Olson & Kerouac

1968 –1969
by Ed Sanders

In late October ’68 there was a surprise visit
from Jack Kerouac
who showed up
at 28 Fort Square in Gloucester
in a black limousine from Lowell
driven by his brothers-in-law

Jack stood at the back steps of
28 Fort Square
shouting up to the second floor apt,
“Olson, the red carpet please!
Get out the red carpet!’

Not having any carpet, Olson
placed pages of the Sunday paper
on each step leading down the stairs

According to Olson’s friend Charles Boer
to whom Olson described Kerouac’s visit
“Kerouac was pleased at the gesture,
especially when he found, going up the
stairs, that one of the pages he was
walking on    contained an article on him, with
his picture.”

Then a year later, October 21, 1969
Jack was watching the “Galloping Gourmet”
TV show in the morning, making notes in a pad
& eating some tuna from a can
when the blood from a burst
vein bubbled from his throat
& he passed from earth

It was the second anniversary of the Fugs’
Exorcism of the Pentagon.
That same day in October of ’69
Allen Ginsberg was just about to leave for a
poetry tour beginning with Yale
& then a teach-in about Vietnam
at Columbia U

He was at his farm in Cherry Valley —
Gregory Corso
had come for a visit

That evening the phone rang
Gregory answered,
it was the writer Al Aronowitz

Gregory turned to Ginsberg —
“Al!  Jack died.”

Early the next morning
Ginsberg and Corso
walked through the early snow
to the woods up the hill
& carved Jack’s name
in a tree

In his book “Charles Olson in Connecticut”
Charles Boer writes about the time
that Olson learned of the passing of Jack:

Boer recalled that Olson
was “startled that he had died so young.”

Olson thought about going to the funeral
but couldn’t determine whether he’d be buried
in Massachusetts or Florida
He told Boer about Kerouac’s
showing up at 28 Fort Square
on a Sunday, shouting up to the
second floor apt,
“Olson, the red carpet please!
Get out the red carpet!’

at which exhortation Olson
placed pages of the Sunday paper
on each step leading down the stairs

one Kerouac stepped upon with
an article about Jack
& his photo too

             As for Olson
a few days later
he went into a hospital
soon to be diagnosed
with his fatal voyage
of liver cancer

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