Jack Kerouac, Charlie Parker, and the Nature of Art and Death
In the “240th Chorus” of Jack Kerouac’s informally titled “Charlie Parker” series in “Mexico City Blues”, the pattern of meter and rhythm used to construct the poem are also used to construct a relationship between artistic creation and destruction.
At the beginning of this section, the meter and rhythm put a natural emphasis on words pertaining to music and its creation. For example, in the first line, the words emphasized are “Musically” and “Beethoven,” which start to create the motif of music and creation through both sound and diction.
The next aspect of most importance is the line breaks. There are many moments in this poem where one word gets a line all on its own. The function of these line breaks is to stress the words that get their own line. Kerouac cleverly breaks lines in a place that creates suspense and questions in the reader’s mind about what comes next. For example, a conductor of string what? “orchestras” (Kerouac 54). He stood like a leader of what? “of music” (Kerouac 54). Charlie who? Charlie “Parker” (Kerouac 55). The emphasis put on these words indicates that these words — words pertaining to art, music, expression, and creation — are the most important .
However, this pattern is abruptly interrupted by the lines:
“And we plop in the waters of/ slaughter/ And white meat, and die/ One after one, in time” (Kerouac 55).
Stress and emphasis are put on the word “slaughter.” Slaughter is a word meaning to kill, but with a very violent and visceral connotation. Slaughter means the death was not accidental or natural, it was an intentional act. The word “slaughter” also brings to mind the systematic killing of thousands of animals for meat — for the purpose of human consumption. Art can also be for the purpose of human consumption. By juxtaposing these two things perhaps Kerouac is making a commentary on American society and media in how it treats art and its artists. The mention of “white meat” and the emphasis of that line being put on “die” further develop this motif of death and destruction. The last line about these deaths being “One after one” gives the line the connotation that this fate of slaughter is inevitable, it is a system just like the slaughterhouse system. This system takes life and kills it, and a poem that once focused on the beauty of art and music and creation ends with a complete shift in motif to destruction, and the inevitability of mortality.
The pattern of the meter and rhythm, and the diction and images it emphasizes, create a dark, morbid, and bleak tone, and communicate Kerouac’s views on the relationship between society, art, and the artist.
Kerouac, Jack. “Mexico City Blues.” The Portable Beat Reader, edited by Ann Charters, Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 53–56.
