Out on Highway 77

Poems for Peace is an album put out by Broadsides Records in 1967 (and now available on iTunes, for god's sake). It documents a benefit reading for the New York Workshop in Nonviolence at St. Mark's in the Bouwerie on April 7, 1966, with readers including Paul Blackburn, David Antin, Ed Sanders, Walter Lowenfels. Which begs the questions, weren't there any women poets for peace in 1966?

The first cut on the record is a long piece by Allen Ginsberg titled, "Auto Poesy to Nebraska." It describes a trip Ginsberg had taken earlier in the year from Wichita, Kansas to Lincoln, Nebraska. That trip has been painstakingly documented on the Wichita Beats site with maps (including the one below), timetables, and more.

(Courtesy Wichita Beats)

Ginsberg coined the term "auto poesy," a pun on automobile, automatic writing, auto eroticism, and probably more. The poem became the first part of "Wichita Vortex Sutra," one of Ginsberg's most epic and "political" poems, calling out Johnson, Rusk, McNamara, and others for their "bad guess" that plunged the country deeper into the Vietnam conflict.

The poem begins:

Turn Right Next Corner
The Biggest Little Town in Kansas
         Macpherson
The red sun setting streaked along the flat plains west,
                      gauzy veils of chimney mist
            around the christmas tree lights of a refinery--aluminum
                      white tanks squat beneath
            winking signal towers'
                      bright-lit bulbs and flares of orange
                                                              gas flame
            pillows of smoke
                 midst machinery--
             transparent towers in the dusk

In advance of the Cold Wave
        Snow is spreading eastward to
                                the Great Lakes
    News Broadcasts & old clarinets
                        car radio speeding across railroad tracks
               Lighted dome watertower on the flat plains

And here is Ginsberg's invocation crossing from Kansas into Nebrasksa:

Come Nebraska, sing & dance with me--
             Come lovers of Lincoln and Omaha
                                  hear my soft voice at last...

Images from the road follow. In my mind, the "Dairy neon" was a Dairy Queen, but it was probably an actual dairy farm or business. But where or what was the "King's Crown" on the road sign? Lost to memory:

Whoops !  passing truck head backward towed on the right lane ahead,
                 King's Crown a road sign,
                                                          a Dairy neon behind trees
                                             looks Africa village bonfire movies
                                                                   thru the jungle wall--
                              Space highway open, entering Lincoln's ear
                                      ground to a stop at the tracks Warning
                                                                         Pioneer Boulevard--  

A friend reminds me that Ginsberg also gave a speech to the U.S. Senate (!) in 1966 about LSD. I hope he wasn't doing much of the driving back on Highway 77.