Preakness springs young writer’s dreams
Castles soar in fresh bright air
Precious Underwood close at hand
And typewriter of thy heart . . . ‘tis furious poet’s tool
Notebooks filled with million words
American stories colored told
Baseball, football, scored by jazz
Seaman’s tales and merchant sails
Spontaneous flow of poetry prose
Languagey language i casual pen
Talent, energy, ambition swell
Leads to Manhattan lights and nights
And its clubs and rain streaked streets
Paves way sad gray Lowell leave
Away New England’s frozen freeze
Thoreau’s pond and pine tree breeze
Wolfe, Melville, Dostoevsky saint
London, Whitman, Shakespeare’s plaint
To his own voice be true
That rises above the mills
And smoke, knowing
There’s nothing like a cigar
For a clean young man from a clean home ii
With a credo
To write all day
And star-spangled night
Of course, there’s a sublime woman iii
A great woman
And a love to cling to
i Kerouac, Jack. Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings. Ed. Paul Marion. (New York: Viking, 1999). pp. 150-151.
ii Ibid., p. 165.
iii Ibid., p. 149.
