1st pO3Try R3sP0nS3

“Desolation Blues - 12^th Chorus” (1956) by Jack Kerouac

Little weird flower,
why did you grow?
Who planted you
on this god damned hill?
Who asked you to grow?
Why dont you go?
What's wrong with yr. orange tips?
I was under the impression
that you were sposed to be
some kind of perfect nature.
Oh, you are?
Just jiggle in the wind. I see.
At yr feet I see a nosegay
bou kay
Of seven little purple apes
who dint grow so high
And a sister of yours
further down the precipice-
and your whole family
to the left-
I thot last week
you were funeral bouquets
for me
that never askt
to be born
or die
But now I guess
I'm just talkin
thru my
empty head

(The poem's irregular indents didn't show up on my blog post, and I can't find a reliable website to link it to, so... just bear with me. Sorry!)

8. Explain the historical or cultural context and how it is important to the poem.

Jack Kerouac is considered the father of the Beat Generation. The Beat Movement flourished around the 1950s and 1960s, and many of its ideals, including non-conformity and spontaneous creativity, were influenced by the disillusionment of two consecutive World Wars. Jazz, which exploded during the Beat Generation, also influenced Kerouac’s writing with its elements of improvisation and unconventional harmonies.

“Desolation Blues – 12^th Chorus" exemplifies the swingy jazz feel and the non-conformism of the Beat Generation. Rather than respect nature, he resents the flower’s existence by asking questions like, “why did you grow?” and “why dont you go?” His conversation with the flower satirically mimics the glorification of nature found in literature. Kerouac blatantly disregards not only nature’s beauty but proper spelling as well, with mistakes such as “thot” for “thought” and “bou kay” for “bouquet.” His unconventional style is not so much subversive as it is honest. In a world of atom bombs and machine guns, nothing but one’s instincts remain trustworthy and meaningful. After all, what else does a flower do but “jiggle in the wind”? And since writing is “sposed” to reflect the spoken word, why shouldn’t we spell the way we speak? No doubt such questions swirled in Kerouac’s mind, and he, certain about his uncertainty, spills out the answers from his “empty head” in a poem with an equally disorganized, bluesy structure.