Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Plymell: HOWL, HIP & MONEY IN AMERICA

Howl is one place that the Beat (Kerouac) dictum proved out. First lines best or whatever it is. Allen was thinking abt changing it. Although its pure hyperbole, it works as is. Some professor gave me the book when it came out in the 50's. If you know that photo of me in Kansas City Bop street going to see Charley Parker, you'll realize that to me most of the beats were still kind of square about that time. Except Huncke. And Kerouac did have the hipster sinc. He's about the only one of them who was really attuned to jazz and could read with it, which many have tried and lost to wrong beat finger poppers. Patchen understood jazz. Ferlinghetti would have liked to. Have you seen those pamphlets of me in 1950? A guy at 12guage press published a few. A photo is in "Some Mother's Son's." All my work is sold to collectors mainly on abebooks.com and places. I find some things on Google under Charles Plymell and Charles Plymell publisher. I found the TV Baby I printed first on black paper with silver ink on the press I printed the first Zap on. That copy of TVBaby goes pretty high, but a later edition someone else printed is sometimes available. It seems like everytime I pick up the Boss baby book something is off, so I don't read at it much. That's what happens when Allen becomes a millionaire off his archives and millions are made off Kerouac. I didn't know that was the Sampas sitting with us at the bar that night. I thought they were a couple of dorks driving Kerouac to the gig. Now they're millionaire dorks. Not that I care about money. I wish I had made some. I'm part Wyandotte Indian (founded Kansas City) on my father's side and Cherokee on my Mother's. I never understood white man's money. But I really didn't like poets who howled like a proletariat and became millionaires. Money is morality here, the more you can give to the church or your goony guru, the more Faith will win the world. Someone wrote something recently about me that I should be despised because I'm poor. Wait 'till China knocks out our electric grids and everyone will experience what it was like growing up on a farm with no electric! cp

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