Dear Neal Cassady

Neal Cassady is another figure of note from the Beat Generation.  He served his inclination for trouble with the law from a young age and spent his early years slumming with the occupiers of skid row and did a stint in reform school.  Raised by an alcoholic father after his mother’s death at ten years old, he performed a slew of petty crimes that eventually landed him in jail despite the efforts of a prominent Denver educator who tried to help Neal turn his life around. He served eleven months of a one year sentence for receipt of stolen property.  It was from this incarceration that some of his earliest letters survive.  

When Neal was released from prison in 1945, he married fifteen year old Luanne Henderson and together they moved to New York City where he was introduced to Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac at Columbia University.  Cassady was never a Columbia student but it was there that he rubbed elbows with the denizens of the Beat Generation.  During this time he met Carolyn Robinson, who later wrote Off The Road, its pages outlining their relationship and where she coined Neal as ‘the archetype of the American Man’.  Robinson originally dated Kerouac but after walking in on Neal, Luanne and Allen Ginsberg in bed together, she fled the Beat’s group.  Five weeks later, Neal Cassady annulled his marriage to Luanne and wed Carolyn.   The two settled down on a ranch in Monte Sereno, California and has three children.  In 1950, Neal  entered a bigamous marriage with Diane Hansen and eventually fathered a son. Diane appears in Jack Kerouac’s On The Road as the character Inez.  It is said that Neal maintained a sexual relationship too with Allen Ginsberg for close to twenty years.

Cassady worked in California for the Southern Pacific Railroad and kept in touch with his Beat counterparts even though they were miles apart in their philosophical views.  Drugs played a role in his life and he soon found himself serving time at San Quentin for offering to share marijuana with an undercover agent at a bar.  When he was released in 1960 he was unable to provide for his family so Carolyn sent him packing, divorcing him.  He shacked up with Allen Ginsberg and another roommate in San Francisco.  It was around this time he first met Ken Kesey and was adopted as one of the Merry Pranksters (immortalized in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), circles formed around Kesey and were choral about the use of psychedelic drugs.   

Neal would make his way across country with his Beats and Pranksters, traveling, experimenting until his demise in Mexico when he attended a wedding.  After the reception, he took a stroll along the railroad track that stretch on into the neighboring town.  It is believed he passed out and slipped into a coma somewhere along that way.  He was found wearing just jeans and a t-shirt and carried to the nearest hospital where he died only a few hours later, four days shy of his forty-second birthday.  A veil of mystery still shrouds his death.

In many ways, Neal Cassady is a true American icon. Upon his death Ken Kesey penned an illusory version of his death titled, ‘The Day After Superman Died’.  And famously, Jack Kerouac built the character of Dean Moriarty in On The Road from the foundation of Neal’s persona.  Kerouac also fashioned Cody Pomeray after him in other novels as well.  Ginsberg mentions Cassady in his epic poem ‘Howl’ and it is even said that Neal was the inspiration for main character in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Neal was a Beat poet and a Prankster but perhaps is most noted for his letters and for the influence he had on the writings of his counterparts.  The title of my poem reflects that fact that his letters are often talked about.  I still haven’t read them all but this piece was written as a letter and/or a response to his legacy and his place in the Beat Generation history.  Perhaps those affiliated with the Beat Generation are less than desirable to some in terms of their lifestyle and beliefs and are by no means heroes.  Yet it was Cassady who is credited for helping to release Jack Kerouac from his sentimental writing style, Thomas Wolfe-like, to what he excelled in and delivered to us some of his best work by writing ‘spontaneous prose’ – a stream of consciousness  chic.  I love the whole idea of spontaneous prose.  Like the old adage says, rules were meant to be broken and the concept of free-flowing thoughts that turn into classic pieces of writing resonates with me deeply.  I’m a big fan of free verse when writing poetry, I’m not much of a rhymer and would be a terrible rapper.  I enjoy the idea of verses being free of rules and unrestricted.  They form easier for me that way and I am better able to get onto the page what needs to be said.  The Beats really gave creative license to this style of writing and way of living.  I abide by so many rules on a daily basis but I never allow my creativity to be powered by 'procedure'.  It’s liberating.

Dear Neil Cassady

aesthetic waste

makes a metaphor of me

in my old empty

smoke-smeared art

drunk writers

break the angry balance

of my splotched screaming

and pacing shadow

here it is

my deep canvas

absurd with mess

Yours,

Secret Hero Howl

**

Jack Kerouac said of Neal Cassady that he was, ‘more like Dostoevsky than anyone I know’.  Neal Cassady lived and breathed the things that only others wrote.  My to-read bucket list includes his book of letters published by Penguin detailing the years 1944 to 1967 and a biography by William Plummer called The Holy Goof. 

My fascination with the Beats continues.

In propinquity,

Nic