Ferlinghetti

Subject: Ferlinghetti poem dedicated to Bob Dylan
From: Steve Lescure (Steve_Lescure@MAIL.AMSINC.COM)
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 18:26:37 EST

(You know your a dylan fan when you go to the library for something to
read and only consider books with some possible relation to dylan.)

This is from a biography, "Ferlinghetti: The Artist in His Time", by
Barry Silesky.

This was news to me.  Hope it's of some interest to others.

Ferlinghetti in his 1976 collection "Who Are We Now?", dedicated a
poem called "Jack of Hearts" to none other than Bob Dylan.

In my mind, Ferlinghetti is doing a riff on the Jack of Hearts character
from Blood on the Tracks.  Sort of answer poem. While in Dylan's song the Jack
of Hearts is a savior of sort, which makes it something of a song of redemption
and hope (unless you happen to be Big Jim:) ) in Ferlinghetti's bleak poem
there is no Jack of Hearts around.  Here's the excerpt:

"...who are we ever," the poem asks after the opening question, (the title of
the collection)

Skin books parchment bodies libraries of the living
gilt almanachs of the very rich
encyclopedias of little people
packs of players face down
on faded maps of America
with no Jack of Hearts...

For most of its four pages, then, it offers descriptions of the missing
"Jack":

"...the one who'll shake the ones unshaken
the fearles one
the one without bullshit..."

And

"the one the queen keeps her eye on
Dark Rider on a white horse
after the apocalypse
Prophet stoned on the wheel of fortune
Sweet singer with harp half-hid
who speaks with the cry of cicadas
who tells the tale too truly
for the ones with no one to tell them...

the author goes on to say,

The dedication to Dylan suggests that the heroic, surrealistic Jack may be
Dylan, but insofar as Dylan is a poet - and Ferlinghetti certainly agreed that
he was - the "Jack" is also an archetypal figure: at time muse, at times an
embodiment of Kerouac, at time a holy figure, all echoing the Gingsberg-like
"He" in the Starting from San Francisco poem.

***

I think the dedication is clearly telling us that the part about the "Prophet
stoned on the wheel of fortune/sweet singer, etc., "is" Dylan, but I also
think he is giving us a hint that the poem is also a spin-off of Lily,
Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.

Does anybody have the entire poem handy for posting? There is probably more
Bob content.

Also, does anybody know of any other dedications, beside Joyce Carol Oates
and Ferlinghetti?

steve lescure


And in a totally unrelated note, and to see if anybody really read this all the
way thru: What the hell ever happened to Ann Beattie?  Love her short
stories, bored by her novels, but lots of Dylan references in both.

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