A POEM THAT ASKS THE MUSICAL QUESTION: IS JACK KEROUAC REALLY DEAD IN AMERICA?

Look! Twilight temples of industry rising
from Lowell landscapes that accelerate
the shadows: sacred, as though they might
knight our shoulders as they cut the sacristy
of God. Carrier pigeons delivering glorious
messages to us, to our mantic mothers, to our
fathers with fears of dying alone {as if aloneness
were more exclusive than death) tolerate our own
solitudes. Lowell litanies chanted, as we slowly
mount the scaffold: wait for the snick of the cold
indifferent blade. Before the spring is sprung, we
have a chance to prove he will never lay out in LA
again, never bum down Camino Real again, never
keep a book of dreams, again, never be able to ask,
again, the old question: why is there this constant crucifixion: tacked-up by academic politicians?
To: Tom Waits
Whittier, California {1975}

From: Crosswalk Casserole

Summary

“A POEM THAT ASKS THE MUSICAL QUESTION: IS JACK KEROUAC REALLY DEAD IN AMERICA?” by Michael C. Ford is a poem centered on place and geography, family, mortality and loss. Its imagery is anchored in California. The poem develops its subject through recurring images and shifts in emotional pressure rather than reducing the experience to a single statement.

Analysis

Voice

The speaker works through observation and associative imagery, allowing scene and image to carry the argument.

Style and form

The poem is line-driven. The poem moves by accumulation: images, references, and tonal turns build on one another, so meaning emerges from their relationships as much as from narrative sequence.

Themes and imagery

Its strongest thematic currents include place and geography, family, mortality and loss, aging. Concrete images give those abstractions physical weight, while changes in diction and pace keep the poem from settling into a single emotional register.

Reading the poem

A productive way to read “A POEM THAT ASKS THE MUSICAL QUESTION: IS JACK KEROUAC REALLY DEAD IN AMERICA?” is to watch how its images change function as the poem progresses. Details that initially establish scene or memory become emotional evidence. The result is a poem whose argument is carried through association, rhythm, and image as much as through explicit statement.

Explore this poem

Place and geography Family Mortality and loss Aging Travel and movement Free verse California 2013s

Source & rights

Source: Crosswalk Casserole (Lawn Gnome Publishing, First Edition, 2013)