Allen Ginsberg

Spell—Footnote to howl

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tounge and cock and hand and asshole holy!

Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! everyman's an angel!

The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy!

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!

Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels!

Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!

Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace & junk & drums!

Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!

Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles is Los Angeles!

Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul!

Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the angel in Moloch.

Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!

Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith!

Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity!

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul.

Ginsberg's notes on Visions of Cody

The art lies in the consciousness of doing the thing, in the attention to the happening, in the sacrementalization of everyday reality, the God-worship in the present conversation, no matter what.

Thus the tape may be read not as hung up & and boring which it sometimes is, but as a spontaneous ritual performed once & never repeated, in full consciousness that every yawn and syllable uttered would be eternal--and here it is immortalized after all by the Great Rememberer and his Cast of Characters remembering themselves while still alive.

And then Jack & Neal go deep into intimate conversation about all mutual concerns, their first meetings & first excitements, first blow jobs & drugs--this lyricism belongs to an age of discovery, to younger people checking up on each other's consciousness--stages & growths. Once you fall in love five times and tell the story 5 times over it loses magic--unless as an older person you fall in love again--then you sadly tell the story again, bemused.

A book to make Ken Kesey weep for pity and tenderness -- the early-ripe fruit he never tasted with Neal, the innocence of 1940s intelligence.