The Devil Never Sleeps by Andrei Codrescu

our death-thirsty soul.

    â€”Tudor Arghezi

    H ere it is, the rich golden light that announces for the umpteenth time that it’s autumn in the world, with its smell of apples and chalk. A new urgency grips the young, an old guilt spurs on the lassitude-heavy bodies of summer. We are all hurtling toward the millennium, resolved to make a difference, to make sense, to produce something. This autumn we will invent something greater than the spork—though it’s hard to imagine anything greater than that. Will we say, “We have come to a spork in the road?” or, “He was born with a silver spork in his mouth?” Probably not, but our new inventions will certainly attempt it. After the losses of each year, there seems to be more room in the world, there are voids everywhere.
    Nineteen ninety-seven was a particularly grievous year. Many giants of American poetry are gone: Ginsberg, Burroughs, Jim Gustafson, Gerald Bums. Gone too are many mad children of the sixties, Heaven’s Gaters all, led like a flock of psychedelic geese by Timothy Leary, destination Comet Hale-Bopp. And closely behind them in the luminous void, the young British princess and the saint of lepers, all of them swept up by the ill winds of 1997. I remember only one year worse than that one, the year 1977, when some of my dearest friends were plucked in the flower of their youth. Is there something about seven, that number Europeans cross at the waist with a line, as if cancelling something? Is there something about the summers of years with the number seven in them? Numerologists may know something, but all I know is that fall narrows like a wind tunnel and the end of the year is in sight. If we come out of it, we should meet the new exigencies of the future, their faces veiled, their shapes unknown, their mysteries more promising and terrifying than ever. The future always lies in the womb of autumn—the inevitable fruit of loss and promise. But hard like a seed in the flesh of it is the bitterness of this year. And it was bitter.
    Â 

    To: James Grauerholz
    Jim McCrary
    Â 
    Dear Ones:
    Pass the word to WILLIAM that there is a huge hole on this prison-planet now that he’s joined his friends on the next level. My condolences to you. I imagine you’ll be swamped with memorials & regrets for the next year so I won’t make this too long. One thing’s for sure: William Burroughs won’t go to any Christian outfit. He’s straight up in the Buddha-place with Ginzy & Jack.
    Â 
    Andrei Codrescu
    New Orleans
    August 2, 1997

    To: Allen Ginsberg
    Naropa Institute
    Boulder, Colorado
    Â 
    November 1, 1993
    Â 
    Dear Allen,
    I have been pursuing your fleet form through lo these many months through many lands because we need you desperately! We ( Exquisite Corpse staff ) are going to publish an anthology called American Poets Say Goodbye to the 20th Century. 4 We need your long or short goodbye for our book. The book would be nothing without your goodbye because you are the poet of half this century. I am hoping that you can apply yourself to a millennial meditation for us. This is a call for poems, so naturally, we would prefer something composed in your incomparable first thought key. Failing that, we will take the work short or long that you think is most thematically appropriate. This will be a great book: we have asked one hundred or so of our most distinguished practitioners and they’ve all said yes. Our deadline is January 1, 1994. Please FAX back: 504-899-4608, to set our uneasy minds at ease. Say yes. The book will be published in the Fall of 1994 by Four Walls/Eight Windows in collaboration with Exquisite Corpse . It will be a hefty, rich and inclusive collection that will see the century off with the music it deserves.
    I hope that you are happy.

    Millennially Yours, With Love,
    The Exquisite Corpse Editor
    Andrei Codrescu

 
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    Allen Ginsberg
    A llen Ginsberg, old courage teacher, is