Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

William S. Burroughs' "Fear and the Monkey" operates within a surreal and occult-inflected atmosphere, where fragmented images, ghostly presences, and a dreamlike sense of decay converge to create a mood of anxiety and dissolution. The poem reads like an incantation, a whispered invocation that blends personal hauntings with literary allusions and esoteric mysticism. Burroughs’ description of its composition—a Oui-Ja board poem pulling from Denton Welch, the Necronomicon, and fragments of other texts—suggests a cut-up technique, one of his signature literary strategies. The result is a text that moves like an eerie, fragmented vision, pulling the reader through shadows of memory, death, and fear.

The poem’s opening line, "Turgid itch and the perfume of death / On a whispering south wind", immediately sets the tone: bodily discomfort (turgid itch), decay (perfume of death), and movement (whispering south wind). The interplay of sensory elements—itching, scent, sound—creates a disorienting effect, drawing the reader into a space where perception is heightened, almost feverish. The "smell of abyss and of nothingness" continues this, reinforcing a void-like sensation, a collapse of meaning into sensory disarray.

Then, "Dark Angel of the wanderers howls through the loft / With sick smelling sleep." The loft, Burroughs tells us, is a converted YMCA locker room, a space with its own ghost stories. The Dark Angel here takes on a dual significance: a literal spectral presence and a metaphoric figure of displacement, of wanderers caught between worlds. The phrase "sick smelling sleep" is particularly effective, capturing the stagnant air of a haunted space, where time and decay intertwine.

Morning dream of a lost monkey / Born and muffled under old whimsies / With rose leaves in closed jars. These lines introduce the monkey, a recurring symbol in Burroughs’ work, often tied to addiction (as in the phrase monkey on one's back). The monkey, a pet or companion figure, seems to be lost or dead, further emphasizing themes of loss and disorientation. The rose leaves in closed jars evoke Victorian mourning practices—preserving flowers from the deceased’s funeral as relics—suggesting that the monkey is both literally and symbolically dead, trapped in memory.

The phrase Fear and the monkey acts as a pivot in the poem, standing alone, summoning the title back into focus. The fear, undefined but pervasive, intermingles with the image of the monkey—perhaps an emblem of addiction, loss, or an inescapable past.

The imagery that follows moves in waves of sensory detail: "Sour taste of green fruit in the dawn / The air milky and spiced with the trade winds." The sour taste suggests an unpleasant awakening, a bitterness that contrasts with the exotic trade winds. This is a landscape of transient pleasures and their inevitable rot, a world of decay masked in momentary sweetness.

Burroughs then shifts to fragmented glimpses of a world in decline:
"White flesh was showing / His jeans were so old / Leg shadows by the sea."
Here, the human body is partially exposed, ephemeral (shadows by the sea), suggesting vulnerability or detachment. The old jeans hint at wear, transience, perhaps even poverty. The human presence in the poem is spectral, flickering in and out of the scenery.

The poem proceeds with a layering of atmospheric snapshots:
"Morning light / On the sky light of a little shop / On the odor of cheap wine in the sailors’ quarter / On the fountain sobbing in the police courtyards / On the statue of moldy stone / On the little boy whistling to stray dogs."
These images accumulate like frames in an old film reel, offering glimpses of different locations, each imbued with a sense of loneliness and decay. The morning light casts an indifferent glow on these spaces of human residue—alcohol-stained streets, neglected statues, abandoned animals. The fountain sobbing is particularly evocative, as if the city itself weeps through its neglected structures.

"Wanderers cling to their fading home / A lost train whistle wan and muffled / In the loft night taste of water." These lines reinforce the theme of displacement. The wanderers—perhaps figures like Burroughs himself, nomads of the Beat era—hold onto something ephemeral, something already vanishing. The lost train whistle is wan and muffled, as if distance has already swallowed it. The night taste of water suggests thirst, absence, or even a lingering dream-state.

The poem closes in dissolution:
"Morning light on milky flesh / Turgid itch ghost hand / Sad as the death of monkeys / Thy father a falling star / Crystal bone into thin air / Night sky / Dispersal and emptiness."
The repetition of morning light on milky flesh recalls earlier lines, creating a cyclical, echoing effect. The ghost hand suggests the lingering presence of the supernatural, a spectral force touching reality. Sad as the death of monkeys returns to the earlier theme, reinforcing the emotional weight of loss. The final lines—falling star, crystal bone, thin air, night sky, dispersal and emptiness—complete the poem’s arc of dissolution, ending in a vast, formless void.

"Fear and the Monkey" is a deeply atmospheric poem, fusing personal memory, addiction imagery, and supernatural allusions into a fevered, dreamlike sequence. The recurring figure of the monkey suggests loss, addiction, or even a companion gone too soon. The loft setting, with its ghostly presence, lends the poem an eerie, liminal quality—somewhere between waking and dreaming, life and death. The cut-up technique enhances this sensation, making the poem feel like a fragmented radio signal, voices from different times and places colliding in the speaker’s mind.

Burroughs’ choice to incorporate elements from the Necronomicon, Rimbaud, and Toby Tyler with the Circus adds further depth. The Necronomicon, a fictional grimoire invented by H.P. Lovecraft, represents forbidden knowledge and cosmic horror, aligning with the poem’s themes of fear and spectral presence. Rimbaud, the enfant terrible of French poetry, provides a poetic precedent for Burroughs’ vision of transient beauty and self-destruction. The Toby Tyler reference, a children’s book about a boy who joins a circus, adds an ironic contrast—childhood adventure turned into a site of death and fear.

In sum, "Fear and the Monkey" is a haunting meditation on memory, addiction, and spectral presences, evoking the liminal space between past and present, substance and spirit, light and emptiness. The poem’s disjointed, impressionistic structure mirrors the workings of memory itself—partial, shifting, resistant to coherence. Burroughs crafts a world that is both deeply personal and eerily universal, where fear lingers in forgotten corners, and where the death of monkeys is both a literal loss and a metaphor for something far more inescapable.

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