off the presses when Bob got to NYC that year.
Actually, Bob already knew about Ginsberg and Grant Street from ON THE
ROAD, which was his "bible" in his late teens. A major portion of the
book is devoted to Kerouac's trip to Denver in the summer of 1947 to
meet up with some of his Beat friends, including Allen Ginsberg, who
preceded Kerouac on the pilgrimage to Neal Cassady's hometown.
Ginsberg initially took a room at the Colburn Hotel (corner of 10th
Avenue and Grant Street), where Neal's soon-to-be ex-wife Carolyn
Cassady was living. Neal then conducted simultaneous affairs with
Carolyn, Ginsberg and Louanne Henderson (whom he married after divorce
from Carolyn). This is where Ginsberg claimed he observed the
laborers featured in his poem.
Ginsberg eventually moved to a basement apartment up the street (corner
of 18th avenue and Grant Street). It is in this "underground"
location (as Kerouac calls it) that we find Ginsberg, deeply involved
with Cassady, in chapters 6 and 7 of On the Road:
"Dean [Cassady], who had the tremendous energy of a new kind of
American saint, and Carlo [Ginsberg] were the underground monsters of
that season in Denver, together with the poolhall gang, and,
symbolizing this most beautifully, Carlo had a basement apartment on
GRANT STREET and we all met there many a night that went to dawn -
Carlo, Dean, myself, Tom Snark, Ed Dunkel, and Roy Johnson. More of
these others later."
Whether Bob asks Ginsberg, or Ginsberg volunteered it, I think it's
clear that Ginsberg gave Bob the "inside story" on this famous episode
from Bob's former "bible," which would have included an account of the
composition of Ginsberg's first "mature" poem and the Grant Street
connection. (Ginsberg got the story into his biography, so he must
have liked to tell it. I don't find it completely credible, but
that's irrelevant for now.)
If you're interested in "The Bricklayer's Lunch Hour," it's the
*second* poem in Ginsberg's "Collected Poems 1947-1980," available at
better bookstores. It refers twice to its setting, a "street in
Denver."
markq...@hotmail.com
fan-boy minutia. This isn't Star Wars.
Life was moving so fast in 1966, I'm sure these songs where written in
flashes and not intellectualized.
Millard Isobar
"Dylanetics" <dylan...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> ("Now the
> bricks lay on Grand Street" = "Now the bricklayer's on Grant Street" or
> something like that.)
Up until the early '80s (and maybe later, I don't know) Grand Street in
lower Manhattan was one of the few streets left with the original brick
surface.
--
Millard
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steve lescure
cool, i always wonder what that was suppose to mean....
steve
Dylanetics
technically be something called "Belgian BRICK."
My contention is that Bob was expressing something PERSONAL and
IMPORTANT in his song. (Would Bob actually do that?!?)
But he didn't want to let people in on his personal stuff, and he liked
to make his lyrics enigmatic in any event.
So he changed Ginsberg-inspired "bricklayer's on" to "bricks lay on."
And Ginsberg/Kerouac's "Grant Street" became "Grand Street."
Just a few days ago, I was working with a formal/literary explanation
-- Bob intended a contrast between inert bricks and neon madmen
climbing. That seemed to me to come about as close as anything I've
seen to explaining why Bob would talk about bricks lying on the street
in this songs.
But now that I've identified a reference to SOMETHING REAL that
MATTERED TO BOB, I'm dropping the formal/literary explanation.
Maybe enterprising RMD'ers can post their own explanations (or, failing
that, interpretations) of "bricks lay on Grand Street"...
Note, by the way, that Bob says the bricks lay "on" Grand Street. He
doesn't say that they compose or constitute Grand Street.
So, if we're going to treat the text as sacred, Bob can't be commenting
on the fact that Grand Street is made out of bricks, like that window
in Maggie's Farm.
We have to find interpretations that work with the image of bricks
lying ON Grand Street. (Maybe some of Ginsberg's laborers left them
there!)
Dylanetics
Glad you're visiting -- you've posted some very informative stuff over
the years...I think I've reposted some of it, in fact!
Derek Homsberg
players ever said anything about these references. Perhaps they did among
themselves, but probably not in public, unless obliqely.
steve lescure
wrote:
>Steve -
>Glad you're visiting -- you've posted some very informative stuff over
>the years...I think I've reposted some of it, in fact!
hey, thanks - and thanks for all your informative posts!
steve