Allen Ginsberg and William Blake

            I was still sick on Wednesday, which surprised me because I’d really thought I was getting over it. My voice broke a couple of times during song practice but I didn’t feel run down.

            I left my place at 10:30 and still got to class early. Professor Weisman was already in front of the room when I arrived. I chatted with her about my research into the word “stranger”. She thought it was interesting that it comes from “extraneous”. She advised me to use the Oxford English Dictionary and so later on I found a download.

            We continued with our study of the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The professor said that next time we would be looking at his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

I suddenly got the idea for an updated version featuring old mimes in old cars and I called it, “The Mime of the Ancient Rear Ender”. I guess it could also be about sodomy or sodomy while getting rear-ended in traffic. There are a lot of possibilities.

We looked at Coleridge’s poem, “To William Wordsworth”. It’s a loco-descriptive poem and a conversational poem. It’s also a greater Romantic lyric, which is a still-used term. The speaker’s insight is catalyzed by the experience of the outer scene.

This poem is different from Coleridge’s usual works because the external scene is not in nature but rather Wordsworth’s reading of what became known as his Prelude. The Prelude is Wordsworth’s poem about his lifelong unfolding process of self-reflection. Wordsworth does not write about being a child but rather he situates himself as an adult writing about being a child.

Coleridge’s poem gives an opportunity to imagine ways in which he differentiated himself from Wordsworth. Coleridge was much more learned and philosophical than Wordsworth. He also anchored himself in guilt and abstract thought sucked out his spirit.

There is a parallel between Wordsworth’s address to Coleridge in the Prelude and Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight”. The city is presented as a challenge to authentic being.

Memory is an important theme for both Wordsworth and Coleridge.

At the end of Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode” is a phrase that reads “thoughts too deep for words”. Coleridge repeats that phrase in  “To William Wordsworth”. What is the significance of Coleridge congratulating a poet for having written thoughts too deep for words?

There is recognition of a limit of representation. I suggested that poets go to that limit to find new words.

Coleridge is hailing Wordsworth as one of the greats of history but also declares that he is beyond time. This poem is almost a re-enactment of Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply”. It is deliberately written in a Wordsworthian style, in blank verse and iambic pentameter, the closest meter to human breath.

There is still a sense of irresolution. He evokes a language that transcends its own limits. He evokes the experience of reading about the experience of poetry.

After class I told the professor that while thinking about Wordsworth’s idea of the inspirational wind, I suddenly remembered Bob Dylan’s line: “The answer in blowing in the wind”. She asked if Dylan had read Wordsworth but I wasn’t sure. I said that he was definitely inspired by Ginsberg. His “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is clearly influenced by “Howl”. The use of the phrase “I saw …” to describe several apocalyptic scenes is lifted straight from Howl. She asked what I thought of Dylan getting the Nobel Prize. I said that I think Leonard Cohen would have been a better choice. She seemed sceptical about both of them.

When I got home I did a search to see if Dylan has mentioned Wordsworth but it seems that he’s more into the other Romantic, William Blake. It turns out that he and Ginsberg collaborated on recording a couple of songs that Ginsberg made out of William Blake poems on Ginsberg’s 1970 album “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. Dylan’s own song “Every Grain of Sand” seems to have been inspired by the imagery in Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”.

That night I made a grilled cheese sandwich and had it for dinner with a piece of reheated grilled perch and watched an episode of Perry Mason. This story begins with a man named Faulkner losing at craps in a casino. Later a man named castle comes to Faulkner’s office to remind him that he owes him $8000. He shows him a promissory note. Faulkner reminds him that he’d given him until April 15 but Castle says it doesn’t say so on the note. Faulkner says he knows that Marty Davis wants his land for a casino and that Castle thinks he can get it by April 12. Castle says he put up $50000 as a guarantee. Faulkner says he’s giving the land to his daughter Stephanie. Castle says he wouldn’t be surprised if Stephanie won’t be easier to convince and then he pulls a gun and shoots Faulkner. Later Castle goes to see Junior but she says she needs to discuss it with a friend. Junior, Stephanie’s former fiancé goes to talk with Castle on Stephanie’s behalf. Castle says something about Stephanie’s relationship with Junior’s father and Junior tries to punch him. Castle blocks it, punches him hard in the stomach and kicks him out. Castle goes to the office of Michael Garvin, Junior’s father where Castle’s former girlfriend Eve works as a secretary. He accuses her of telling Junior to come and see him. He reminds her that there is a sheriff in Kansas looking for her. After Castle leaves Eve calls Stephanie to tell her to meet Michael at Perry Mason’s office the next morning. It turns out though that Castle has been listening. He tells her he’s going to call that sheriff in Kansas. After Mason talks with them he goes to see Castle under the pretence of negotiating the sale of the property. After leaving Mason goes to a phone booth across the street to ask Paul Drake to investigate Castle. While they are on the phone he sees Stephanie arrive in a cab and enter Castle’s building. A few minutes later the police arrive and Mason sees Stephanie leaving by the fire escape. Mason drives his car over to pick her up. She seems in shock. The next day the papers show that Castle was murdered. Michael calls Mason to ask him to defend Stephanie. Mason goes to see her. She says she had gone to try to find out if Castle had been responsible for her father’s murder but when she got there he was dead. Mason finds that Stephanie has a gun that Michael gave her the day before and it’s been fired but she says she didn’t use it. Mason goes to see Michael and asks to see his gun. Mason “accidentally" fires it, with the bullet creasing Junior’s desk and going out the window. Mason tells Michel to put the gun in his pocket and come with him. They go to Stephanie’s place and Mason tells Junior to give her the gun. Tragg comes to see Mason to tell him they’ve arrested Stephanie for murder. It turns out that the gun he had Junior give her was the one that killed Castle.  In court it is revealed that after the murder Michael had secretly taken the gun he’d given Stephanie and replaced it with his own because he’d thought that Stephanie had killed Castle. It turned out that it had been Michael’s gun that had been used in the murder. He’d put his gun in the safe for half an hour while he got ready for dinner. Michael’s secretary, Eve stands u and confesses that she’d removed the gun from the safe went two blocks to kill Castle and then returned the gun to the safe.

Stephanie was played by Peggy McCay, who played Caroline Brady on Days of Our Lives from 1983 to 2016. She died three weeks ago at the age of 90.

Eve was played by Alix Talton.

            I felt very tired at 22:30 and so I went to bed with my clothes on without washing up or brushing my teeth. I got up at 1:30 to pee and got formally ready for bed. I saw a baby cockroach in the bathroom sink and so I decided that I'd better do the dishes.