PART ONE
The Charm, 1945–1952
Burma, New Hampshire, Aix-en-Provence
LETTER TO GENEVIEVE AND HELEN CREELEY
Jan.20.’45
Dear Mother and Helen,
We soon will land, and after that I suppose everything will become something over which I shall have little or no control. I am actually looking forward to that time, though I should never have thought I would. But then many of the things that have occurred in the past year I could never have predicted, and they are the very things which will make me think as I do. It will be quite pleasant to carry out someone’s orders, to do what one is told. Yet, should I find myself on my own at anytime, I have enough strength, enough intelligence to rescue me. I do not worry about that, and it would be little help if I did. Anyhow, I am ready, as much as I can be ready, for what is coming.
Being at sea for a month, away from all past influences, did a great deal for me in many ways. On ship, having only one companion and he so different in his tastes, I found all the time I could possibly need for thinking and reading. It was rather like waking from a nightmare with the realization that the nightmare had only been oneself. All I have done, and so much it was, to ruin myself, to hurt those who love and trust me, to cloud my eyes to everything while it was so very important for me to see, all of this I saw and realized. I thought about it over and over again, until at last the mistakes were clear, were obvious, and I could know them as mistakes myself; and to call an action a mistake has nothing to do with knowing one is. The little good that was left I have kept, and on that I must begin to build my whole new structure, nothing more or nothing less. I have a great deal of work to do.
I wrote quite a bit, and very little of it is good, or I think is good, yet that will do for now. I can’t alter my wish to write. That remains, and I can only adjust to it. I do believe that I shall be able to someday; I will not admit ever that it is only a dream or something which I can never realize.
I think of a number of quotations, all of them admirable, which I might now use for my own life. The very obvious one is in Polonius’ speech to Laertes in Act I, Sc. III of Hamlet “This above all, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man”. Oh, that would help, I think, but not answer. So much more is necessary. I think of Walpole’s Fortitude,1 and I remember reading it when I was quite young and almost wishing someone would beat me, so that I could be as brave as Peter Westcott. That book begins with this: “Tisn’t life that matters; ’tis the courage you bring to it”. And that’s much more than true, and still not nearly enough. No quotation is enough. How could it be? Nothing outside oneself can ever be enough. I cannot be told, and I cannot be shown how I should live. I can only find out for myself. But I sincerely wish to hear how others have done it, to have them tell me what they have learned, for they may lead me to my own answer, though they can’t actually give it to me. Enough of this. I will learn, because I must.
Remembering letters I wrote in prep school, even when at Harvard, I am afraid that you will think I am insincere, verbose, because of what has preceded this. Believe me, I am not; this is not a time for that, and it was then. If I appear to take myself too seriously now, it is because for the next year and a half I shall hardly be a “self” at all. And think of the last year where I took myself seriously in such an unserious manner. I love you both much, more than I can tell you, and it will always be so. Take care of yourselves, Bob.
[RC’s note, upper left margin] 1The ship’s library happened to have and I reread, enjoying it as much as I once did.
•••
LETTER TO GENEVIEVE AND HELEN CREELEY
2012 Volunteer Robert Creeley
A Platoon Section 1
S.E.A.C.
April 13, 1945
Dear Mother and Helen,
Cooler this morning, God be praised, and letter-writing becomes an actuality instead of a hope. We’re having the preliminaries to the monsoon at present—rain which comes in the later part of the day and clears about night-fall, though I’m by no means happy to see the advent of the monsoon, the respite from the heat is undeniably welcome.
Working at last. I’m attached to
and have begun to do the work I wanted to do five months ago. To give you some picture of what it consists, the following is more or less typical. About six the I.O.R.s (Indian Other Ranks) begin to chatter and make sleep for anyone within hearing range impossible. So I get up, grab the canvas bucket which someone considered a curio, get some water, and wash—the latter action is for the most part futile, because in an hour I’ll be sweaty and consequently dirtier than before. Then I sit around waiting for breakfast, which, if we’re in luck, means eggs, bacon or sausages perhaps, and tea, but, if we’re not, it is something quite indescribable. After breakfast I try to find something to do—sweep out the ambulance, straighten out my kit, talk with anyone who will, or do what I’m doing now, anything, you see, to fill up the time between breakfast and the arrival of casualties. These come in at about nine thirty. They’re treated as quickly as possible, loaded into an ambulance (we’ll say mine), and taken back to the C.C.S. (Casualty Clearance Something). Now the last sentence involves a half day’s work where I am at present. From our A.D.S. to the main road, which is very fortunately tarmacked, there’s some four miles of bumpy, dirt road, and it’s difficult to drive more than five miles an hour without making the patients very uncomfortable. And in the case of bad stomach wounds or something similar it’s impossible to go that fast. Once on the tarmack I can go much faster, and in a relatively short time I’ve arrived at the C.C.S. some twenty miles distant (in this case).
I drive up in front of “Reception”, get out, and, forcing all the authority summonable into my voice, shout “stretcher bearer!” Sometimes they come, sometimes they don’t. Should they not come, I go ferret them out from wherever they’re sleeping and prod them into taking out my patients. Once the ambulance is clear, I simply turn around and come back to my A.D.S. and spend the rest of the day doing whatever I can find to do until it’s time to sleep.
The joke about waiting being the greater part of military action, as you may have gathered, is no joke out here. Luckily I’ve a few books and my own writing to fill out some of the blanks. (Books, understandably, make the ideal package from home.) Nevertheless, many times I think I’d have had it, had nothing happened within a few minutes later.
It’s literally impossible to tell you what is happening here, the atmosphere is always changing, first grotesque, then absurdly funny, now poignantly sad, and then quite pointlessly ugly. One’s system of values shifts from day to day. Last night, for example, six feet from where I was sleeping, an I.O.R. was lying with his side shot away, still living after a day and a half; they could do nothing for him. Just before I fell asleep, he died and, as I was dozing off, I could hear his death rattle. But I was too tired to think about it. I suppose normally one sees very few people die, and their death means shock and great sadness. Here there is only a minute for the shake of a hand, a comment rather bitterly appropriate, and then it has passed; all of it, until the next. And who’s to say even that much is not wasted?
War, as well as Elizabethan drama, is a good exponent of comic relief. For me there have been infinite numbers of instances. I remember one time when I was still driving a water truck for H.Q. we could find no water point with a pump. So I with two I.O.R.s began an extremely ineffectual bucket brigade. Well, the sun was hot as I think it can ever be, and I was streaming with sweat, and the damn tank seemed bottomless. Yet I was laughing and thoroughly enjoying the situation, all because the pants of the I.O.R. in the middle fell down every time he passed the bucket up to me on the truck. Thank God for British issue butts!
Please keep your letters coming—especially, Helen, ones like the last long one from you. They help so very much. And if you can find time for photographs, they’d also be appreciated. You can rely on my writing as often as it’s possible.—In the meantime take care of yourselves and Sandy.
All my love,
Bob
P.S. I have a photograph enclosed in this letter. Hope it comes through alright.
Volunteer Robert W. Creeley
[The black square indicates censored content.]
•••
LETTER TO GENEVIEVE AND HELEN CREELEY
| Vol. R. W. Creeley | May 10, 1945 |
| Am. Field Service | |
| A.P.O. 465, c/o P.M. NY NY |
Dear Mother and Helen,
Your letters are coming in regularly, and I am more than thankful that they are. Mail is the most effective morale-builder there is out here; an oft repeated fact, but one well worth repeating.
At the present there is a temporary lull in activity. Consequently, I’m getting a rest which I can’t say I’m glad to get, but which, I suppose, is good for me. Since I haven’t reached a point where I’d be glad to be back and take things easy, I’d much rather be working. Anything is better than inactivity I’ve found; the latter makes me extremely restless and moody, gives me too much time to think.
All this serves to introduce the subject of reading material. I can never have too much of it. To date I’ve received no copies of the “New Yorker” nor any of the “New Directions” publications which I thought might be most convenient for you to send me. If you can pick up any copies of the “Partisan Review,” “Poetry” or “Furiosa” (I’m not sure that the last is still being published), I should enjoy having them. Please do not consider this in any way a reprimand for what I might think a lack of cooperation. The blame, if any can be justifiably placed, might well be put on postal facilities. They are certainly not all one might wish for. So I think that that is where those various things I have asked for are—somewhere between you and me. They’ll probably arrive some day.
I’m looking forward to the monsoons with a great deal of curiosity and uneasiness. I’ve heard some very incredible tales about them, and they’ve come at one time or another from fairly reliable people. Naturally the more imaginative will tell me tales of how the rain comes down to within six feet of the ground at which point it changes to steam. The effect of this on the average person seems obvious—driving conditions, I am told, are impossible. Sometimes vehicles are mired down for days waiting for someone who can’t move himself to come and tow them out. The whole procedure becomes a symbol of gullibility—the monsoons, consequently, must be pretty God awful, and the fact that they last for two or three months makes them hardly more attractive.
It’s unfortunate that the people involved in the field work part of a war can’t know where and when they will be wanted. But that, I suppose, would terminate the war a bit too quickly to suit the ambitions behind it. Moreover, if it weren’t for the suspense and the frustration, which constant waiting creates, the people involved might forget their negations, surely the type of thought produced by unavoidable and unending expectation repression, and come forth with some constructive thought. And who knows what that might lead to?—I will always feel pity for those who are forced to wait for something they actually see no reason to wait for, caught in a situation they can neither correct nor understand. What can they do but gripe?
I have written to Arthur. I wish in a way that he were not overseas—my reason for that is apparent. Yet, since I know he shared the curiosity I had, I’m glad that he will be satisfied. The experience he is having can intensify or blunt appreciation of the things most elemental in our lives; it can make or break a person as sensitive as Arthur, and I think his comparatively sound sense of logic and reasoning will cause it to have the former effect.
Your descriptions of Sandy and his explorations into what makes things work make me wish that I were back with you to see it for myself. I spend a great deal of time thinking of the various things I should like to do with him, picnics and all the rest, and if Arthur can spare him long enough, I’ll see those hopes come true. It is something for me to look forward to.
Thanks for sending the camera. It hasn’t arrived yet—no packages, other than the almonds, have, for that matter. It’s a very slow process I’ve found from the experiences of my friends. But God willing they do get here eventually. I would like some films for it, if you can get them—rather difficult to get out here.
Please take care of yourselves. And keep writing as often as you can. Give my love to Sandy and tell him that I’ll bring him back lots of presents.
All my love,
Bob
•••
LETTER TO GENEVIEVE CREELEY
| Mrs. O. S. Creeley | Vol. R. Creeley |
| 65 Sparks St | Am. Field Service |
| Cambridge, Mass. | A.P.O. 465, c/o P.M. NY NY |
U.S.A. |
May 15, 1945 |
Dear Mother,
I’ve sent you a package containing the artificial eye which I got in Calcutta. It was cracked a few days ago quite mysteriously. Rather annoying, since I had it in a tin packed in cotton. Anyhow, see if you can get me another of similar measurements. You might have them use one of my old eyes for determining the placement of the pupil. Please try to obtain one and send it to me as quickly as possible, for the mails are very, very slow, and it would take almost four months, were you to send it immediately. Do what you can, anyhow.
All my best,
Bob
•••
June 21, 1948
Dear Bob,
This will be, I should think, the last letter before I see you. Little more than a week to go. I wonder what Cambridge will look like (all of it); the same, without a doubt. It used to bewilder me to go back there when we were living on the Cape because no matter how long it had been since the last visit, I could go into Jim’s place, sit down, and finish the sentence that had been left hanging in the air when I’d been forced to leave suddenly two months before. To some that might seem even pleasant, but for me it was unbelievably horrible. It confirmed my suspicion that I never talked to anyone but myself.
Speaking of Proust (which we have) recalls a particularly good comment by William Empson (Seven Types of Ambiguity which I figured out once he wrote when he was little more than twenty) on Proust to the effect that Remembrance of Things Past read like the paraphrase or better, the verbal recollection, of a great novel that had unfortunately been lost. I forget which of the 7 types this was supposed to illustrate (if any) but I do remember that it came somewhere in the next to the last chapter. I’d get it and quote it if the book weren’t buried somewhere under all the rest. Last night I came on another comment on Proust in Otto Rank’s Art and Artist, i.e., ‘in contrast to Homer’s spatial metaphor Proust’s is temporal; that is, it attempts, by the temporal association of the present with the past, to restore the latter to life, just as Homer puts it in living form before us by means of plastic presentation. (All this is pretty obvious.) The two kinds of metaphor are, however, distinct from each other in the same way that space and time are conceptually and factually distinct. Space is a concrete idea, time an abstract, and thus Homer’s metaphor is plastic, Proust’s intellectualist. (Now it gets a little better but for my money still a gross over-simplification so damned common to the psychologist and his use of any material beyond what is potentially his own by way of jargon.) In fact, the temporal quality of Proust’s metaphor is typical not only of his famous similes but of his whole work which one might take as a single gigantic metaphor (le temps retrouve). (Of course that has been stretched to include all of the life function, i.e., ‘life is but a dream’ or a metaphor which in this case depends on a very slim basis of actual objective fact. I do him an injustice, however.) But in Proust the intellectualist outlook—which is almost a self-evident necessity in the modern poet—proves that at the bottom it is a matter of ideas of death and the fear of death, of will to maintain the actual life-process in himself, rather than of a will to reconquer the past, which could only come out as a neurotic expression thereof.’ He goes on to conceive of Shakespeare’s metaphor as dynamic, i.e., an incorporate jumble of both past and present, use of myth, present, and so on, personified metaphor—‘Shylock inhumanly avaricious like the devil of gold himself’. Well, I started the book, bought it, to find out something more about the psychologist personality and this is perhaps the best evidence (not the quote) of it that I’ve yet seen. It is strange to consider, for example, strange for me at any rate, that Rank is propounding what must eventually get back to something not very far removed from the spiritual and just about as lucid. His rejection of Freud’s idea of the artist as thwarted neurotic whose basis of creativity depends on the sexual I like and think it well-grounded in fact (the recitation of which would take too long to include here). But since I have never subscribed to the idea of man as animal or at least sufficiently well explained in these terms, I may be merely applauding the reiteration of my own beliefs. I can’t tell you how many fights (actual) I’ve had with Ann on this score since she is a thorough-going Freudian, at least in so far as she is concerned with explaining the actions of anyone who may interest her. For example, I recently read Sorokin’s Reconstruction of Humanity whose theory of conflicting loyalties on the ‘socio-cultural’ (i.e., the women’s club, business, boy scouts level, group affiliations almost) level as the basis of the most neuroses impressed me as comparatively sensible and whose quite violent attack on Freud at least warmed me. I was nasty enough to read a number of the comments to her and we had a rather rough time of it for a while. But as she says, ‘I don’t like poetry’, so sooner or later I’m bound to be confounded. I was annoyed, for instance, by her absorbed reading of Richard Wilbur’s book, i.e., these things hurt. However, be that as it may, Freud is a thorn in both our sides. I recall at this point Paul Goodman’s essay, ‘The Father of The Psychoanalytic Movement’, (Kenyon Review, yours), i.e., ‘We must think of Freud as methodically eyeing himself for half a century, as a doctor does, and seeing that he had become old, ill, and tired. Or as a parent keeps an eye on a child who has a tendency to masturbate; what can the child do but get out?’ or ‘Freud was the first of the psychoanalysts and therefore had to analyze himself.
‘Resisting the analysis, he had no one to vent his hate on but himself.
‘Therefore Freud said, ‘The heavy burden of psychoanalysis.’1
‘1This excellent reason was suggested to me by Dr. Erich Kraft’ Who turns out to be our landlord in Truro.
Now supposing that this, all this, were not enough, you could try as I have reading several other books at the same time, all conflicting, all confusing. Each night I usually have the chance to read for an hour or so and since all of the following books arrived at the same time I somehow am reading them all at the same time, i.e., Philosophy in a New Key, Susan Langer or something, Art And Artist, Sartre’s The Psychology of the Imagination (now he denies the unconscious completely but doesn’t go into ‘why’.), William’s Paterson 2, which I finished and thought very good, Wilbur’s The Beautiful Changes which is also terrific, T. S. Eliot, A selected critique, which god knows is stimulating but makes your head spin. Ransom, D. S. Savage are the best so far. Also Schwartz who is for, the other two aren’t. Van Wyck Brooks and Winters, the lowest, utterly stupid. Then in a corner staring at me is Gide’s 2nd Journals which I haven’t the energy to start for the time being and anyhow Ann’s reading it and tells me it’s very good which of course makes me want to start it but I’m running out of book marks. I write nothing.
What you tell me about Greenberg is interesting but now it doesn’t matter very much since the place was too ‘rough’. He came with his son who was quite a little character and who, I’m inclined to think was responsible for their not taking the barn, Example: Mr. G. had to use the toilet which was in the house and left his son in the barn while I was making coffee in the kitchen. In the mean time a lot of men were up on the roof, shingling it. Then I hear the cry, father, father where are you, and so help me god it was as close to unearthly as I’ve yet come. The little joker was dashing about in the yard giving out with this plaintive shriek and the men on the roof were almost falling off with laughter. I don’t think his father heard him. Anyhow, I’ve been amusing myself this morning with the idea of Zoe as his mother. He’s eleven, excuse me, thirteen.
For the last few days I’ve been spending most of my time in the garden, hoeing and trying to shoot chipmunks who have eaten quite a number of the potatoes and beans as well as other things. Sort of a new phase of activity for me, the latter, not so much from the ‘can you hit it’ (usually) idea as from the ‘do you want to’ which I certainly don’t. When I was younger I wasn’t allowed to have a .22 and my relation to animals (wild) was confined to watching them whenever I got the chance. I can remember well enough spending a great deal of time in the woods trying to catch sight of a pheasant or even a squirrel and to see one was something big for me. The circumstances of the chipmunk-hunting are much the same as that was except that now when I see one, I’m obliged (notice the attempt to make it an imperative act) to shoot them. Perhaps because I do sit in the garden with the effects of their work quite visible, chewed potatoes and torn up roots, when I do shoot one I have only to look around to see what it probably would have gone on doing if I hadn’t but then there is the fact of the quiet, then the apprehension of the sounds of the field, birds, the wind making the brush rustle, then perhaps a distinct crackling noise which comes nearer, a little at a time, and then I can see the brown of the chipmunk moving through the leaves. I raise the rifle and shoot. Once I shot and there was the most horrible sound of thrashing together with a chirping cry and I ran over and shot again to end it. Usually, thank god, I either kill them immediately or miss completely. Anyhow it isn’t pleasant. Related to this is the problem of porcupines which gnaw everything they can find. For example, there is a sizable hole in the barn door which is the result of their work. So they have to be hunted as well and the other night I treed one and then had the task of shooting it down with a .22. You see, even a larger caliber gun is usually not enough to kill them first shot especially at night with them 20 feet or so up in a tree. It’s a matter of shot after shot until slowly you see them begin to slip and then again until at last they let go and come down, crashing, to the ground. And then you have to walk over and perhaps fire again until you’re convinced that they’re dead. What this does is a strange and unpleasant thing. Of course, make it a matter of necessity and much of the problem (you’d at least like to think) is gone because they have to be killed. But it does very little to the dead, cold feeling you have standing there, shooting at that desperate, dark form some 20 feet over your head with its claws biting into the limb, as desperate, determined, as life can ever be. To make it worse the one I shot was a female, pregnant. I’ve felt like a murderer several times this last week.
The ideology of the country as opposed to the city contains that aspect of passive brutality which, however, it is usually impossible to attack or even for the most part to define. No one, at least no one I know, performs any act comparable to that of some Irish policeman in the 3rd precinct, Boston, (I am thinking of a specific occasion) who without the slightest appearance of anger can beat a negro or white to unconsciousness as part of an incredible routine (it is). But this complete understanding of woods, of land in a primal sense (I am thinking of some neighbors who are lumbermen), finds itself coupled to the practice of killing which it would be difficult to characterize. Perhaps ‘passive brutality’ is a poor phrase but what I intend it to mean is the act minus the intention which one would normally ascribe to it. A man beats his wife because he is angry with her.2 Active brutality. A man shoots a woodchuck when miles from his home doing something, say cutting wood (in this case) which has no reference to the woodchuck because he does or does not like the woodchuck? It could be one or the other. Because he thinks the woodchuck is doing damage? Again it could be one or the other. It doesn’t really matter to him because all that he seems to care about is shooting the woodchuck and strangely enough it often isn’t even that. There is no logic. Sometimes he might chase the woodchuck, beating it out of brushpiles, for several miles in order to eventually shoot it. Or let it go. And he might have five cords of wood to go or might be finished or he might not even bother to pick up his gun. I call it passive brutality because it doesn’t have the logic of the active variety. But no matter how I characterize it and I’m sure that I’ve done it wrongly, it is the problem that I am interested in and it also is one representative of most of the country people. It isn’t that they function without logic but that they are willing to let it go at any time. You know, perhaps I’m right here, that in general the city seems to be made up of people like this; they all care about something and to say they don’t care about something is almost to say that they care about something else instead. But there is to be found a logic of ‘caring’, a reality of action behind most of their activities. Well, in the country with the slowing down of activity in general (I don’t mean that a farmer plows a furrow any slower or faster than anyone else could plow it) the reactions to logic seem to slow down too so that a man can, say, get off the train, do something and get back on again without suffering a shakeup. And to discover the reality of the action performed when the man is off the train would tax anyone’s perception. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t—which doesn’t mean for a minute that I don’t care which. That’s about it.
That would come under the heading of pure and simple musing, why the grass is green without reference to a chemistry book. We know why it is but, really, why is it even if it is and should be. Is that the end of it. Say A hits B and B crys. Can we eventually say that it can all be explained because if we do, then we also know that the explanation can be explained and so on, so far as anyone wants to go on with it. Cause and effect. What often seems to me like a priori classification. That is to say, each assumes the other and both exist after the fact, so what has been proved is the one fact that a single aspect of reality often causes an instance of ‘cause and effect’.
[note in left margin] 2In the case of the police man, you might ascribe the “active” to his relatively simple ‘enjoyment’. This is not the case with the man I am thinking of. He doesn’t consider, or doesn’t seem to, the animal as more or less than himself—apart and still part of, and there is no enjoyment to be derived from this aspect. Of course there are cases of it where it would be similar to that of the policeman.
•••
Friday [ca. August 1948]
Dear Bob,
To begin with, I hope that Edith is feeling much better and that you will both be here before very long. Your telegram depressed me very much (selfishly enough) and it wasn’t till your letter came today that I felt again as I should feel in a place like this.
Several years ago when I was a brief, subversive member of the Advocate I used to take the books that were sent to it for reviews. Among them was that New Directions selection of Melville’s poems and to tell the truth it’s the only thing of Melville’s I’ve ever read. At the same time I remember being contemptuous, safely enough, of the crude phrasing, etc. and in consequence I never got much more than an impression of ‘fatal’ strength out of them, i.e., there was that connection with Hardy that you mentioned but it wasn’t a very satisfactory one. Since that time I haven’t looked at the poems and for some reason have never had the chance to read either Moby Dick or any of his other novels despite the fact that next to James his name was very often heard. ‘the noble acts of violence. Premeditated and done with righteousness. He laments that the people and institutions do not understand and condemn it.’ ‘Primitive strengths.’ Last night I unfortunately heard over the radio an instructive program about a juvenile delinquent who was ‘made’ so by the fact that his mother did not respect his father and so on. His acts of violence were not ‘noble’ but they were premeditated and they did lament by their very accomplishment the fact that the people did not understand and condemn them, i.e. that would have been necessary for their full accomplishment. I do not believe that the word ‘noble’ means very much. It has been too often used in varied connections. For example, even the Latin offers several implications. Right off it occurs to me that a Roman would hardly apply it to a poor man, or better a slave, or better an individual ‘self-detached’ from the state. Or if they should it would be because he might have been an asset to the state. Nobility in all of its forms recommends the ‘common, i.e., available’ to all virtue. So that when a man is considered ‘noble’ or his acts are thought of as ‘noble’, my own immediate impression is that the man or his acts in some way have contributed to an ideal held by one or several groups. ‘Noble’ has no meaning other than that of a well-meaning abstraction. Contrast, for example, with the familiar ‘good man’. Try to think of a noble act, a noble man. Does a simply grasped idea occur to you? I strongly doubt it. So ‘a noble act of violence’ becomes ‘an act of violence’ which in some way after its accomplishment contributes some sort of apparent reality to someone’s sense of the ideal. For myself, to go on with it, the word, ‘noble’, has the connection with ‘regal’, lordly, which I cannot overlook in my own consideration of its use. The obvious connection is with a noble, nobles, barons, kings, knights and so on. To get back we have the idea of a noble act of violence / can it be. To propose a noble act of violence or a noble act of any sort is to me an impossibility. It cannot be done. When someone attempts it, it occurs to me that he is trying to justify a course of action already decided upon which is doubtful enough to need the approbation of a sentiment supposed to be ‘common’ but, what is more, important above the ordinary realm of criticism. One can, for example, question the actuality of a good act. ‘He thought he was doing them a good turn but what he really did was insult them.’ A noble act, on the other hand, is one agreed upon and cannot be divided against itself. One can say he’s a good man but he didn’t know what he was doing when he insulted them unintentionally. There is little question that the motive was ‘good’. But a ‘noble’ motive (which I believe only is considered after or in strict relation to the act itself) has to produce a noble act. When you say that a man thought he was doing a ‘noble’ act when he killed John Smith but that he actually wasn’t, you do not suppose that his motive was ‘noble’, i.e. ‘it couldn’t have really been that’. Consequently, the concept of nobility is linked with a priori reasoning, in fact, depends on it for its meaning. Getting back to Melville, I would say on the very scant basis that I have that he was more interested in the act of violence than in the noble act of violence. The horror of the concentration camps was and is that there is no attempt made to make the acts noble or for that matter to justify them in any way. On the other hand, self-sacrifice, suffering, all manner of socially beneficial (individually so) acts have nothing whatsoever to do with the noble. They cannot be considered in relation to this word. I would personally think that much the same thing could be said of ‘righteousness’ and its intended concept although here the implications are even more involved. Oedipus was actually less noble, for many reasons, than was Creon and he was also less righteous. What he was eventually was something a great deal more human, more understandable than either the idea of nobility or righteousness, i.e. humble. Here I think of Achilles and I try to understand him as a noble man but that is not what I think of. It is of course, via Jaeger, ‘areté’ and that in itself is a great deal more than noble.
But another idea comes with that of the ‘just crime’. The paradox suggested by the words themselves is not the least interesting feature. Right off I get the idea of justice versus crime and I see that it must be either one or the other. The just crime of course depends on an ironic interpretation of ‘crime’, i.e., it is not a crime, they only think so. The act itself as realized by the person who performs it has nothing to do with what he believes to be crime. It is rigidly opposed to it and hence he states it as an ironic paradox, a just crime. Taken literally, a just crime does not exist. Taken figuratively, you come across it every day. To take Melville at his word, of course when the ‘tyrant’ (injustice) rules, ‘the good heart (which I oppose to the rigmarole of the tyrant which he uses intellectually to justify himself in opposition to the wisdom of the heart) whose patriot (he is of course thinking of his people, the real country) fire leaps to a deed of startling note (see Fourth of July), do it, then flinch?’ Of course not. Because what the good heart proposes is not a crime but an act of the most basic justice, i.e., a democratic act intended to bring good to the many not the one as would an act which conformed with the tyrant’s idea of justice.) What has this to do with crime? I mean the kind of crime I visualize when I read a report of it in the newspapers? Nothing. The just crime then begins with the idea of itself as the very opposite of crime and its success depends on its being considered by a sufficiently large number of people (sufficient for the ‘actor’, that is) as a ‘just crime’. The ‘evil grit’ has also another purpose which is not that of the good ‘grit’s.’ I do not believe for a moment that Melville would like to consider a basic comparison between the ‘grit’ of a homicidal maniac or even a pick-pocket and the ‘grit’ of an intended self-styled patriot, Booth, for example. The two are distinctly separate. As for the dictators of our own country, noble men would not assassinate them and I doubt that even good men would. I recently read an article on the concentration camps by Hannah Arendt which spoke of the necessity of destroying the ‘juridical’ sense in man as a means of rendering him fit for totalitarian society. What prevents action of this sort is of course that very same sense coupled with a moral one. So that to kill a dictator is to kill the idea of justice itself. ‘The mills of the gods grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small’ or something. The idea that justice since it is thought of as an absolute by many will eventually exert itself prevents one from using injustice (the taking of a man’s life whoever he is) to aid it. During the war and in many other instances it was necessary to destroy the idea of the Germans or the Japanese as human beings in order to facilitate their destruction. I could not kill a man (flesh and blood and heart) but I could kill a Nazi. An idea also demonstrated in that article that human nature can be changed and man destroyed before he is actually dead makes the just crime seem remote since it removes the sphere of justice and injustice from its place as an absolute governing realm to that of a parlor game. For example, the prisoners in the german concentration camps represented roughly three layers or better four. Criminals, politicals, Jews and people. In the case of the first two and even the third there was in part a knowledge of something done by the prisoner that had caused him to be placed in a concentration camp. The politicals, although their ‘crimes’ were certainly not so easily grasped by themselves, could at least use their beliefs as a means to understanding the reason for their being there. And the Jews had also at least a part of this understanding, they were Jews, hence . . . But the people who had none of these classifications had the problem with no possible solution. So long as a man has done something, he can understand or at least fabricate a reason for his being subjected to all manner of horror. The juridical sense in him will grasp his action as a means of explanation. But when there has been no such action the juridical sense is blocked and can be destroyed. The fact that the Nazis used vague and shifting classifications for the inmates of their concentration camps is evidence of their appreciation of the necessity to avoid giving the prisoners a means of orienting themselves in a juridical sense. Also, the people were at the bottom and usually the criminals were at the top of the prisoner society and for a while at least Communists were given the rule but primarily (according to Arendt) because the criminals were utterly useless as leaders. To go on, the mass executions fall into the pattern as a way of producing evidence of the fact that justice and man and reasons are equally superfluous. Remember that at that time the bestial element had gone and that the men in charge of the operations, executions, were for all intents and purposes as sane and as normal as you or I. We could not understand their actions in terms of pathology. I would strongly suggest that you read this article (Last PR) because I have only paraphrased a brief part of it which I thought came in here. Consider then, the idea of no crime, no justice, only the violent act. Melville’s idea of it becomes the expression of a strong individual in an age where he sees what he believes to be social evils, etc. There would be little ‘crime’ connected to their righting. As for the ‘taboo murder’, etc., that is something else again which relates to the symbolic strength of justice and depends on reference to an abstract force. Because the people have a diverted (through ‘priests’, etc.) relation to it, they are not in a position to consider it as right or wrong provided that they have an implicit, unshakeable belief in its machinery. If they should happen to distrust the ‘priest’ as a representative, I don’t think the sacrifices would be so easily performed because they wouldn’t be ‘right’. But the dissatisfaction would still be with the priest and not with the sacrifice. As for ‘he who lives by the sword shall die be the sword’; usually, but again an assumption which can hardly be justified as anything abruptly actual. Certainly the converse doesn’t make much sense.
I suppose I have purposely avoided what you intended by the quotations, etc. It’s due not so much to the fact that I dislike Melville’s poetry (which I do) but more particularly to my own attempt to posit my sincerely believed ‘fact’ that we can no longer consider a concept so inextricably romantic as that of the ‘just crime’. Notice that you assign its implications to the pathological and noble men. Do either exist for you? I understand personally neither the feelings or implicit motivations of the pathological nor of the noble man. To be noble has come for me to mean to do something which is considered for arbitrary reasons noble and it has nothing specifically to do with causes. The romantic is not to be discarded in toto but the almost pseudo-religious intentions which the generally romantic can have is what I myself have come to dislike. I have read that Lawrence was one of the most religious men of our time and if I divorce my attention from a consideration of his style I would consider him what is generally called a ‘romantic’. But what is different is Lawrence’s self-destructive attempt to deal specifically with the problem which is of course what no romantic can ever do. Yet what I admire in Lawrence is particularly the intense sincerity and ceaseless warfare against the general classification and his attempt to make actual what was at best a poorly apprehended generalization, i.e., love. Lawrence’s characterization of love between men and women is certainly one (taken as a concept, though unattached to Lawrence’s particular recasting of it) which has served the romantics better than any other. What I intend here is to produce the problem of the specific, the actual, versus its abstraction to a realm where it can be dealt with at leisure. The existentialists speak of a world in which man alone is responsible; the world of choice. But what makes them sound often impotent is for me at least the fact that they have intellectualized an immediate and forceful way of life. When for example Heidegger (via Sartre) says that nothingness is the constitutive structure of the existent my understanding of his words produces an activity that is desperate in the extreme. For if I can posit the idea of a world I can also negate it which is of course to produce the eventual statement that nothingness, and so forth. To believe this is to believe that the action has to be continual and constantly performed or nothingness will be constant. I do A, I reflect on A, I achieve the ability to posit A in a relation to myself and my world, I can then negate A. So the process has to be continued. But all this I know absolutely nothing about and can say nothing about. I read elsewhere that Malraux (of whom I have read nothing except a dialogue between him and Burnham having to do with the ‘THIRD FORCE’) ‘was the first to introduce French contemporary culture to the themes that have come to be popularized under the label of ‘existentialism’. Apparently he is of the opinion that if one chooses to involve oneself in an action, one cannot withdraw. Now consider a world which if not ours is at least close enough to cause apprehension where forlornness, anguish and so on are our fate because of our existential nature, i.e., because we are to define ourselves through what we choose to act. The positing of a ‘to be or not to be’ in terms of a noble act of violence becomes at once a treachery and a devastatingly unreal question. I know what are perhaps my immediate needs and I understand something of their nature. But they do not constitute my reality because my reality is that which I am able to project into meaning. On the other hand, the meaning must be actual in relation to these needs which I deny to be my reality. I cannot sell bathtubs to savages nor accept one if I have no plumbing. So although the problem is not that of putting ‘real toads into imaginary gardens’, it is not to write a ‘sex’ poem about a political comment. Cf. Yeats in last poems, the one prompted by a speech of Thomas Mann’s. It is the paradox of positing the imaginary as real in connection with the real as a possible imaginary fact. Sartre commits the beautiful to the imaginary and pronounces the ‘real’ world as one which produces nausea and disgust after it is returned to from the imaginary. But the problem is not particularly to create an imaginary world like that of a schizophrenic but to contain the imaginary in relation to the real. To sing in the bathtub if you like but to include the bathtub in the singing. What confused me this winter was the realization that Communism is effective both in achieving its own ends and more particularly in offering immediate solutions. But if you’ll read Sorokin on any of these current political institutions, United Nations included, it will I think convince you of the absolute fallacy of the ‘right’ government. To be an altruist is my hope, both naive and sincere. And to constitute my reality in relation to it is what I hope to do as a writer. Violence is productive of violence and I deny it absolutely. You must read this as what I began writing a little while ago and what I never thought would end up as this. I see that I can’t begin to include a description of my own beliefs or even the idea of what my intentions are and yet both are necessary for an adequate discussion of the problem brought up by the ‘just crime’. Which I see has a sufficient effect on me as an ‘understandable’ concept to get me excited. You should have stopped several pages ago.
I’m afraid that I won’t be able to meet you in Boston as planned but the train does come to Littleton after many stops so if you could tell us when we’d arrange to meet you there. Give us some idea and we’ll meet you without fail.
All our best,
Bob
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Littleton, N.H.
February 11, 1950
Dear Dr. Williams,
This letter will be in some sense an intrusion, since it will assume that you will have time to read it and to give some thought to the request which it will make. Its only excuse is the fact of your own work and interest in poetry.
To be brief, I’d like to ask you for your help with respect to a magazine I’d like to get going some time this summer. The magazine will attempt these things: (1) to provide an outlet for prose, poetry & critical work and to present it in a way that will avoid undue emphasis on the writers’ present position in the literary hierarchy; (2) to present criticism which reinforces understanding of the poetry & prose used and to have the latter serve as a demonstration of the attitudes implicit in the critical work; (3) to have the magazine’s entity as a critical attitude be coherent and recognizable to its readers. I don’t know if this is enough, or too much, for a magazine’s ‘general program’ but it’s the only one which occurs to me as being of any practical use. I know I have little liking for magazines that don’t use such a program and since I find myself about to edit one, no other policy falls to hand.
In any event, whatever you yourself might be able to contribute, prose or poetry, would be very gratefully received. To be frank, I’ve put myself to school with your work, can think of very few others who’ve written verse comparable to your own, and would be honored to have you represented in the magazine. The only thing I don’t like is the need to couple that appreciation with a request for a contribution.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
February 27, 1950
Dear Dr. Williams,
Very, very glad to have your letter, i.e., it helps. At this point it gets to be a question of material, what I can get hold of, and being here, away from the centers, real or imagined, it’s a problem. I don’t know how much of it one can do with letters but at least those I’ve sent have brought answers of varying sorts. And it’s to the point to mention that people like yourself and Wallace Stevens are freer with their reputations than those who are still worried about being printed in Harper’s, etc. Anyhow, things move a little.
The idea, or better, what I take as the idea of any of this, has much to do with the flabbiness of PR and magazines like PR. And on that score, it’s a question of having a magazine that has the nucleus I mentioned in the last letter, that much anyhow, which will have to depend on demonstration to get around the sounding generalities involved in talking about it. I’m acquainted with some of the West Coast magazines where I’m told ‘poetic activity is humming, etc.’ and would agree that this, simply this, isn’t much to the point, if at all to the point. The kind of outlet which they maintain, which they maintain they maintain, is of the kind that comes up, usually, when A or B can’t get printed, etc., and so print themselves, this leading to an eventual distortion of their own position, the old dead end. Anyhow, not that.
To begin with, I spent some time the last week, looking over what little mags I have here, in an attempt to work something out of them, to learn, one way or the other, what was good or bad about any of them or all of them. Briefly, it comes to this; that magazines like WAKE, etc., come to little because of no center, no point, if you will, beyond a collection of ‘available’ material, printed without much of an eye as to why A should come after B, and so on. And this leads to embarrassment all around. An instance, or so it seemed to me: the kind of eclecticism that prompts the HUDSON REVIEW to print Valery, Stanislaus Joyce, & some comment on Ezra Pound all in one issue. Here missing, that Valery may be grouped verbally with Joyce et alii, but suffers in being printed even with an indirect representation of this other next to him. It comes to the kind of logic that would delight in a big fat book, Dostoyevsky, Mann, Shakespeare, etc. etc., all under one cover. Or like the college intelligence that points with some pride to a course on Proust, Mann, & Joyce with, by way of an introduction, Eliot’s Wasteland. I can remember with some pleasure Prof. Levin’s progress through this particular instance. Anyhow, this is an indication of what poor editing can amount to, what incongruities can be found.
So, on the other hand, I would find in magazines like KENYON, etc., at least a very shrewd & usually able, at least for their own purposes, editorial hand. Here everything blends, if you will, and alien & conflicting criticism is never less at home, nor more crude, than when allowed in, by way of a ‘fair’ representation of both sides of the question. In any event, this kind of worldliness is to the point, that being, to have some apprehension of what you have got on your hands and what you can do with it. And is a means of survival, this kind of editing, preserving its bridges, as it does, establishing attitudes.
To get back to my own problems, and about money, means in general: this thing began by way of a suggestion to a friend of mine who had just got himself a printing press in Pa., that he, having the means, use them to print a magazine. For the past five or so years, this had been an idea we’d both had, and beyond the usual college friendships, etc., I would say he and one or two others would be those I still have and not by way of the usual college friendships, etc. This beside the point, but to suggest some knowledge of each other, etc., and what we might be up to. Anyhow, this much of his letter would be to the point here: ‘ . . . an immediate limited objective to start with, though ‘no point of view’, no attitude to start with. For the prose and poetry—selected by taste and if anything real was being talked about in the critical selection. The p & p could not help but have some relevance & connection to it—or rather vice versa . . . ’ This being the idea of demonstrating rather than beginning with a problematic manifesto that will limit any kind of development that comes from the act of editing, the act of selection. It doesn’t imply a literal lack of attitude, since the act of selection is a demonstration of attitude, like it or not.
So far as qualifications go, he worked with printers for some time, both of us have had stints on college magazines (the Harvard Wake, mine being at the laying away of E. E. Cummings), both of us are now busy with work other than literary and if this last isn’t a necessary qualification, it helps. He’s doing butchering, etc., for a locker plant, deep-freezing, and I am a poultry man of sorts when not writing, etc. I don’t know if this is to the point, any of it, but I mention it by way of getting to, again, the source of my own discontent with current little mags, and the reasons, again, why I’d undertake to introduce another. Many things annoy me in the former, that is, the insular criticism, the literary tone, the ‘littleness’ of much that they print. Since I have my own concerns with poetry, I don’t read with much pleasure the many instances of impacted imagery, for lack of a better name, I hit; all the images, all the words. Little or no force, little or no reason. Not simply to disparage, but to suggest, to insist that this level of verse isn’t an end, to be aimed at, to be ‘representative’. And the implications of a ‘return to form’, being in that sense a ‘going back’, and not, as it must be, a development, invention, new use. And language, or a dichotomy of language as it now is, split & emasculated. Where criticism is a kind of witty implication of value, that may, or may not, exist. What is all this, anyhow, that being about it. And at least that much for impetus.
So you say ‘how in the hell can you do it’. What else is there to do? Giving up this isn’t simple, although waited, like they say, long enough. And also like they say, now is the time, etc.
So for now, it’s the problem of getting material, getting enough to be able to work it into a first issue, to be able to demonstrate some of that assumed taste, etc. To make it an evidence. There are, as there would be, one or two, I can get work from, which I’d want to print. But to make it into something that can be noticed in point of size is a little more difficult. I don’t want it unwieldy, but 60 or so pages or a little less, would give room for everything and not be too big or too little. Something you could pick up. Summer is still the time we’d like to publish a first issue. I think we can make it. Anyhow, your own interest goes for something here. And your advice.
Forgive me for taking so long with this. I suspect that you are busier than you say, having had doctors and nurses in the family. They are busy people. So again thank you for taking the time to write; should welcome a letter whenever you can find time for it. And should add that either poetry or prose will be very welcome.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Creeley
•••
Monday [ca. February 1950]
Dear Larry,
Your letter at hand, and much obliged. I’ll try to go into some of this, while there’s time. To begin with, ‘logic’ has this sense for me, applied to poetry, or most anything for that matter, this sense beyond its philosophic and/or academic, though the meanings overlap: Logic is the demonstration by a poem of its meaning. It is, in other words, simply the means by which a poem makes known its sense as opposed to its rhythm or its use of vowels or its visual aspect, if you will. But this is, at least for the most part, sophistry. And logic can be put as the direction of thought in a poem. So that a poem concerned with having the reader consider the plight of the bumblebee would in all probability run counter to its own logic, if bumblebees weren’t mentioned. It’s an arbitrary use of judgement to speak of a poem’s logic as though we had the right to determine it; better, it will be ours to appraise if we will, as we find it in the poem. It goes back to logos which would imply both word & reason, this from the dictionary.
About writing verse or anything else for that matter, I would say that you can find about any approach you might use condoned, encouraged, or as you will, somewhere. That is, a few years ago now Horace Gregory advised me, on the basis of a few minutes conversation, to set myself the work of writing in the strictest verse forms I could find, without making an attempt to express profundities, etc. I can’t say that I did that, but at least, I’ve worked in a variety of forms from time to time, with the logic that it would be to the point to have a technique capable enough to write in any form I might need for what I wanted to write; this to avoid being contained by a form, rather than having the form contain one’s thought, as an instrument of expression. On the other hand, the development of one’s thought and by this I mean no more than an apprehension of what is around us, how it relates, what one has to deal with, here, that seems no less important. And a too-ready grip of form allows for a kind of technical virtuosity that must always embarrass sincerity. Here, it is difficult to say what I mean by such a use of form without seeming to encourage slack or incompetent poetry, that suffers from lack of form, or from a lack of familiarity with verse forms and technique generally. It’s just that a preoccupation with form, a preoccupation that excludes the building of the form with the building of an idea’s expression in the mind, that makes the form dominate the sense (simply), isn’t good. Like virtuosity in general, it results in shallowness. I think this would be the best way of putting it, in terms of analogy; with virtuosity in any field.
About rhyming: the mention of ‘Clementine’ with ‘time’, etc. This in spite of what the school may have told you is as good a rhyme as any, since it has its uses, like any, and they can be well used or misused. You will see what you’ve done is to depend on your vowel sounds for your sense of rhyme. The ‘i’ sound in each, and as is the case here, the consonants modify this sound. This is what’s called assonance. And is often used to avoid heaviness, a banging, sometimes got by an overuse of strict rhyme. For example, in Yeats:
One had a lovely face,
And two or three had charm.
But charm and face were in vain
Because the mountain grass
Cannot but keep the form
Where the mountain hare has lain.
Here, you see, assonance is used to keep off the ‘end’ of the poem, before it occurs, and so he saves the pure rhyme for his final one, i.e. lain & vain. And in this poem, for example, since it is a kind of questioning, and that sense of movement, query, it has its justification, for shifting, a little, as it goes. And the use of assonance has its effect. But in the case of a different intention, as would be almost all of Pope, for example, assonance would destroy the completeness of the couplets, and would in turn weaken the intended patness of the statements. For example, a little learning, etc., would not be an epigram in the sense that it is, a kind of circle, complete unto itself, if we found anything but spring or a word like it, in sound, rhyming with thing. So you see that assonance has its uses, but can also have its misuses. The latter often occur in relation to assonance in the line itself, that being, when a word in the line is made to rhyme in terms of vowel sounds with the end word, or a word in the following line, and so on. Often a poet, caught by the sound of a word he is using for a rhyme will use it unconsciously, its sound, that is, in a word following it, and unless it is conscious and deliberate and used with an apprehensible purpose it will irritate the reader’s ear. As usual, it will be the use which determines whether or not it is ‘right’, schools notwithstanding.
About Basic: it’s to the point to memorize the list. That is, you’ll do it anyhow if you use it. I don’t think one should let it be a limit in the sense that one should exclude other words from one’s speech, at least, not for a general rule. What Basic can serve is the purpose of breaking down into unavoidably clear words what may confuse in the state of the language in which we find it; for example, Richards’ translations of Aristotle into Basic read with a wonderful clarity and openness of thought that all of Aristotle’s translators garbled. So where we can put Basic to work is in those cases where we are concerned with understanding the exact meaning of each word & phrase as we come to it. Now this, paradoxically enough, is not always the case in poetry, for example, nor in prose. Hart Crane can’t be read word for word. Meaning there depends on the color or, better, the sound of the words as much as it does on their denotative sense. And in poetry generally, we’d destroy the connotative sense by translating into Basic. And to this, would be to destroy much of the poem’s intention. Anyhow, as a critical instrument, Basic has its uses, but like anything else, it needs care.
Would like very much to see you whenever you can get up. The farm, or as much of a farm as it is, at this point, doesn’t take much of my time. Just enough to keep me busy when I give up on the writing, etc. We are building up a breeding flock of several varieties of poultry, or Barred Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, Buff Leghorns, and Partridge Wyandottes in the big birds and then in the bantams, Partridge Wyandottes again, and the Reds, then Silkies. Also have geese and pigeons, and these last are Pigmy Pouters & Pensom Rollers. When I read on Cid’s program, my business in Boston was, simply, the Boston Poultry Show. The idea here is to build a good stock flock of birds for exhibition. And that’s what we’re doing. Here, the winters are too cold for commercial poultry to do very well, that is, eggs & broilers, etc. And the soil is about as bad in its own way as the winters, a kind of gravel. We have a fair-sized garden, but just for our own needs. And at the moment we’re negotiating for a milking goat, not having the capital for a cow at this point. As usual, it’s a question of survival. The poultry sells for good prices, anywhere up to $100, they tell me, for a good show bird, and about $25 and up for good Pigmies. And about $15 a pair for the Rollers, and a goose will get you $15 for meat, much less for show. So it’s one way of doing things. And it’s a lot of fun.
By way of other things, I’m 23 and have a wife and son, aged 2 and some, and here we all are, like they say. And would like to see you anytime.
And is ‘Wallace Stevens literally America’s greatest poet’? I don’t know, that is, these final judgements on my part would be irony. Not thinking much of that kind of criticism. But Stevens I like very much indeed. And Williams. And a few others. It’s hard to say.
So that would be it for now. And will hope to hear from you when you have the time. All best,
Bob
P.S. By way of the little magazines and WAKE, in particular. WAKE began in Harvard some years ago, now, and then about 2 years ago was taken out, at first to be subsidized by NEW DIRECTIONS, the publishing house, but that fell through, so it published a few sporadic issues, and has now settled down to publishing once or twice a year, depending when its editors, Villa, and Lawrence, are there to see to it. It prints a number of good things, this I’m obliged to say, by way of acknowledgement of their kindness to me, but there is no center, that is, everything thrown in altogether with no coherent editorial policy. And by way of contradicting Cid, though I haven’t seen a recent issue, POETRY is a kind of sloppy magazine in itself. That is, there is an awful lot of slop in it. By this I mean not much more than an antipathy to verse, removed only by a very little from the ‘moon’-‘June’ school. Cid tells me that Karl Shapiro is about or is editing it, and this to my mind, is the kiss of death. Cid and I, incidentally, disagree violently on this one issue. And I think you’d find better poetry in almost any other magazine, this for a general level, if you will, and not to deny that POETRY may print some very good work. But watch their minor poets, so-called, because that’s where they begin to smell. This, too, not to suggest they can’t make mistakes and print something very good. But it’s no rule. And having my own interest in these things, would say KENYON, for both prose & poetry, and then in a letter from William Carlos Williams about the magazine he says: ‘There are several new magazines, new little magazines on—not the market because they don’t sell—but circulating in the mails. Look up IMAGI especially and POETRY: NEW YORK, etc. etc.’ So perhaps you could try those.
•••
Littleton, N.H.
April 14, 1950
Dear Mr. Pound,
Very grateful for your letter.
A few random comments: I’m very interested in your thought, E. P.’s, as to what this quarterly might come to, get at. I.e., these concerns, intentions, a demonstration of both, can’t be found anywhere that I can think of, certainly not where they should be. I had yesterday a letter from Mr. Horton about this same thing, and have written him to this same purpose, i.e., I am interested but, simply, confusion coming from the fact that I don’t know, as what ‘member’ of my recent ‘school’ does, i.e., Harvard, etc., what’s this to them. Hence: a confusion about Del Mar, since this was the only thing Mr. Horton gave me to go on. Your letter makes what I had thought seem correct, but it’s a favor you could do me, (wait a minute—this name comes back—1800’s—forgive this random method, but I’m trying to get to this anyhow, help me with this; I’d be grateful. You see, what it comes to, here, in any event. To get on, I have written Dr. Williams about permission to reprint his note on Eliot which I found in FOUR PAGES; this to serve as another evidence of his good sense and an occasion for making a point of FOUR PAGES on the fact of its revival and, too, to serve as example for what can be found there. This seems to the point. If he’s willing, I’ll write Simpson, etc. The size of the magazine will be about 40–50 pages. That is, more is not to the point both for your reason and by reason of the work involved in setting type, etc. For that space, then, I intend the following: space for current poetry & prose, that finds a place in my own taste, etc. That is, I w’d agree that a magazine like IMAGI, though by no means like HUDSON, as Horton suggests, can carry a lot of the weight here. In the matter of prose very damn little is or has been done. Then, too, the matter of an adequate representation of the people involved, i.e., the matter of longer poems which seem to be an anathema for most now current. There is not enough ‘room’—that is, it’s to the point to make ‘room’ for those who merit it. I take the consequences of my own taste, etc., here. I ask no one to share this. But, this leaves a good deal of room for critical prose, for reprints that are needed, for a concern with what you want to see in it. Then: a first issue is planned for midsummer, possibly before. The job of setting and printing taking the time it does, material has to be in in a fairly short time. Then: what use can I be to you, for this issue now. Have you anything there or do you know of anything that I could make use of for this first issue. I see no reason why current poetry and prose should not be printed in the company you suggest. I.e., a direct and deliberate representation of those concerns will make a way for getting at what these ‘examples’ imply, this current work. The mind that can get at the one can get to the other. Does this seem reasonable. I have no wish for the critical material to run beyond or counter to what the other work shows, but if this latter fails there, it comes to finding what doesn’t. That can be done. Anyhow, I’d be very grateful to hear more. Let me say, too, that the ‘tradition’ by way of Eliot, I could never get to; by way of Pound, it came to the only way. Williams, as well as Pound, has shown what’s of use. Williams would make it now, the insistence on this that’s here; I can’t betray my belief in that. Then: what can be a demonstration of both these concerns. I don’t think one need belie the other, etc. I can’t see how an actual concern with one doesn’t come to a concern with the other. But this may be my own way of thinking. Two things seem of importance, (1) the getting back to what we’ve lost by way of the universities & ‘Winchell’s employers’; (2) the maintenance of outlets for what is now worth print. We can’t expect anyone to find what they want in any of this, i.e., ‘many years of reading have not made you wise’ or how could they, that alone, etc. But to give (1) the basis for the concern by explanation, example, and demonstration; (2) to make evidences of what is and has been of import there for one to get at (by reprints, etc.); (3) by the fact of that belief coming to more than words and more words—this to point to what now groans as concern (verbiage, etc., obfuscation, etc.); (4) to mean to make sense as Pound, Williams, have for the past 40 years, etc., to give room, always to that speed: what would this come to. More than much that I now see. The keynote, or what you will, the ‘reason’ for FOUR PAGES making elemental sense for anyone, like it or not, is the fact of its method coupled with its concern. So many ways of saying anything; and damn few saying it.
So, please write about anything that can now be of use, for this first issue. That seems the first step, etc. Thanks again for the help.
Best—
Robert Creeley
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Littleton, N.H.
April 15, 1950
Dear Dr. Williams,
I’m very grateful for your letter, the permission, etc., but much more for this evidence of your faith. I hope that I can make it. It’s hard, now, even useless, to go into all the reasons that come into the one for why I attempt any of this. Perhaps, not much more than a vanity or even pride. That I could help, etc. That I could be of use. Here, it’s a very lonely place; the few people we live with, that we see, are farmers and lumbermen. For the last few years it’s been what we’ve been concerned with. I grew up on a farm, so this comes to hand. There’s no language lacking. And, of course, with the chickens, etc., going around to the shows, and once in a while, helping with the birds, I get to a sense of what language can be, what, even, it must be. I couldn’t live here if my own language wasn’t whole. They’d shoot me. So ‘attacks’—they couldn’t come to anything that would matter. Because these people, these others, have lost that sense, altogether, of what makes language whole, the reason, the sense.
Then, to be attacked, granted, ‘we who have nothing to lose’, can only come to at least some thinking about what is being attacked. Even that would make a dent. Would make the beginning of a ‘point’.
During the last few weeks the correspondence with Ezra Pound and D. Pound, etc., has come to this: his concern with what makes false history. ‘You would very considerably revive him if he thought you would align your quarterly in the fight against the smother, and against the pollution of the whole of U.S. thought by Luce and the ‘lesser Lice . . . the REAL american culture . . . ’ I come back to your own comment in Letter To An Australian Editor in a past issue of BRIARCLIFFE QUARTERLY, i.e., beyond, perhaps, a simple aping of your thought, the thought to be found in the above makes the tragedy, that forgets the nature of the reality which we now face, that thinks these single men in the past hold all that is of use to us now. But that this kind of intensity is needed, god knows, seems much more than reasonable. Reading this past week, (1) The Serious Artist, (2) Meditations, and then (3) A Retrospect. ‘Mr. Yeats has once and for all stripped English poetry of its perdamnable rhetoric . . . ’ . But it grows fast, no matter how often its dug up. But there it would be; the immense use, the overwhelming intensity. Who could match it. It may be useless to expect now something like that. For what, I expect, would be a good question. If one could only shift that attention to full center—to get it to bear on what is here, now, I’ll bet they’d run for cover. And yet, it comes to how much do the younger of us expect a right to from a tired man; it comes time for us to make some sense. Beyond the watering down of methods, the borrowings, etc. To come into our own intensity. Then, it comes to not being able to stop any of this. The friend who wrote the letter I make use of in the ‘Comment’ writes as well: why be concerned with ‘clearing the air’ when you should be concerned with giving ‘a new substance’. And yet to stretch that, the air comes first. But better than they should come together. What my own writing can come to now is, perhaps, a method, a means. Nothing final, certainly, nothing ever final in their dried sense if I can help. Conclusions have their own betrayal. Anyhow, this now seems the point, what can be done.
The connection with Simpson can be something, I think, provided I keep my head, as it were. Their kind of insistence, granted, certainly, its point, is apt to include a smothering of my own. But that I have a good deal of respect for the past issues, and the effort, etc., they make, is true enough; so I think that reason enough for them to make use of me and I of them. I think perhaps the fact that Pound is the intermediary will keep both of us in line.
Anyhow, take it that right now I do get scared, and can suffer little beyond that, the pressures of selecting material, trying to find it, trying to make the whole thing come to sense. A little viciousness would be, even, a relief from the rather honest pain I’ve given some of the contributors, when I have sent back their work, trying to say something, etc., about it. The nightmare of trying to make my own sense; it couldn’t get worse, and if I’m wrong, I’m wrong now, not when they tell me. And if not, then to hell with what they say.
Thanks again for your help.
All best to you,
Robert Creeley
•••
Sunday [April 23, 1950]
Dear Cid,
Your letters, and the CRISIS & GRYPHON, and the other letters, yesterday. And many thanks for all of these. The past few days had brought a few discouragements, or perhaps not much more than the to be expected ‘doubts’, etc. In any event, these got me back to it.
Anyhow, let me try to get a little sense here. I have your own intent to get to a clear appraisal of these things. Perhaps, first of all, to get to the ‘they’ to whom Williams was referring. You will know of Williams’ belief in the need to make use of the currents, of language, of method, that are closest to hand, this in the sense of ‘environment’, what we live with, closest to. What we are, beyond what general pattern of belief, etc., might get us to by way of possibilities. And you will know, too, of Williams’ insistence on new forms, new progressions, in terms of what is now around us. To this point: general language. But perhaps I can get beyond it by coming to the question of enemies, and why he, or I, would take them to be such. For example, you say these ‘enemies’ or, here, the little magazines like PR, even KENYON, are those who back the people which either Williams or I, might back. What, then, is the difference sufficient to make us enemies? It comes to the question of use, the use to which this ‘interest’ is put. For what purpose. So far, so good, i.e., to see these people in print is certainly a point. But, now we come to the ‘interests’. Does this seem well-grounded to you? A poem, story, etc., will have, certainly, its individual effect, no matter where it appears, i.e., Stevens in Vogue, etc., has, certainly, his effect as Stevens, etc. But, now, what is this effect in relation to the magazine, etc., the purposes, etc., to which this magazine is committed? I take it as naiveté, to believe that Vogue, etc., is committed to a policy which makes clear their own attempt to publish good verse. I w’d have my own thought, that much more is involved than this, i.e., an attempt to maintain a ‘tone’, to ‘satisfy’ certain conditions of what is necessary to maintain this tone of ‘tolerant intellectualism’ mixed with a taste for good, expensive dress. So then, taking the idea that to publish someone’s work, at best, can indicate a belief in the method, the concerns, implicit in it—we come to the reverse, which would be—to publish in a magazine, for the usual reader, means to agree with the editorial policy implicit in that magazine’s behavior. Now this may seem even idiotic to you, or I, who know the difficulties of getting into any magazine, but I think we can both see that for someone not interested in these difficulties, etc., that such an assumption w’d be possible. And, for example, when the poetry, etc., doesn’t come to any explicit statement to the contrary, what else could be supposed. The use to which much of Auden’s work has been put in these past two years, and Stevens, etc., will show you some of what I mean. I.e., there has been an attempt, often as blundering as any attempt to make use of things without having a concern or an understanding of them may be, still there has been an attempt to include good art, or instances of it, in a deliberately maintained level of false art, art calculated to deal with a specific demand, related, directly, to commercial standards. Now, to go into the matter of PR, & KENYON, I think you’ll know enough of each of these magazines, certainly the first, to find my thought not too far-fetched, i.e., that each of these magazines has a very coherent editorial policy, one which can be got to by reading half a dozen issues of either. Now take, first, the case of PR, and why I take them to be very actual enemies. Politically, PR is dedicated to the usual disillusion of the usual Marxist, after the facts of the past 10 years, and the developments of certain aspects of the Marxist tenets, to a point which makes them capable of individual existence, i.e., witness the many rifts, etc., among the current Marxists, and the very bitter chasm between the Stalinists & the ‘Marxists’ now bitterly opposed to this use of the original tenets. Now, to bring this attitude into a system of evaluation, into a basis for critical observation, etc., is, perhaps, not immediately recognizable as the destructive force it, in all actuality, is. But where we can first get to it is in the method, the way the language is put to use—there it betrays itself, and all the emotional bitterness, vindictiveness, etc., comes to bear. Then, too, the attitude, given its original orientation, is one which must have definite, prescribed limits; it cannot come to the work in hand without having, already, plotted the extent to which that work can possibly effect it. Now this may seem like a mild form of insanity on my part; but I commit myself to it, nonetheless. I do not think we can ignore, ever, the nature of the criticism a magazine prints, since that will be, always, the explicit demonstration of the magazine’s way of getting to value in any given instance of art. Now, does it seem that the intelligences which put such vindictive limits on criticism in any issue of PR can differ from the ones, which in the same magazine, give us, now and then, examples of art worth our time & trouble? I can’t think this, nor can I think, even less, that these intelligences relapse into acquiescence when they come to judge work for any given issue; I believe that work printed by PR is printed no less deliberately than the criticism; I believe that this work is intended to maintain the precepts of the criticism, even in such unlikely instances as Williams’ poetry. Such a magazine must recognize that people like Williams, etc., are too much of a force to be ignored; but, if by including them, they can seem to be concerned with the values these men represent, they are free of the battle of fighting overtly against these values, and can ‘by-pass’ and so get to their own concerns, without running too much of a risk. Because one book review of Williams’ poetry, or of Stevens’, can undo the very slight foothold these men can get by an occasional appearance. Remember: [William] Phillips & [Philip] Rahv, etc., are there all the time; the others very rarely.
In all of this: I don’t think we should lose sight of the grip criticism now has on all creative work. I think it of supreme importance to bring again into focus Pound’s idea of the critic to be found in Date Line in MAKE IT NEW. That is, the literary hierarchy is just as powerful as it ever was. Certain instances of supposed tolerance shouldn’t be mistaken for the rule. They are not. Witness the fact of the ‘new’ writers PR usually prints. That will get you to the ‘facts’ in my assumption. KENYON is no less to be suspected, though, I grant you, lacking the very strong political overtones of PR, their method doesn’t seem as bitter. But: witness, if you can get hold of it, Ransom’s method in the Winter 1945 issue, in relation to Savage, etc., whom I certainly don’t commend, etc., but see how it is done. That is what keeps me awake nights. That’s what makes me distrust KENYON, i.e., they aren’t interested in the development of individual artists, or in the development of any group. They are interested in the maintenance of a deliberate and perfectly coherent critical method, confined, as it must be, by the ideas of Ransom on everything imaginable, to be put together, eventually, with the more rash, and consequently, more overtly stupid, pronunciamentos of Tate. Don’t watch a man when he’s judging something 100 years dead, in time; because he may fool you, having the benefit of the ‘tradition.’ Watch what he says on what’s at hand; if he can’t come to sense there, or if his method reveals itself as definitely limited for purposes having nothing to do with its subject, then, dammit, shoot.
So, as you might suspect, we come, at last, to Thomas Sterns Eliot, etc. What’s wrong with T. S. I’ll tell you one thing that’s damn wrong, and that’s his values as they exist now, and as he attempts to apply them. I know, certainly, that Eliot’s work, in the past, is of immense value for anyone who wants to take the time to go into it. I certainly have. But when a man who up to this point has driven the car very nicely begins to go all over the road, we do not let him keep his seat. We kick him to hell out before we all crash. We don’t let him go on, in the case of Eliot, representing us, since he was once able to. Hence: Eliot, insofar as his methods concern us now, as he now attempts to have them concern us, hasn’t the slightest reason for being spared anything, short of actual murder. He should be revealed, completely, for what he is; he should be stripped publicly; he should be made to account for every one of his subsequent moves. I know, I know, I know, the danger this has for his past work—this certainly seems to me great, i.e., the fact that any attack, now, may confuse the values to be found in the past criticism & poetry. But we cannot allow this man to go on as he is going, without making a substantial attack on his method. This is what Williams was commending in my own COMMENT—this is not, perhaps, the substantial attack I have in mind. I would rather see that effected by counter demonstration; that would seem much more to the point. But since Williams’ criticism is that counter demonstration, I’ll certainly make use of it, when I can.
So we come to the younger. That is where I look. The fact that the ‘tradition’ has shut up all but a very few like [Richard] Emerson, I take as having some fact in it. There is no counter method, now, coherent enough, strong enough, articulate enough, to fight it. But it must be found. It can only be found in the younger men, the men, who have & will have a stake in what comes of it. The difference between the magazine I hope to have and PR, etc., is this: I am committed to finding a way for poetry, etc., to assert the concerns implicit in it, to, simply, make room where it can assert its own value—PR is committed to finding examples of poetry, etc., which will serve as implied illustrations of its critical concerns. On the face of it, this seems, only, like two ways of saying the same thing. But to expand each, perhaps absurdly, we can get to it, i.e., I am committed to that best of all possible worlds where art needs no criticism; and PR to that where all art serves, only, as a means to criticism’s ends.
I am impressed with CRISIS; but like yourself, I hold somewhat to be lamented, the great coloring the method relies on. But, the times are hard ones. Little else will serve better, though, eventually (and why not now), it must come to a less flavored way. But certainly, he has my vote. I like the format, everything about GRYPHON, except the pleasant statement of the editorial ‘position’ to be found at the front. That makes it all a little meaningless, or so it seems to me. That is, each time these chances are put down, in place of pleasantries, each time, we agree to let PR, etc., be the articulators of critical concerns & method. That is the ‘destruction’ we face. That the ‘destruction’ is real,—take what passes for good work in PR, POETRY, etc, etc. If these people are not dented, and soon, we won’t be talking about poetry, as we now are, but, whatever happened to it.
Your own poem there I liked. And, very much, Emerson’s, and Ferrini’s, though a little slight. The rest, all pleasant, though some a little mediocre, etc., but not much else to stir. But don’t take this as my lack of faith in what might come out of these things, i.e., the little magazines. I agree that would be the place, perhaps the only place, to look.
Will write again soon, to get to more of this.
All best,
Bob
Will return the CRISIS etc. the middle of the week.
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
[Littleton, NH]
April 24, 1950
Dear Dr. Williams,
Thanks for the push with Olson. I had seen some of his work, but nothing like what I have on hand, or what I find in the copy of X&Y (the first poem there being what we have to get to). Anyhow, have now on hand by him a very fine thing for use in this first issue. Then some results from T. D. Horton—some poems sent by him, Donald Paquette—these too what’s needed. Albeit the inevitable amount of deadwood, picked up when things looked tough, and I’m now hung with, I think she’ll float. Also, good word from the one who’ll print it, i.e., he wants smaller issues more often; and I think I can work better with that—to make these things ‘come up’ as often as possible. I hope that the issues to come can get deeper into what this first one suggests, perhaps, or can’t get into altogether certainly. But for this first, I thought it best to let what articulate criticism I could get my hands on do its work, and not try to pack that end of things with stuff that couldn’t make it. Then, too, poetry like Olson’s & Paquette’s will serve me here; certainly better than ever would the ‘professorial’ tone.
Have no exact date for when it will be ready. This end is apt to be slow, since it’s all hand work. But sooner or later. And will have a few copies for you, when they come. Anyhow, thanks again.
All best to you,
Robert Creeley
•••
Littleton, N.H.
April 24, 1950
Dear Olsen,
Have your poems at hand. These are too much—unlike what I had seen; forgive, etc. But the others didn’t make it for me, and, perhaps, useless to go into that here. Except to say that you have my vote on the matters of language, etc. It was, in those, that I couldn’t come to it, etc., but as you will.
So will print MORNING NEWS in this first issue; and will keep, if you will, the others to look at for a subsequent one. I w’d say that MOVE OVER w’d be it, for something later; but will write you on this, when I can come to it.
Good that the Dr. took the trouble to say those things, etc. This means much. I.e., more than goodwill, some help. Very few can make this. Anyhow, I’ll make use of his ‘program’ and also, by way of emphasis, a reprint of his article on Eliot in the Feb ’48 issue of 4 Pages. Do you know this? Expect you w’d. At the moment, have a rather tenuous relation with same, via so many, that I can only shout, etc. But for one: T. D. Horton has been of great help in these matters; through him, some fine things by Paquette, which will also make use of in this first issue. But you will see. It comes, at times, to making peace among these various, but granted the will, perhaps (dare we hope) the way, etc. So much for that.
I saw ASYMPTOTES, and have to say I’m happy with what I’ve got. Again, forgive, etc. You will know how we are about these things. To each his own, etc.
Very grateful for the copy of Y&X; the first thing very, very good. You’ll have to take it, that lacking this kind of substance, or better, not knowing about it, the first poems I saw suffered, accordingly. Not to back down on that matter—NEVER. But this much to say how much I like what I find here.
Anyhow, send some more of these fine things, whenever you have them to spare. Also: when you want to come to these matters in prose, send that too. Always room, or will make it, for these things.
Best to you,
Robert Creeley
Nota: I am still laughing, like they say. I hope people can pick up on this thing (MORNING NEWS). I think, with horror, of those who are not amused, etc. This, in any event, saves me a lot of wind, etc. Thanks.
•••
[Littleton, NH]
| Will plan to print the 2 other | |
| poems here in the next issue. | Apr/28/50 |
| Plans shift at the moment; I had | |
| a note from the one who’ll print | |
| this he wants something to run 8–16pp to appear every two weeks. | |
| Myself, double that length, once a month. But we get to it. | |
Dear Olson,
This is redundant, etc. But these past few days, have been looking at the poems in the little book, staring. Very, very good of you to have sent it. When loot, etc., allows, will ask for a few copies to send to those who are still looking for something like this. What can I say: I take you to put down here movement beyond what the Dr., Stevens, etc., have made for us. Wonderful things.
Have taken the liberty of making a short note on these things for the magazine; together with one on Crews who is dead, somewhat, in the head, but no matter. It’s yourself I’m concerned with. Because of space, etc., not much chance to say more than LOOK AT THIS, but that’s part of it. For the note: quote some of La Preface & The Green Man. Now, I wd take parts of The Moebius Strip to be it, but again I take La Preface to show something the deadheads never thought of, and/or, the ‘simple’ condensations of WHAT’S HAPPENED. And/or ‘not only “comment” but container.’ The compression, without DISTORTION, in this thing: too much. And through all of this, you make your own rhythms, language, always the POEM. With all the deadwood around, & all the would-be ‘form’, etc., I take these things as coming headon.
Thinking of Stevens, who slipped into PR, with this: ‘Poetic form in its proper sense is a question of what appears within the poem itself . . . By appearance within the poem itself one means the things created and existing there . . . ’ Basic. Yet they won’t see it, that it cannot be a box or a bag or what you will. Like Eliot: the imposition of tradition, etc., etc. Both senses to apply. You cannot put 1 tradition on top of another, without losing what APPLIES in each . . . Like these idiots who will not take what is of use, but insist on ‘returns’ &tc.
Anyhow—sick at the heart.
So, then, must count on yourself to help me at times with this, by way of poetry, & criticism. A suggestion. We plan an open forum on American Universities, etc. To be, in point of fact, on methods of blocking what few IDEAS this country possesses, etc. False representation: beginning with when the prof said, no, that is not so, etc., etc. You must SEE it THUS, etc., etc. A matter of life in death, if you will. So, then, what you could bring to bear on these matters wd help. A suggestion: what we can get on this will at times be from ‘names’ which the ‘public’ takes as red, etc., so better, perhaps, to print these things anonymously, and explain: this is to avoid these preconceptions & to get to what’s being discussed. The ideas, etc. But when you will. Always good to hear, so when you can. Let me know how people take the little book. Those who have eyes, etc.
Best to you,
Robert Creeley
•••
[Littleton, NH]
Monday/june 5 [1950]
Dear O,
Blood from a stone and all that sort of thing/ USELESS to kick against the pricks, i.e.: ‘If it were at any other time of the year we could send you an advance check for the story. But the Summer issue is the last of our fiscal year, and our comptroller, the College Treasurer, has imposed it as a rigid rule that we cannot make advances for material that may appear in the following fiscal year, etc., etc. . . . ’
‘Consideration of your account will be appreciated. If your check has been mailed, please accept our thanks. . . . ’
Well, subjectivity, etc. For my money / never was: else. I.e., take it, or not (little matter): that concurrent with the ‘deliberatism’ of ‘science’: came the supposition: that a ‘cool head’ needed an explicit tag. A disastrous split, nonetheless; and opposition on this head: altogether useless & a waste of precious time. No such thing as ‘objectivity’ for the man who wants to do a good job. Or . . .
Will pick up: on this comment: since it’s a center. I.e., ‘a man must create himself . . . ’ [note in lower margin: (looking back, I see I misread you—it is: “man must create himself—instrument—” Still, my first reading is close enough (ha!).] I wd say so: and more, that it is the possible variations on the center/creation: that make up the plot of art, granted its center is: what you say. Or as they used to say: the foci & the loci, etc. Or words to that effect. We are NOT mathematicians/ or we are: and then some. Breaking down the supposition/ that prose & poetry: depend on perhaps counter/ at least ‘different’ kinds of attitude & intelligence: we can get to the agreement you take to exist: in the use of both: of the S. I. The need. Again: what posits A as A, is the existence of B/ no MATTER: if it ‘exist’ . . . It is the variation: that can accomplish its status in the sense of: A. I see no need for MORE than ONE head: if it’s a good one. Or better: I can not see that such a head: should feel that OTHERS were essential. This is to break down: the supposition: that we are first & foremost: a continuum.
Abt ‘myth’ & the Kollektif Basket: the talking ABT myth: it would seem to me: works to destroy the essential feature/ pervasiveness MINUS exact root/ or ‘in the air’ like they say. Now, granted the ‘use,’ valid or otherwise to which it has been put/ as a ‘name’ for a body of ‘information’/ as an insight into past or existing ‘group’ intelligence . . . [note in left margin: blah] It seems only: when it can be used/ as a manifestation of its own character: that it has valid testament. To be such: it must again become: pervasive & unidentified. Here/ of course: myth: IS in the air/ and none to do more than MAKE USE OF it in reasoning/ in apprehension of what might be around. (This is way off the beat, etc . . . [note in left margin: I dont know shit abt any of this—]
Again: abt ‘instruments . . . ’ (‘becoz he is instrument, & uses all available instruments only to dominate ’em, not his fellow cits . . . ’): you will know of all the blah: abt possible ‘audiences’ in the case of both prose & poetry/ you will also know: absolute bull/shit. That is: the intelligence that had touted Auden as being a technical wonder, etc. Lacking all grip on the worn & useless character of his essence: thought. An attitude that puts weight, first: on form/ more than to say: what you have above: will never get to: content. Never in god’s world. Anyhow, form has now become so useless a term/ that I blush to use it. I wd imply a little of Stevens’ use (the things created in a poem and existing there . . . & too, go over into: the possible casts or methods for a way into/ a ‘subject’: to make it clear: that form is never more than an extension of content. An enacted or possible ‘stasis’ for thought. Means to.
Abt the Uni/s, etc. Leed’s poets as pedants;/ to mean: the academic use of the ‘particles,’ etc. carried into a raison d’etre for SONG. Or, more precisely, the analyzers, in poetry; who are NOT the analyzers in poetry, etc. You see/? Well, put something down on that head/ using Leed anyway you want. Granted, I can: that the Poet as Pedagogue/ is the TEACHER. That, too: you had put down fully.
Take this for now: will try to catch up soon.
Best to you,
Creeley
I had read once with delight: de Gourmont’s attack on ‘romanticism’ which was, praises be: a good stand for subjectivity. . . . [Added: he “subjected his data”—]
Opener in PG’s [Paul Goodman] The Dead of Spring: which has just come under the hand, like they say:
‘Friends have reached the most beautiful part of their meeting: the impasse from which nevertheless they do not get up and leave. They are resting in this hell . . . ’
Then he begins to ‘chew’. . . .
[Added:] Vol. 2—Del Mar—also here this 5th day of June—
Was thinking if, perhaps, Wasserman, et al.—had not provided the “transition” from Dostoevsky—to the social observer—others as well (it was that ‘way’)
Some more abt the poets being the only pedagogues// at this point, or at this stage of the game: the only possible pedagogues. I take this in the sense of/ ‘science of teaching’ (flat phrase) or better: those capable of demonstrating, thru USE: a method, a way: of transmitting: communicating: idea/thought/‘history,’ etc.
Leed’s thought: only to do with a related word/ coming only from the pedagogue’s MISuse of his calling, etc. Pedantry/ many poets now ARE pedants, or they have been put to the same dry work of evolving superficial, for already assumed, often already completed: analysis, etc. Again: an insistence of having made the way; the end. Well: do such need any kind of attention. A hard thing to comment on; IF one is busy with one’s own work (and be damned, and rightly, to the MISuse of others . . . ) A pounder/ wd know this/ as did he: constantly reiterate the dreariness of talking ABT aht, etc. It comes to/ how far do you take the current pedantry in poetry to block: understanding & development of same/ how great do you take the damage, if any, to be: to what the Dr. called ‘means to leap the gap . . . ’ That they are: the ‘nonpurveyors’ . . . one wd take that as fact. That one’s work sd be concerned with their failure/ well, that’s the question . . . If one can shake free, fair enough that he should: certainly . . . But very damn hard to find room, these days . . . free of them, or their thought, or their damned rigidity, and ugliness. Hence: the magazine: first—the point wd be, or better: cd be: to cast light on: illumine: make available: aspects of the universities: not taken seriously, or not usually seen to be harmful. Some months ago, re this whole thing, Bud had written: I hate to think of you as ‘clearing the air’ rather than trying to give: ‘a new substance . . . ’ Beyond my capabilities to do either: it’s the pivot round which one’s actions, in such matters: can swing, or loop. Or just damn well droop. That is, I grant you, certainly, yr own good reasons for not seeing (I have to assume this, at this point . . . ) how effectual Leed’s slant can be/ put against yr own idea of the poets as pedagogues/ one, the first, being against, and the second, yrs, moving at least to a: projection, a positivism: of attitude. Having thought much, like they say, abt these matters, and the limits best set/ for a first launching, etc.: I had to take the fact, that very damn few wd be willing to come to a demonstration of yr own statement. Obviously, the point is NOT to come to something ABT it, but rather: to make it, actual, in the corpus of yr work. Well, the dead wood/ and the lack of guts, and the general hate & fear: of what a poetry, a prose: cd grip/ given the center: just, dammit, plain suspicion: having only to do with the ‘possible’ pride a man might feel: IF he were capable, actually, of more than ruminations . . . for these it must be: well, you had yr Lawrence & you had yr Pound/ and a few others: and they cd never agree among themselves/ and all they were: was arrogant, and, at last: we couldn’t understand a damn thing they said . . . And, if for example, either Lawrence or Pound had had: an educational system going full steam: to back THEM up??? The point: a certain am’t of clearing has to be done . . . A magazine, or anything, with a reader potential: has the chance: and I will make use of it. But not RIDE it to death, or anywhere similar.
This is obtuse/ and I hate to beg off, each time I get to where I sd be hitting the point. Somewhere (back) it’s in there, but to weed it out/ cant do it: now. Or at this moment.
Well, hitting something, elsewhere: it is simple enough to take the law, of S.I., if you will: as bearing on both aspects of the word. I wd transpose one or two words here & there, only for purposes of my own coherence: say . . . ‘illumination . . . ’ vs. ‘expression’ as you had it there. Wd become for myself: (expression) the line running
off.
And (illumination) the line: running, IN STASIS . . . which means no more than it: is held, in tension, the line of the intelligence as manifest by its expression: in ‘words,’ material, or has: more simply: posited itself as ‘complete’ in an ‘example.’
That given: you have the basis for a distinction between good & bad prose/// the difference coming to, what is a ‘circle’ in prose & what is: an ‘ending . . . ’
I.e., a good novel, as a good poem: CANNOT: ‘conclude . . . ’ /// it exists/ only to be returned to.
(Obviously, here I dont give a damn with what the author cites as ‘ending’ [^ rhetorical convention] on pp. 250–255, etc.)
Sd not think that language, per se, wd have any more reality than Blake’s Nature/ it is the Imagination which has Outline . . . or better, that which defines: the real. In its first aspect.
This is the bulwark of ‘romanticism’ they say, but that argument is fruitless.
Again: very much wish that it were possible to see you. That is, the impossible time/lag in mail, etc. Well, no ultimate bug, but a nuisance. Here/ impossible to move, or to travel anywhere. No money, and damned by inconsequent possessions of one sort and another. Well: we wait only for the best time: to heave them/ tho perhaps the waiting is itself: disaster. So, during the war, while impossible to realize anything that was going on/ tho I cd see all of it with my eyes (i.e., can there be any reality in suffering of that sort, the physical*, when it reaches a proportion you cannot, in any sense, imagine, etc.) [Marginal note: *(i.e., the consistent: pitch of actual pain: was such: that you could not believe it: anymore than you can take it as fact: that a hen ‘suffers’ after you’ve chopped the 500th head: THO it is that consciousness: of reaction: that one MUST maintain. But the continual death, & pain/ at that point: were such that they were NOT.)]: became, like an idiocy: delight in the movements possible. The greatest possible pleasure in shuttling abt.
I pay it back, at this point.
With great vividness: Tel Aviv, which was an end in itself: a city at that point: one cd not have designed more perfectly. Or filled with such people. After having come from Burma, etc. The Am. Field Service/ which was a group of completely divers people/ having no ‘head’ or nothing more than one cd think of: at the moment. Truly: Fabrizio:s/ Anyhow, spent abt 2 weeks in Tel Aviv, after the Americans had left/ Arabs & Jews were then/ holding off. But a crazy city. Well, the freedom that cd get you on a boat/ sitting down/ two days at sea: to look out at the water & possible birds, etc. That wd be it.
The point: there are parts of Burma, villages. And people: who maintain; a way of looking altogether distinct from our own. And while this is simple enough to talk abt/ say you are alone in such a place/ with the air abt you: only then IS IT FELT.
Trying to keep up, etc.
A note from Leed/ that he agrees: yr way in the prose bits/ the right one, i.e., : ‘olson on projective and on g-pa [Pound] extremely what we want . . . ’ He will have the stuff back to you shortly; i.e., wants to get well into it. Etc. Slow but sure/ and not so slow, at that. I.e., it has to be/ a human being talking abt what he might reasonably, as evidenced by his ‘style,’ be supposed to have some stake in . . . etc. We wd have no use/ for the ‘casual’ eye, etc. The so-called objectivist, etc. I have yet to figure: WHY in point of style, say, the heart sd be taken: as necessarily out of it: granted Kenneth Patchen aint usually: it. Still: I’d go with some of it/ seeing he can shake it up: now & again: tho I feel sad: that it sd come to so very damn little. Rather: it was Henry [Miller]: now & again: letting loose with the round-about story/ that had the right kick. Or/ ‘if I call M/ Claude a whore . . . what am I going to call other women . . . ’ Or: the long bit about Brooklyn/ which has always warmed me. Better than what passes for better/ god knows. Then the ‘gems’/ like they say: abt the arguing with the customs official/ which documents the incongruities of this life, etc. Or that little excursus/ The Hamlet Letters/ or death IS (not) enough???
Then Fraenkel’s kick / jesus / how dull can you get . . . NOT that it cdn’t have been MAKE: but he sure didn’t make it . . .
There is so very damn little to warm one, these days, or, as when once a friend was staying with us/ and I was sitting in another room reading: I heard her say to him: ‘He often laughs like that, when he reads . . . ’
Or somewhere not too long ago/ I read a ‘serious’ comment abt the possible ‘reason’ for WHY EP had written: Papyrus . . .
Well, GONGULA.
So it wd go.
Word To Live By: ‘You know, if there weren’t distribution expenses, we might come close to break even . . . ’
R. Leed
Who had also sd: ‘I am engaged in that worst of all possible occupations: making money . . . ’
yes: abt Francis Thompson/ had hit a bit of his in the Summer HOPKINS REVIEW// all that I cn remember. But that fair enough. Tho little to go on. What wd be the background/ or what can you tell me, old sport, re these deep things:
I suspect . . .
hmm. USE??? What use?
Just give the possible slant, & will be glad to do the work, etc. Always on the job/ and ready to talk chickens.
yr old poultry friend.
C.
•••
6/15/50
Dear Mrs Pound,
I’m grateful for all the periodicals, etc. This afternoon I was able to give some time to them, & well-spent. Many, many things/ to think abt. A few: (re the ballot, for example): the practice of tagging the candidate: which amts to use of the ballot for advertising. Well, nothing new/ nothing new. I have had some experience re the difficulties of getting a minority candidate on the state ballot. An almost impossible job (in Mass/ & probably even more difficult in other states). Then: the various uses of the press. At 18 I had taken a job with the Boston GLOBE/ copyboy & apprentice (everything). I expect anyone with that experience, however brief, and mine was abt 10 months thru the first landings in Italy, etc., wd have a good grounding on what to expect of the press. Impossible. The reporters/ averaged: abt 10 yrs in the head. One: a ‘star’: used to relax with BLACK BEAUTY, & it still haunts me/ the intense expression . . . Well, what a mess it was: just abt everyone loaded all the time: bitterness & personal ambition thruout/ due to the hierarchy system (which might have had its merit, but now makes room for partisanship, etc.: blocks who might be of use). That was: is: Catholic dominated. Again: their attitude toward matters political, usually forecast, broadcast: in the mouth of one Uncle Dudley, well good (but, jesus, rotten . . . ). So, much of what you had sent, re the campaigns, were echoes. Of when the now: Secretary of Labor, used to sit around & drink with the boys in the backroom: waiting for the returns. Ole times & Mr Tobin.
Other things: again & again: these things hit me . . . Yr point re: Illiteracy is the inability to recognize the same idea in different formulations & civil infantilism is the inability to collaborate . . . That seems the whole picture. Or that main block. What cant be traced from that head.
So many: sick, and give up—want to give over, to those whom they might think have the head for it: (of all people) the gov’t. What is it, socialism, but this wish: to lie down. We get NOTHING now, & so many: cant see that even LESS is. I say: we get nothing, well, something: but Americans: dream of potentials. In a hurry. I had thought (here) of the thing in VIGIL re: only in countries in a hurry, do the people consider the lie, immoral. But what an edge, the americans, for a clever man/ men: given their slants. Was anyone ever sitting/ more like a duck. Someone else: that who cd keep up with the data/ granted the blockage, & deceit. Well, it comes to, what Lorca’s brother had noted: the complete political immaturity of the average, the American. Inconceivable (to him) that there should be: shades: of democracy. That this cd be put to USE.
Again: yr words / cd they be seen? By 155 million, ; ; ;
what is the answer to: the gov’t by the people, & how. Now, a slush, slop: of interests. Who ‘elects’? Christ, NO. No one elects anyone. I, you, or he: PICKS: one. Who cares. You do not exercise yr vote/ they say, I do, but? When what I want to know abt any one candidate/ IS not to be known. A problem. Well, so much for that. Will write again soon,All best to you,
Creeley
•••
June 21—50
Dear O,
If I keeping hitting the biz re seeing you, forgive—not to suggest an expiration of hopes elsewhere, simply that it now seems important to have that chance to get to some of the things suggested by the letters, tho impossible that they should get the full weight there. I mean no more than: who is around these days, somewhat in the sense you had it, in a recent letter, but more: who is around that can come over, thru, for me, for those like Leed et al. Fighting with the writer of the notes, the indicator of these presents/ as he had it: abt yr own groundsense: I am crippled by no little dogma & inexperience. I know: I am right/ but that matters little. Nor is he, less right/ for his purposes. But it is now NOT that he is dealing with/ nor what’s to be coming. In some sense/ let us now deride the smugness of Pound’s followers: I have thought that often; at the beginning, had written such a note to H[orton]/ to forget to mail it, and then to get into the correspondence with him, etc. Well/ out of it, it is. In many ways: foolish that I am in this, any of it, since here I am, alone, and here I damn well mean to stay. A yoking up with divers & sundry is an effort, hard to consider, tho nothing to do with the big cheese possible, etc., : simply, my own nose, is all I can follow. God forbid that it should be pinched by their fingers, etc. To talk, then, not abt art, which is a topic not for a man with full possession of his senses/ but better: simply, again, the drift possible, what gets to ground in spite of itself, any afternoon, anywhere. Or should. Because/ much talk from the others: but from yrself: the facts of the poems/ the prose on P/ & the verse. The letters. That wd be enough, any one of them. Having eyes, etc., was able to SEE what you can do. I dont see it being done in any sense, kind or condition/ elsewhere. Simple enough to flatter anyone: but very difficult to make plain wherein the basis for a trust: puts itself. I wd take as the first obvious & most ‘clear’ step/ in making a way for oneself: to make ‘there’ oneself: the tempering of a method. Or, simply, the acquisition of one. Insofar as anyone IS a derivative of a style current, rather than its USER, he is, briefly, damned. But as before/ content being the shaper: it is, too, that looking for the content/ its root: in the head & self: that takes the time. (‘Why do I write today . . . ’) Well, a time give to that, most probably, a long time. 20 years? Or something. A long time. If one is striking off, for oneself, free of the ‘existing’ forms, then the product is presented with an apparent ‘quickness’ (Stein, Pound, Williams, etc.). But just as we go thru the whole of Joyce looking for one IDEA, beyond the reiteration of echoes, & are somewhat put down, just so: an apparent logos in method/ new/ can mean no NEW content. A man, each man, is NEW. If his method, his form, IS the logic of his content: he cannot be but: NEW/ ‘original’. But the changes, whatever, in an existing method, by a man coming up, will most certainly, not of necessity: mean: new content. In the sense that it must be. Lawrence was going by the head & heart. I had wondered: what kind of an answer to a question about his ‘style’ would one have got from him . . . I mean, what more than CONTENT? what more was the point. Less obvious, since he has been tagged so, is the ‘stylist’: Gide/ but why . . . That he had the strictness in his gripping of ways & means/ that he should make, for example, the ‘neat distinctions’ about conte & possible: novel. That a possible reader can ‘see’ surely, having been told, but much more to the point: that he see why it was again: CONTENT, that was pushing. Never a man worked more deliberately with his own vision/ seeing: than Gide. I simply cannot think of any that can pass him/ & so put him up with my own teachers: Stendhal, Do/, etc. The counterfeiters/ wd be enough to make the point. And the other work/ taken with this slant: then points the reason of its sometimes apparent slightness (I am thinking of the Isabel, etc.) It is useless, altogether, to make assumptions about what can be done, until such a method is in the head. So, whereas a 100 idiots can flash in the pan, etc., yrself, one of the damn few concerned with a method/ that can get to the shape, be the shape, of yr content. Just there, for that reason, is my respect. Not knowing you, but for these letters, and they, much help tho they are, cannot make the point altogether. Well, that is why I should like to see you/ if & when you will be in NE. I wd confess/say/ I have to make a deliberate way of not being caught to or by: anyone, and that is no less fatuous that it sounds. Stupid, such a comment. No, I am here for the same reason anyone is here: to be so caught up. The sweet afflatus, or what you had, something. The season. It is. So when you can, give me word on when you might be around. Wd not like to be obliged by other things, and to not be, wd take some planning. So when you can.
Best to you,
Creeley
•••
Wednesday [October 18, 1950]
Dear O/
Yr letters here (the Monday ones) on Corman, et al. You’ll have my own spleen of yesterday. I wrote him a real pisser, which will set him on his heels—but what the hell. It will rock him, for the real punch, I tossed out today. I mean: you wrote him abt the possible THREE—& I wrote him five pages of close document on the WHYS. I mean, I played it straight with him, gave him the gig as clear as I cd, showed him why this advising, minus clear hand in, led only to headaches (viz: ‘Creeley’s ideas . . . ’ & the way I blew my top), and left him very reasonable outs. Or 1/ we are editors with him, have the way you note on mss, et al; or 2/ we are contributors just like any others, who take it, he’s a good outlet. In the first case, we stand responsible for the workings, the policy of the magazine, etc. In the second, we have no commitment more than what our work, in the magazine, intends. Just that he damn well can’t throw the names around, any I or you, or anyone else, is 100% behind him, without giving us the exact say as to what it is, and will be, we’re behind. Now that don’t force him. He knows, and I say it there again, I take it a magazine is one man’s work; and I figure he should be very damn sure as to who he wants in. I mean: no pressure play here—not cool. I have been putting the facts to him for 4 months now, for longer, and he knows what I cd do for him, or should. Obviously, I can’t assess my use for him, nor can you, etc., of your own, etc. He’s the one who has to do that. The thing, I don’t figure he’ll buck here, and no matter which way he goes—we’ll still be in with him, without blow-ups, etc. Just that he call it. He says he’s using a letter I wrote him to handle the Brandeis gig, which proves, at least, I can hit him with sense. Okay. Is he going to heave that out, & what more you would be? That’s the hinge, and I put it to him, without calling it open—and/or he’ll be left with, without having it yelled at him: can I make a real gig without these two, or can’t I? The question, and I don’t figure he’ll be able to squeeze out. In any case, we’ll have some clarity. (I’ll stick his letter in here, the one today, after yesterday’s, to show you where you stand, and it’s that, for one thing, I most certainly don’t want to fuck up, & see no reason why I should. We can play this straight, all open, and still be holding the right cards. This IS a fucking game—no sense in figuring it otherwise, but you can hold longest, when you have that flavor of real openness, & it’s what I want to hold to.) He floats all over the place, and I do damn well feel that without us, he’ll have a splurge & not much else. He just can’t see BALANCE or figure what goes with what—which is editing, which is the key. He goes this way and that, tells me Kitasono is old hash, and then asks if Spender wd be good, says Michaux aint it, and then someone else gets his ear, and he’s all excited abt him—he’ll never get a damn thing done IF he doesn’t have us there to call the plays. Just won’t, no matter ‘you’ or ‘I’—it’s him who’s the fuckup. All over the place, he is. Gets my ass. But there it damn well IS—40 pages, old friend, let’s ride. Now the thing I wd figure, to, say, let GATE & CENTER stand as prose; to make up real strong bunch for poetry, into which, given spread, the Ez one should most certainly go—let stand at end, group of excerpts from letters, on heads like, ‘long poem’ which was to Emerson, etc., etc. I think such a section, the letters using excerpts, etc., can document the finished thing of the poems—can show the energy & spread in back of them, & that wd be it. Think here you should make use of spread of yr correspondence, i.e., Cid mentioned Ferrini, & there’s Emerson, & myself, etc. And there must be a real range there, which can document the spread, show it, in fact, as it picks up kinds, varieties, of people. Okay. The thing: make that 40 pages he plans—a real gig, NOT the soupy ‘I am sooo fond of Chas Olson, and there . . . ’, with the dinky little po-ems at the very end—BUT, what a mag can have over a book—fragmentation—burst—plunge—spontaneous—THE WHOLE WORKS. Think it should be played so. Just have it in, making only the very rough divisions I note : but make it, continual, all the energy, & the commitment. Think it should go—Gate & Center; poems; letters. With, if I can work it, a two or so page note on you, on where you are, this such & such day of our lord, this country, this world—OF WHAT’S UP—to document it: OLSON—here he fucking well is. Well, tell me what you think. He don’t YET see it as a, strictly, Chas Olson number. But it’s going to be just that. I mean: 40 pages with a clear commitment to them pages, on part of magazine, outspoken, noted, pointed. To DEMAND attention—not sudden & unexplained 40 page growth in magazine, as wd a reader think—why this, & wonder. It occurs to me—IF you do go in as a contributing editor, and I am 3–1 against this, at bottom, as I am for myself, can’t then work this so. But let’s cool for the time, & see what’s up. I mean: what’s that going to seem—40 pages by one of the contributing editors, eh? No soap. Stay free, the real gig, be free to play it any way it comes. Very damn little is worth heaving that over, and I don’t take it this magazine is it. IF you can get these 40 pages, open, giving, committed to you, free of any overt tie-in—it’s worth all the damn time & trouble. I hate to see it thrown, as it will, I think, have to be, IF we take on that job of steering overtly. Well, again, something to wait for, to see. How it goes.
Emerson: he’d sent on the book. Not much there. Here & there, technique I like, turns, tricks. Don’t see any head in it, or in this collection. The Gug biz—I can’t take it seriously, for him or me. Just that you don’t get squashed there, what matters. Very damn good of you to come out at him on the biz of the book. He & I square pretty well, but then, have not gone in deep with him, because, to be honest, I can’t understand what he is talking abt (and that’s not snide here, jesus, I can’t honesttogod understand a lot of it, he talks abt). Well, I think we get along ok. Aint he too late now. Seems as though he is. What the fuck. To hell with it.
Coming back to life, real slow. Spent abt 3 hrs of last night’s rest period, thinking of nuances of situation, I wd like to have story on. What I flopped trying to write abt a month or so ago—just before MR BLUE. I.e., those people were here this summer. Very odd. You see, was equal thing—3 of them, 3 of us—2 little boys, 2 men, 2 women. Very odd it was. You see, they came wearing clothes which were even more fitted to this place, than what we did or do. Ours being continual, what is at hand, etc. Anyhow, I had to leave the very night they came, talked only, an hour or so, and then off that next morning, early, to get back here, 4 days later, to find myself, almost, the guest arriving. Was goofy, very odd. And they fitted so strong, into this place, so complete, the 3 of them—we were displaced, as any one is, having ‘guests’, as beds are switched, as Dave was pushed down, etc. Well, I wanted to figure that, & the fact of the shifts in it, the heaves, et al. And the sets of figures, so thrown. Maybe something. The first time I worked it, I left too much out, figured only a switch of women, me to this new one, which was wrong—I mean, sure, me key of heaving, but must have their unit, their 3, as complete thing, to make that force for the breakage. Too much it was.
Wd like to figure story abt that time with the house. A climax, somehow. So much that night. I mean, what I hadn’t put in the letter. Briefly. We had been over to visit some people, a yng couple, like they say, the man of which was at divers times drawn, like they say, to Ann, but more, he had, at root, a hate for me. I was just figure, I mean, just stood against, unwittingly, so much he held to, made, not was, that I threw him off without meaning to, and certainly not intending, etc. Anyhow, this night, Ann had gone home, leaving me there, somewhat drunk, and I decided to take off for Boston, spur of the moment. Got the dog, and then the biz with him, who tried to dissuade me, et al., much time, this horrible wet night, and he trying to talk me out of it, and at last I got into the car and just left. Several times, before I did crack up, I felt the car dragging, sober as some drunks get, and skidded badly, tho I was going slow, on some of the curves, but not OUT, as speed would pull you, but IN, the back end, pulling IN, on these curves, sliding over against the edge of the road. And then it did come, there 80 miles away, the slide on the curve, the car going over and into this tree, right at the back end, cut in between the bumper & the fender, at the back. Not much, even, of a shakeup. Just hit, and stopped, but it had, I thought then, strangely wrecked my tire, the back inside one, or it was almost flat. And the tree had managed to whack the frame. A mess, tho to look at it, you’d think, just change the tire and knock the dent out, and you’d have it fixed. But the chassis frame was hit, so was a mess. Anyhow, then came the biz I’ve told you of, the house, et al, then the cops, the diner, and from then on, was getting home. After the cops left the diner, everyone started to ask questions; before that, while they were in there, dead silence. The dog got doughnuts, and one of the truck drivers offered to take her & me in the cab of his truck, etc. So we got to Hyannis. I tried to get her on a bus, it was abt 8 or so in the morning, but no soap. Had long wrangle with timer on buz biz, but no dogs. So went over to taxi-place where I sat and answered calls for them for abt 4 hrs and so got reduced rate on cab ride home. The road to our place, from the main one, too drifted to get thru, so I walked the distance left, in sneakers, & just abt made it. Real cold it was. Both of us, dog & me, just abt done when we got in. Now what came as sequel to all this, and what, later, made it more pointed, as climax, than I then saw, was that the man, this man who had tried to dissuade me, seeing he couldn’t, decided to fix the car so I couldn’t use it. I take it, any damn fool knows at least six ways to fix a car so a drunk can’t drive it: steal keys, take wires off the spark plugs, detach lead to battery, take out rotor, detach ignition wires, etc., etc. I mean, any damn fool wd know one of them, or so I figure it. This man, be it known, was a fair mechanic, had helped me once or twice to fix the car, certainly knew HOW to fix it so I couldn’t drive it. Here’s the thing—what he DID do, was deflate the back tire, NOT flat, but only abt 3/4, enough so a sober man wd feel it, but never a drunken one. He let me drive out of there with that tire like that, on roads were so icy, you’d have trouble walking on them, much less driving on them. I don’t know if you know that road from the end of the Cape up. From Truro to Wellfleet there are real curves. I don’t yet figure how I ever made the 80 miles. Looped as I was. Anyhow, there it is. I can’t figure it. I mean, did he do it cold, to make that attempt, which must have been, to finish me, figuring how a drunk normally drives, etc., or did he, somehow, keep it under, think, perhaps, what he did do, was the cool thing??? I saw him a good bit afterwards. He still writes us, i.e., a letter here a week ago now. One other time, someone confused my name, i.e., Creeley with Curley, and as you’ll know, around East Cambridge, the gangs, etc., the way things can work, no matter what’s thought—this night I was sitting in a bar, and a friend comes over to tell me, this man is after me, has only this name, & for me to get moving. I mean— very weird thing. I was, then, like this other, drunk, so only kept moving from bar to bar, until abt 4 hrs later, this same guy catches up with me, to say, the mistake had been corrected. Maybe I work each too much, but there it is. This last thing: drunk, etc., cd still see it, as what might happen, i.e., wd it or wdn’t it . . . because you damn well can’t believe, for no reason BUT a mistake, someone’s after yr skin. And the other: I didn’t know what was up until abt 4 months after it happened. Crazy things, both of them. But you see, anyhow, to take that first story—it’s so damn many strings there, so much that has to be cleaned. But I take it, as you suggest, that the part first told you, sd stand as enough, and will try to do it.
Ah . . . and next week, we will bring you, etc.
Had another friend, who sat looking down thru a sky-light while these two men looked for him, this on Charles Street. He was House of David, his wife the same, and her mother: fanatic—& she hated him, and COULD so arrange to get rid of him, COULD. I mean—there they were, guns and all, right below him—where he was sitting on the roof of this place, a stone’s throw from the common, right in the middle of Boston. Ah, but that’s another story. To hell with it.
You see, the thing with the first gig, with the car biz—he told Ann, not then, right away, but told her, later, what he’d done. Which means??? I mean, no one thing is complete—this is endless. I take what’s given, etc., or see it as no one thing alone.
Abt Race—he was a good friend when I was in Cambridge, etc. But to spot it—I had 3 friends there, Bud, Leed & Race. Race & Bud now both in Albuquerque. Race studying there. Bud plays in band, for which Race plays too: piano. He’s too much. Has one of the most, most beautifully whimsical: humors—I ever met with. Very strange yng man, he is. He’s the one who they told at Harvard, removing him for no other reason: that they had no place for the exceptional. He was, & is. He drove up here with me, in the truck, when we brought the things up, first, before we moved in. We’d be going along, beautiful day, and you’d see this spread of field, sky, too much, and he’d let the truck slide that way, look at me, and pull UP on the wheel. I expected us to sail right out & over it all. Very hard to tell you of these. No letters here, I cd send, etc.
I forget one, above: Joe Leach. But that’s the four.
Wish I had this picture that Bud showed me, of Race him & the Prez (Missis Berlin) walking along thoroughfare in Mex City . . . like they are snapping 24 hrs per—real crazy it was.
Well, write soon. Feel I’m getting back to it, slow, but anyhow. Hate that deadness, even for a day, or whatever.
Yr lad/
Bob
•••
Wednesday [November 9, 1950];
Lieber Herr Olson:
zuerst mochte ich mich fur Ihren herzlichen brief bedanken, uber den wir uns so gefreut haben . . .
Etc.
Anyhow: COOL. It is, and/or: yez is speaking with the NEW American representative of the Groooopa. Fair enough, I figure. Real nice gig: he says—wd be very happy if we cd have something thru you, for every (each & every) issue. Well, like he sez: Machen Sie mit? Sure. In or out/ I’ll take IN. Anytime. It excites me, considerable. Anyhow, gig can be much greater, I wd figure, than anything with Cid, etc. I mean, like: ok—he came back strong—takes me in, writes to those I gave him names of, even offers to pay me back for postage (I’ll keep that card, thanks . . . ). Anyhow, he listens. By luck, happen to hit things he never heard of—& stirred him. He’s sending me: his own gig on ars poetica. Let me know: he takes it back wall is Perse/ front Pound: area within: area, which I will shake him out of, eh? YOU WILL. Anyhow, as long as my german, holds (I stagger thru this stuff, & then hit him with every idiom I can think of: IN ENGLISH . . . )—we can make something here. Is sending little bk of new german stuff—can then see, clearer, what’s up with these boys. No, this one sounds real straight—I mean, he’s willing (1) to take chances; (2) to give free rein or semblance of same; (3) to commit himself on 1 letter. I like that fucking way. Contrast with Cid. Anyhow, DONT figure the Old Man to fuck this one—this Gerhardt sounds too straight, & figure him too awed by Ez, too respectful, to bother him with details, like Olson will be featured in 1st issue. Ha.
Don’t figure the stuff sent, will make any difference. But still suggest, if possible, get the work translated, what you put the stake on, there, & send off to him, that, when you can. Can then explain logic to him, etc. Well, think something cd happen here. He sounds a little tight, by that I mean, he’s got it: poetry, he wants to center on that, & don’t want much that don’t relate directly to sd head. BUT, you know what you can do with such; and/or: show them. OK.
On Kitasono: hard one. Depends, exactly like you note, on what you wrote him. Real cool, he is. I believe this: with any such, the way to excite them, is to make it: TRANSFER—that is, why not make this point, as you certainly can—that you wonder what the fuck is up THERE (their front) & cd perhaps help to get same out, over here (Cid, et al). I mean/ that keeps them close. Well, wd only figure, come out, exact, on what yr want to know—and/or: you people dead? Which is relevant question, or seems so, looking at his letter. Yez must get very old very fast over there. Ez’ hand there—wdn’t care to say, like they say, because I somewhat doubt it. I wdn’t care to say, because this sounds, K/ speaking, somehow: not a voice thru. Well, what else, but hit him back—push him into saying more than he does here? I dunno.
A breather. Space it so. Because, but for these heaves, have sounded the bottom, the past weeks. Jumpy, can’t be touched: hate it, & want out, clear of: all; of this biz, of the handling. Language: I remember, say, first time trying to learn French, in class, listening, etc., to what I had heard of it, cd then mimic sounds, or enough to be asked, as it happened, if I was kidding, i.e., HAD I studied it, etc., from which point—I mean, learning what it was I was saying & making effort to say—got worse & worse, until I cdn’t say a sound right. Self-conscious. That difference, between own tongue—& a language. No chance for the thing to come clean up, from the heels. With language. Well, with this man, say, german, it is ok, since to follow him, & I am, god knows, more painfully conscious of every damn nuance than he is—is to get from A to B. But I can’t, easily, go over into poetry. To the push. Since there, what I damn well fall back to, what I hate the lack of, in Wilbur, in Hoskins : is somehow, what’s up from the heels. It rocks you.
Damn ROUND of this room. Exact spacings of it. What I CAN reach—what I hate these days. Nothing comes of it.
No word from Emerson. I burn bridges fast with Cid, i.e., hit him, but what else: since if he goes flabby, it’s the end, anyhow. I keep getting little cards, (well, one, from Sister, but you had been away too): saying, I have been away for a few days. That Gerhardt: the same thing, you see. I sit here all the damn time, right here—never more than a stone’s throw from here.
Write soon.
Yr lad/
Creeley
[Attached is Rainer Gerhardt’s letter in Creeley’s translation, which begins: “First I would like to thank you for your fine letter, which we were glad to get.”]
•••
[Littleton, NH]
Wednesday [November 29, 1950]
Dear Blackburn,
Very good to have yr letter, & fine news about the translations. Hope very much they use them. Thinking of that headache you note, i.e., aristocratic vocabulary, etc., vs the other, I wd figure metric wd be your way out, and/ or, placing of words, or what I am thinking of, just that tone, is got by such, tho I wonder if he intends it, etc., G. S. Fraser in opening of MANNERIST POEM, #2 Nine. Just for that, worth looking. I.e., if you keep the vocabulary relatively stripped, meaning by that, to use words not overloaded with relation (grubby, filth, incredible, gorgeous, etc.) & let yr metric maintain the bulk of yr tone: you have an out. Well, not much matter.
[Dallam] Simpson sent the poems. That preface/ shit. He wrote it, i.e., one of his many aliases. Hideous thing, it is. Blabber, about all I can make of it, & wonder what the hell he’s up to with such. But he’s fair enough, i.e., warm heart, etc., tho idiotic at times (viz preface). His address: P.O. Box 6974, Congress Heights Station, Washington, D.C. Which is, I’m told, just around the corner from St Liz.
I wd argue with you, re Pound’s prose style, but not by that fact, certainly, say it was a question of poor imitations, as pathetically poor as Simpson’s et al. But it’s not to be put down, i.e., that in the prose, he stripped off a rhetoric no damn less actual than its counterpart in poetry/ 1912. No, I like it very much; find it moves with good balance, & weights. Viz translations from Kung, etc. Early essays. Beautiful writing, they are. Bunting, you’ll remember, was one of those in Pound’s ACTIVE ANTHOLOGY; i.e., it shows where Simpson got him, etc.
The Olson poem. I lack a copy at present. Don’t agree that a lyric is a matter of length, tho, as you suggest, this instance may not hold its tensions, etc. But it sure could, etc. One thing: what is objective realisation of subjective material—had gone to war with Russell on this head, & took that fort, so willing to try same with you. ‘State yr time & place. Well, fuck it,—get yr sense, but don’t like this use of ‘objective’; i.e., means almost nothing to me. Can’t see logic of such a word with respect to the altogether subjective act of poetry. If it means, only, the cool head—fair enough.
Well, I like that poem, but can’t show why, without a copy. When I get one, I will.
Am now acting as Am/ representative of a german magazine, edited by Rainer Gerhardt, & wd be very grateful if you wd keep him in mind as an outlet for yr work. An exceptional man: plans a monthly to run 32–48 pp of main text, 24 of marginalia & criticism. Also edits a series of contemporary poetry; has done some of the Cantos, etc. Apparently an excellent translator, & a good poet himself. Excellent letters from him. Well, send him anything you think he cd use—am sure you’ll get a good deal from him. Rainer M. Gerhardt, Verlag der Gruppe der Fragmente, Freiburg im Breisgau, Postfach 336, Germany. Will have re Am/: unpublished Pound prose, Olson poems, perhaps Williams, Stevens, etc. Also Perse, Benn, Italian work, Jean Genet. Etc. I’ll send you a prospectus when I have them. All german text.
Well, hope yr not killing yourself in the print shop. Leed, who was in on this summer’s effort, worked for abt a yr in one, in Brooklyn. Cleaning presses. Not good. Hope you have a better end of it.
Well, this much for now, & write when you can get to it. Cold, bitter days. My wife expecting a baby any minute, which is hell on the nerves. However. Not the first, or the last, I expect.
All best to you,
Creeley
Did you see Olson piece in current POETRY: NY. Very much with same. Also, have you read CALL ME ISHMAEL/ on Melville: Harcourt Brace, now, I think. You cd get same from nearest library, I wd think.
•••
Thursday [December 7, 1950]
Dear O/
Thinking of yr letter on the biz of the staying/ going, et al. And that you take me as/ direct. By no means so, in truth, i.e., Ann had read that, and snickered, i.e., am simply by no means so. Because, with this way of it, the figuring of all the ways, or making of it, each item, the possibles, very damn often: I sit where I am, etc. But no matter, here. What does, is yr notes on yr own way of, it, and the thing abt Williams, that is, what you note of his staying. I don’t feel the same things there [^ as in you, i.e., that you are similar], to be straight; i.e., I do suspect that in him, which made it the job of staying home, that precise, work, and don’t like it, and when it comes up, in the comments in a note he had written on Ez (Letter To An Australian Editor) it isn’t good, i.e., it makes of this thing, a local thing, saying, finally, but how he cd know, then, how cd he, having gone away. That is, Lawrence, most certainly, had demonstrated, been, much more than Ez, the one who moved, and each place, found, deliberately the materials he needed. I wish that sometime, a precise, a warm, for that wd be it, saying of this thing in him, someone who knew of it, cd give a real sense of it, as it wd have been, in the act; well, some note it, etc., but the essays, the bits, seem still the only real sense of it. Anyhow, my thought that it is not Ez and Bill, come to the ‘ways’; because I do have the feeling, those two are almost: a common ground. Think of it, quick: who is comes WITH Ez/ with Bill? Who IS the TWO? Not, then, Joyce & Pound, Lewis, Eliot, et al. IS/ always has been: Williams & Pound; and Williams’ kick, the bitterness, I think, grounded on a sensing of the crowding, the space, for one, two had to stand on. Well, lucky there were those differences, i.e., Ez & his method, Williams’ & his localism, gave them a distance; but cut it away, heave out the bad stories, Williams’, the bits & pieces, pare it down to essentials, & yr close to the insistencies of Ez, back of the method, back of the items, the divisions, into what comes of: hard as youth these 40 yrs. Precise. Because, I do get a sense of the local in Ez; very strong, as both, all: Flaubert/Stendhal/ James—also have it, as part of them. Check me, i.e., see if that isn’t something, something runs thru all 3, because here I figure beyond, much, what I have a right to. Was Ez the traveler, i.e., think of Lawrence, in Italy, starting off to the New Land, comes, via Ceylon, then Australia, and into San Francisco, down to New Mexico, into Mexico. Etc., etc., etc., old stuff, sure, but think of it—where he did go. I mean/ it goofs me, that man. Or where did Ez go, to put it that way, i.e., I have the sense of 2 main moves: England/ Italy, via France. 1/2. Finish. I also have the feel, his way of it, his tone, remains as local as the first day he must have got into London, to be looking around, & figuring it. But, jesus, take it as Lawrence had the thing; i.e., walk with him, (which sounds fatuous, but what the hell) thru south Germany, Switzerland, into Italy: i.e., FEEL. That’s the kick, yr difference, that Lawrence wd be getting it; and Ez/Bill: trying to go out for it, etc., which is inexact, but HERE: precise—TOUCH/ as you note same. Bill/ in Rasles gig (which is frightening thing)—‘he touched’, I think he says, and, quick, I ask you to throw that, that way of the act, against EVERY DAMN TOUCH Lawrence EVER noted, and/or, sure, the triteness of it, what wd stare, did, back at one: Broadway: YOU TOUCHED ME/ NOT: (the KICK) I TOUCHED YOU. Well, too simple, I wonder, and yet it falls for me, into place; makes me, my sense of this coming & going, shows me that complex, what wd be too easily put down as ‘passivity’ comes to characterize the traveler, but that it is, that he is so, open; not man sitting on ground, trees abt, starts to hack, clear the circle, which is Williams for me, and Ez. Well, here, it is easy to look out, to the edge of the woods, to know of such, blend there, move there, without displacing a single THING. How to do such—Lawrence, his whole life: intent, or what is at the root of his method/ to be touched: relation. Look, again, at that biz in the Plumed Serpent. But to stay, is to sit in yr circle, to be hacking, clearing, which is, let me say, honest work; the one way of it. And the other, the moving, is the other, that insistence, to be so, moving, not displacing, but sitting, coming to rest, where, how, but somehow: some hollow, shallow of the earth/ any damn thing: makes that: place; to sit till/ again/ the shift, & to move again, on/and so on.
I mean: myself, can clear nothing, can only look for the fit, to somehow figure it, & conjecture the thing, falls to hand. I don’t want a battle, fight, of it; not against, but somehow, to fall in, not step, but swing, not swing, but: as there is that moving. To have the feel, to have that riding of it.
Not to say, then, that staying is, in itself, to be anywhere, 7 yrs, or 70, inexact, or inexact, as sense of the way of it; since, say, Ira, or others, just so/ or yr Douglas, and how cd, wd, you move him; i.e., there is that fit, BUT lacking it, we cd not sit, or HOW? Well, Bill/ was he against it, was it that gig, the fighting, constant, i.e., you answer me, since you know. As with Ez: is, tho bitter, the place, now, less a place, is it, that it cd have been elsewhere, i.e., was or is there a place, he doesn’t start to clear out the underbrush, knowing there were, was, such for Lawrence, that he moved so, from such, place to place to place.
To jump: wd say, that, too, is in some of it, is the prose, under, makes that the way of the man, exceptions, notable or otherwise, notwithstanding. I.e., movement, such, is common, peculiar, to those men. Well, the under, that move, in Melville, Lawrence, Dostoyevsky, the people, who move, that shift of it.
Because, what the hell, beach, the sun, the boats, down, drawn up, and let’s make it—a most beautiful day, & what, what: is assured, but that we might (1) be like a bulk in it, an extraneous, or (2) fit. And what room, more, is there, to figure.
Here, I had it, or some of it, that I cd sit back, down; but myself, I know when that’s done with, or how long, it can be done so, serves. So/ move. Because, it’s not there, i.e., address, place, etc., matters; but that another place, should now be coming. To have the context, might come.
Well, to hell with it. Anyhow, that wd be some of it.
Myself, just as fucking nervous, to have this out, away, too.
Yr lad/
Bob
Reading this over, wake up, to see I come over, repeat, much of yr own ground, comment; well, let it go, for what anyone wd have to be making for himself, anyhow.
I.e., yr ‘Cannot think of environment.. as so much out there, separate, as it is extension of, self, or, . . . it is not much use but as I am it also . . . ’ What else. I.e., one thing else, i.e., thinking of yr comment, to be where there is nothing American, i.e., against that, wd put this: that the thing is, somehow, not so much that as to be, in a place so much its own way, any, that it cd make you, push you, somehow to a difference, not that change, i.e., to the ‘new’ personality, but to that shade, variation, cd plot you, new, the line to yr self, etc., to the in. As such wd goof me, in Burma, as it was, happened, one time in Tel Aviv, was sitting in this place, cafe, open, & the 7 languages, running on, then later, was sitting in another, and this German, old, somewhat fat, with the baldhead, him trying to play jazz, drums, and the old 1/2. 1/2, throwing him everytime, what he threw back to, constant, and blushing, he had leaned to me, talked one incredible moment, of it, that pull, exact, then back to the play and, later, was girl, Arab, who was waitress, the place packed, had come over & sat to talk, was to see her later, & it was that, sitting as she had taken me in, looking out at the: OTHERS. The end. That kick, to somehow: get in/ each place/ each time: IN. I mean, I was waiting for her, & fixed. And have found, oddly, always it is, to come straight out, in, anywhere: gets you, always in. Too much.
•••
Thursday/22nd [1951]
Dear Mitch,
Very fine to have yr letter—all the information, etc. Will see what might be done on the money; cannot bring great am’t because we don’t have it, but what we can, in cash. As for after that—it’s certain that the Trust Co. will probably make it impossible to work any gig straight from them—what I mean: part of their responsibility, is to make such funds as are coming to Ann, ‘available’ in the sense, deposited to a reliable holder. Hence, they will want the name of the bank there in Aix, & wd be grateful if you cd note it for us, in yr next letter. But perhaps they wd be willing to deposit some of it, here, in this country, & then, by check, we might be able to get someone here to cash same & send over, cash. Devious, but perhaps, etc. The am’t now, thanks to this war, has increased, i.e., it was $185 a month & is now $215, from which we can probably save considerably by living in France—or hope to. Well, time enough.
To say a bit abt the Olson biz, etc. Yr note that the alternative, in or out, seem obvious, etc. doesn’t in my opinion, allow for this fact: that almost no prose, now being written, falls in either category. That is, there certainly are other ‘places’, so to speak; immediately, I think of the ‘half-management’, which he notes; being where the writer mixes ‘objectivity’ with an attempt to interpret. I think any number of examples can be got from PR, or from many of the magazines, i.e., think of those stories, etc., where the writer posits a case, against an overt set of psychological references, i.e., makes this last, by either inference or overt noting, the ‘interpreter’. Such work is meddling, i.e., is neither in nor out, because it vacillates between these two assertions—on the one hand, figures that the ‘objective fact’ finds its own coherences & on the other, still believes that this coherence will be missed unless some ‘referent’ is given by which to ‘explain’ it. And there is another pattern, or way, in current prose, certainly as used (mis-used) as any ever was; i.e., the mnemonic. This makes ‘recall’ the major factor, i.e., intends that coherence be got by asserting a continuity, that continuity, which people believe the memory to assert, etc., along with the balance of emphases, etc., that the act of ‘recall’ can get to. Well, no more than a good many detective stories make use of, as well as, Proust.
Well, play that one again, then, i.e., figure that this in & out biz, is precisely what it asserts itself to be. The fictive, just so, blasted—to mean, construction, along given lines of practice (the novel & the 19th century, etc.), no longer relevant. If prose is to be ‘document’, in the sense that it be, the precise assertion of forces in relation, minus insofar as is possible an ‘interpreting’ ego, it is already a good deal more than ‘naturalism’ &, as well, a good deal more than ‘record’; because, you see, this intention means full force, no thing left out, no construction, no thing but what IS pulled in by the thing focused on, etc. It’s not my own way, & so that difficulty in trying to define it here, etc. But I think, even this brief note, can make clear its difference from the bulk of current writing.
Now, the other, the in, is what I myself intend; and it’s best defined, by, again, harking back to what Olson has said of it—that is, if the writer make himself, the context, or the beginning, of the context, if, there, he allow all play of all that relates, if, without warp or interpretation, he make himself force, in relation to what surrounds, is so related, again he can achieve a coherent other than the fictive & other than what now is prevalent in the writing of most prose. What happens is not ‘experience recalled, etc., etc., etc.’; what happens is what happens—i.e., throw yrself on the mat, like that, & you get the exact movements, of any force so introduced to any other, or group of others. Well, you walk out on the street, etc., & who’s to say what’s to happen, etc. And tho this may seem I believe much too turgidly in the ‘gratuitous’, it isn’t quite so simple—what it does mean; that I figure all force & its relations, to have relevance, & a relevance a good bit beyond the fictive (to mean, again, that which is constructed, to coincide with a given set of premises, such as, man is good, man is bad, man is not so good, man is not so bad, & all the way down the line.) And I believe, further, that, given a man, thrown so, by his own act, into this field, in the act of writing, what comes out has a coherence & a present not to be found in the fictive. Well, one comment Stendhal had made, which has some relation here: “I write out the plan after having written the story . . . to make the plan first freezes me, because after that, memory is the active agent instead of the heart.” The ‘heart’, is, even as it is, in Olson’s “the HEART, by way of the BREATH, to the LINE . . .” emotion, exactly in the act, as it comes there, I mean precisely, occurring as the writing occurs, etc. Without this, you have construction, etc., & no need to speak further of that.
I don’t think that “methodology” means anything more than what you yourself say, somewhat before your note of it, i.e., (where you note James’ comment on Flaubert) “. . . two ways in which a novelist may go about to handle his material . . .”, that is, this ‘handling’ is, precisely, “methodology”, well, it’s what he means, & I don’t think that meaning is far-fetched or so very irrelevant, etc., or even, that the word itself is so bad. Thinking of James, it’s Pound who says that the Notes (appended to the Ivory Tower) are a landmark in English prose, the history of the novel, because they demonstrate a comprehension of the novel as a “form” (and I have quoted P/ beginning with ‘comprehension’.) Anyhow, you must see that what James brought to the novel, was, exactly, METHOD; prior to him, there was NO method, no plan, no outline, nothing but an ‘intention’, etc. Now it happens, this emphasis on ‘plan’ that James got to, seems to me, overbalanced &, finally, crippling; but I can’t deny that the emphasis was precisely what English prose needed, having run out, etc., or having degenerated into a series of poorly written tracts, etc. At least, he shook off the conception of the novel as a vehicle for moralisms, and how he did, was, exactly, by asserting that the novel, being a ‘form’, must have its own ends & intentions, squarely related to this character of its form. Of course, assert a form for anything and you make impossible its manipulation without strict attention to this form; which is to say, why a thing is ‘present’ is because it has form, & why a thing finds an ‘end’ (instead of being, only, means) is again, because it has form.
Well, to get back—I wanted to note that, reading some letters of Flaubert’s, he does make the point that James makes, but a little more cogently. That is, James mixes ‘interest’ (which is subjective, call it, impetus to the act), with the act in progress, which is this “The more he renders it, the more he can feel it . . .” I mean only, that I am left with too general a sense of this ‘render’ & this ‘feel’—I don’t know exactly what he means by either one—being that they can, each, be applicable to a range of intentions, etc. Anyhow, what he says of Flaubert’s sense of form. Here it is in Flaubert’s words: “To suppose an idea without form is impossible, and vice versa . . .” I like that, because it gives both emphases, i.e., that without form, you have no content, & without content, you have no form, etc. Very fine. And enough? I figure it is. My own emphasis is: form is never more than the extension of content, i.e., I believe it begins so, from that prime: content. But that cd be argued, etc. It’s a matter of the work. Etc.
Talking of a ‘methodology’ makes this sense: that is, if you agree to this idea of this methodology, coming to mean, no more than the handling, I figure you’ll see why, certainly, it’s relevant. I don’t believe ‘great works’ or any, fall out of the head, like apples from the tree, etc. Or I believe the job of finding articulation, of, simply, gaining some precise sense of one’s own capabilities & faults & of, further, having enough grip on them & their extension into use (the actual writing) to be able to give presence to whatever comes to hand, is the one precise job we might have; we can’t set ends for our work, prior to its writing, we can’t, or I believe we can’t, work assendto, & begin by holding the burning belief that man is evil, etc., because I believe the act of writing to assert its own relevancies & even, its own discoveries, & that which makes such impossible, by clamping on a ‘view’ prior to the act of writing, or a view, so rigid & ridiculously dogmatic, that it twists lust into virtue, hate into love, etc., is what should drop off, fall off, even as the apples, etc. Anyhow, we can’t talk about ‘ends’ because they are precisely what, the work can assert, & only the work; but means, —certainly we will have to give some attention to them. Not, by that, to fall into, what I expect is precisely USA, AD 1951: The Engineers, etc. But to have sufficient competence, & understanding of method, as means, to be able to be, articulate, open, coherent. Well seems pretty certain, etc. [^ Well.]
Leed’s address: 309 South Clinton Street, Iowa City, Iowa.
I don’t have a copy of WHITE MULE: I’d read it sometime back, & at that time, figured there wasn’t anything there, one couldn’t find in the stories, & anyhow, don’t figure either the bulk of the stories or these novels, to be up to: 1) IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN; 2) A DREAM OF LOVE. No matter that they are this ‘history’ & ‘drama’ respectively—well, do believe they are much better prose, & even as such pertains, or might, to the writing of a novel, have much more use. Myself, I don’t think he ever wrote better than: IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN—& for the total in, i.e., the full gig, the play is a good deal better than any of the stories, because in the last, you get a certain staginess, I mean, a fixing of elements, now & again, is not too good; this doesn’t have to do with the best of the stories but does have to do with some & the novels, which ramble & finally bore one stiff (tho this is snobbish, & I don’t mean to make it just that, etc. It is, they are very slack writing, as opposed to these other two instances, of his prose.)
Well, about it for the moment. Snow here, even snowing at the moment; slush & a hell of a mess. Also, neighbors get tired of saying goodbye—since we had first thought we were leaving April 3rd. And no one more beat than ourselves, etc.
But soon.
I’m not quite sure which port we’ll come into; I think, Cherbourg, & if not that, le Havre. The idea of going to Marseilles, is a good one, & I’d tried to find out, earlier, abt boats going there, but at this distance, & lacking addresses, etc., it’s next to impossible. Just that we can’t look around, etc. It’s meant (being here) about 2 weeks’ delay on every item we’ve had to get (as the passport took 4 weeks, instead of 2, etc.); well, no matter.
Hope that something comes on the house; when you know, send us the address, i.e., wd be a great help to have it before taking off from here. Cd leave it at the post-office, etc.
Also, many thanks for the note about yr friend, & the hotel, in Paris. Certain to be a help.
We go, I believe (I don’t, know, anything at the moment), on the Ile de France.
Well, enough for the time. Will write soon again; and looking forward to Dennie’s letter.
All our love to you,
Bob
Ann says to ask Dennie, if she wants her baby clothes back; i.e., my sister is having a baby pretty soon, & wd otherwise leave them with her, along with what we have, etc. Whatever you say.
A drab America, with or without
advertising is only possible
always in this limited century
if we stand up and take it, not lie down
what then, why, downtown will be gloomy
like corner lots beside the banks already
on cold evenings many things darken
the bright stream of jazz, our classic stuff
also the network of river-drowning
not daily be pronounced history
(Sent in by Mr. L. E. of Swampscott, Mass.)
•••
LETTER TO DENISE LEVERTOV AND MITCH GOODMAN
April 18th, 1951
Dear Denny & Mitch
Very fine to have your letters; a little damn breather in this other hell, etc. The thing, that we are still in the same fix,—don’t yet know just what will come. There’s nothing we can get for a place around here,—in fact nothing in France that we’ve been able to get word on. And have had, god knows, enough people looking, etc.
But not at all sure this is the country in the 1st place; Italy, from what you had said, and what, too, others say, sounds the much better place. I wrote to D. D. Paige and he says we could get something there in Rapallo; but that’s very fancy, etc. Don’t know how the hell that would set, and expensive, & might be simply another headache.
Otherwise, I guess to come back. Olson says we could come there to BMC; wouldn’t pay anything but would mean room & board and that’s the main thing, on any quick jump back. Well, it is still very unsettled. Have less than two weeks left, so should know soon what will turn out as ‘it’, etc. Will keep you posted.
On the poem,—just now checking back to see the copy you’d sent. I think this present comment of yours has mixed itself into two of my own, etc. I.e., first of all to get straight on which poem this one is; I figure, the one called, or beginning:
Perched on a bristly grass, a shaved steep slope, etc., etc.
If so, my comment wasn’t aimed against the ‘change’ element, but about certain slownesses in the progression. Or I damn well think it was? If you have that letter still,—could check me. Otherwise, no matter.
(I remember I’d hit another poem on this thing of a ‘central image’ or what I’d thought could, or even should, be one.)
Wait a minute,—I haven’t got the right poem, it is that other I take it you’re talking about. The one with the door, & fire, etc.
—That one don’t surface,—somewhere in all this litter, but damned if I know just where. Anyhow, what you say here makes sense—change, I get it,—I hope I got it that first time. Anyhow, you are the boss; what strikes you as it, that’s it. Voila.
Let me read it in ORIGIN, eh? Ok.
I got another issue of that there WINDOW—he is an idiot but there are two poems, in this one, that are, strangely, very damn fine. A man named Martin Seymour-Smith; do you know anything about him?
Otherwise, it is such lush & loose crap. And the reviews sound like they were all wearing little lord fauntleroy suits, etc. How sweet & correct they get to be; and it could, as always, be something else,—they do have paper, type, etc. But to hell with it.
ALL DEVILS FADING
All her devils here tonight,
Duly expected: a sour mouth,
And ache in the head, and her voice
Ceaseless in anger. In blurred sight
Angels on her wall rejoice
At a sudden end of drouth;
But here, still this blight.
There were no easy years:
Always, in glut, a vague hunger
At spring. “You were never divine,”
She says, “and over your affairs
The shadow will always incline,
Closing in. It is your anger
At nature,” she says, and stares.
Why then, with her slight smile,
All devils fading, does she give
Me her hand? and close her eyes,
Thus in her sorrow to beguile
My death. It must be she too dies,
But with no love to forgive
Me for her own betrayal.
Very goddamn fine GRACE to that poem; one can be pedantic about it. It is a fucking RARE ingredient. Second verse has rhythms ONLY Blackburn could top. And he couldn’t do better, and third verse has a damn fineness of edge, of position, NO ONE beats. A wonderful fucking USE of the conjectural, there, “It must be she too dies . . .”; that is damn, damn fine. Just that beautiful damn sliding into MEANING; this guy has GOT it.
Words here & there forced by rhyme structure, but handled with grace at that. GRACE: quality which is the result of perfect bevel between the means used to suggest a meaning, and that meaning (itself) resultant.
Read that thing aloud, let it ride out; fine fine thing.
But slight? But a good poem if one figure, it’s not at all easy to say anything, and the mind here used to say this, can then go on to say other things, and it is, anyhow, not at all easy to say anything about the relation outlined above (in the poem) and this man has done it sans fatuosity or pompousness. And has himself a real HEROINE, and she seems very very lovely. It is beautiful statement of CONTACT, between two human-beings; and I have not the slightest difficulty in believing either of the two exists, and they do not go blurred or dim when I look out the window, or simply think of something else.
Etc., etc. I got the 2nd issue of GOAD; same damn enthusiasm, and excites me all over again. Why not get him some stuff? Some notes even on what is NYC now,—what the feel is. Or stuff like that item of the Italians getting soaked, etc. Or do get in touch with him; I asked him to write you, hope he does. The address is now: 207 South Mayfair Avenue, San Francisco 25, California.
Have been writing a little, poetry, etc. It was good to get anything out, after the bleak winter.
THE INNOCENCE
Looking to the sea, it is a line
of unbroken mountains.
It is the sky.
It is the ground. There
we live, on it.
It is a mist
now tangent to another
quiet. Here the leaves
come, there
is the rock in evidence
or evidence.
What I come to do
is partial, partially kept.
[CP I, 118]
I was reading Rexroth’s damn long thing there in ND #13; I never did get thru the last part. What the hell does he think he is? Eh? This damn form beats me,—just don’t make it at all. But sense impeccable in many places,—but drones on & on & on.
You relieve me about this crib, and will get down there, shortly, to see what the hell they have done. I thought someone else had a baby, etc. And so, etc. Well, good to know it is still within reach; shall try to grab it.
Did you read Pound’s ABC of READING? Good book,—very clear exegesis of his main heads. Terrific school bk/ if anyone would ever consider actually USING it.
Read Kenner’s damn bk/—THAT is horrible. Christly pompous style he’s got: “When the widow of Ernest Fenollosa perceived that the poet of Lustra was ideally fitted to work into articulated forms, etc., etc., etc.” Very hard to even get THRU that one—incidentally, it continues (on the book-page) for five more lines. Ending, “. . . of penetrating an utterly alien poetic method from which unworn procedures and formulations might be drawn . . .” O/ utterly!
Fuck that.
Creeley’s Law: any novel you can’t pick up and read the last 20 pages of and then go back to the beginning and read the whole of, with pleasure, is a bad novel.
Sequence. Novel written on premise of logical surprise: no good.
That is, sd law: all other things being equal. Men who satisfy sd criterion:
Stendhal
Lawrence
Melville
etc., etc. The emphasis is this: IS the going-on of sufficient tightness, & persistence in its own right (as in this formulation: a) detail for its own sake; b) detail in pattern of whole—to have those 2 ingredients balance tightly & cleanly) to break up that usual continuum of which the detective-story gives us such pleasant examples?
Henry Green, by the way, is also satisfactory, judged by this ‘law’. A man could certainly write a very bad book which would, anyhow, satisfy this way of looking at things,—but he could not write a good one which did not satisfy this way of looking at things.
It shows what a hell of a ham
Graham Greene finally is.
In short,—IS the main line straight to the sod & all? The grave, like they say? IS that the main significance. Or is it, more simply, precisely what Rimbaud was shouting,—the particular energies of any instant? What Lawrence put to such exact work.
If one writes narrative prose on this line, the line of a to b to c,—c as climax, the dying-off, etc., IF he writes on that line, then what is his emphasis? On fact all things head for the bucket, voila.
It’s a dull point, actually. It is not the main one.
Sure, this is a broken way of putting it,—any way is but the demonstration. However. “Today all American novels try to be shockers. If it doesn’t shock? and French writing that is looked at tries to be the same on an “elevated” (snobbish) plane : the “profound” insight. All forget that writing is simply writing FIRST. It is writing, an elemental and pleasing thing. I am sick of it. What is going to shock us? We are tired of being shocked.” Wm. C. Williams, etc. It makes sense.
He said he got the chair of poetry, Library of Congress; that makes a hell of a lot of SENSE,—damn damn fine. He follows Aiken,—shows you what it had been, etc.
Ok, about it, and will keep you on. Do likewise. Things can’t keep on in this present mess, etc. Should be something decided damn soon. Will tell you what, when we know.
All love to you all,
Bob
April 27th/ Just landed a place, & some damn ankle catch at that! It’s in Lambesc, campagna, & ok. Six mille the month; fair enough. Plenty of room, fine grounds, etc. We even got a big GATE, just like the aristocrats! Phew. (Got to Rapallo, & that wasn’t it. But driving thru Sori, saw yr bell tower, & thought of you all—that, incidentally, looked a hell of a lot better than R/—latter place simply too lush, & cheap damn lushness at that.)
PS—will get you address later this week
[note in left margin] MITCH: how abt trying REVIEW of Wms’ Auto/ for New Mexico Quart/, Albuquerque, NM. Man is Lash, Kenneth Lash (remember . . . ), but seems chastened & trying to do something; make it, say, 5,6 pp/s double-spaced. They pay a little. Wd get you to movies maybe! Once. (But he was saying, how great he thought it was—I mean, iron is hot, etc.)
•••
[Editorial note: This letter contains superscript numerals that are part of Creeley’s original typescript.]
April 22/ 51
Dear Denny,
Very pleased to have yr letter; an answer to the last just mailed, & so won’t go into same biz again (i.e., the house, etc.).
Fruitless enough, to go on arguing the biz of ‘frenzy’—but if only to have the last word (which I very well know, I won’t), I make this logic for those other comments. Take it this way, or break it down, so: one can have (among a variety, larger) at least 2 kinds of ‘essence’ for any thing, coming to exist in his writing (& here, of course, it’s poetry we are thinking of)—& by ‘essence’, I mean those solids, which come to make substance for the given poem, etc. Simply, materials & the presence given to them, in the work.
So, then: (for our use) 2, 2 kinds. And the first, let’s make it: of the instant, having no ‘history’ beyond the given context, no attachment to an external set of actions or premises (& it should be made clear, this is not to confine the possible associations, but rather to make clear, emphases) which the reader might be given, in another instance, by either implication, or overt reference.
In other words, like this:
“Then see it! in distressing
details—from behind a red light
at 53rd and 8th . . .”
That is, here, in this instance, the emphases all fall to the immediate, to that instant, of coherence, of the thing, just here, just in this one context, being: NOW.
Like, Williams, most of his work (the example being, also, from him) where the fact is, NOW, is of, this instant, & the ‘history’ is, for that time, put down. And all falls, comes to bear, on this complex, of the instant, & all ‘value’ gets its weight from precisely, this complex—which is to say, no ‘prior value’ can ‘act’ in this complex.
Well, 2, that is, another way for it. Think, first, of two phrases: “the aged oak . . .” & “that place, where we had been . . .” The first, by an adjective (aged) implies a history, which the context, in all probability will make use of. This is the language of, recall, of, then, the mnemonic, wherein (usually) a shifting thing is held, the flux being, between this present & that past. Well, you must know the usual uses, of same. The second example is abt the same thing; the phrase, “where we had been . . .”, implying again, a ‘past’, which again probably, will be exploited in the poem’s whole.
Now, when I argue this biz, of ‘frenzy’, & whether or not, say, this palm tree cd be, so, itself, the act of frenzy, & by token of such, for that instant, what the act is, and/or, itself, the tree, in fact this frenzy—it’s clear enough, I’m pushing off from this biz of the, the instant; which is to say, the palm tree, here, is & insists on being, an entity held in, this instant, held just so, there, in the immediacy, of its context. It doesn’t matter, say, whether an old woman had planted it to commemorate the birth of a child, to her, at the age of 88; or if, as well, this same storm came, finally, to uproot it; or even if, by vote of the town, it was decided to move it precisely 1 mile SSW, from its present site.
And so, even the more reasonable ‘history’ you tell me of, that is, “most of the time . . . as calm as could be . . .”, is, as well, irrelevant for the reader (or the writer, in the act of sd poem). [← !is not true, finally, but the other is—and is, the point.]
All that does come to matter, here, is what, precise, this palm tree is, in the poem’s entity, what, there, it is, what there, its presence.
And that seems abt the end of it. Tho this much more, to make clear I have no argument against a mixture, of this biz of, recall, coupled with the other, of the instant. Well, this very wonderful example:
“The blossoms of the apricot
blow from the east to the west,
And I have tried to keep them from falling . . .”
That is, there, so hinged, held, the instant against the matter of all time, or of all action—& the care: a lifetime, & the loss: eternity.
(It is Pound & the words, Kung, & here, or in just this: the sum of all his work.)
Well, enough of it. Ok.
(But it seems I can’t yet shut up, or, this much to show you where it cd get ridiculous:
“How the bucket, this rust,
the edge of it, that redness
being Mary who had left it out in the rain
that time we all went picking blue-berries
up on Foster’s hill . . .
Is present, is the
color of
present, has no time but
now
tho it is almost 5 yrs old
& is pretty good even yet
under the circumstances.”
(Creeley/ unpublished mss(hit)!)
Ok. Is enough.
Anyhow, a confusion, when it comes to exist, between where the ‘presence’ is to be [^ emphasized], either of past, or of present, can fuck you up, but good. But wd make it clear: this hasn’t a damn thing to do with sd poem, & sd palm-tree, more than to make my logic for taking this palm tree, ONLY in the PRESENT the poem insists on. Ok.
On the new one: a hard thing for me to figure (if only because I had the lines of the other 2, in my ear, before I saw, in yr letter, it was made from them). Anyhow, one or two things (which, damn well let me insist, are only what comes, immediately into my head, being my, head, & so that limit, etc., etc., etc.)
One thing: certain things here & there, seem (in some sense) to break out of what ‘pattern’ of coherence the poem has. It’s a hard thing to lay out, & perhaps best to make a copy here, marking by ‘( )’, what bothers me (& following up same, with some more notes).
1(Precise
as rain’s first spitting
words on the pavement)
pick out
the core of violence
give it back
(aware of2 (cool dawns) paused
over strident avenues
3(come in simplicity unnoticed))
iron satyrs stamping
in desire
jagged heads
pushed up
the city: inordinate!
red honey on its towers
smoking . . .
spring evenings in sea light
facades relax
& always nightfall can impose
a fantasy on the black air
chips of light
flashing scattered
4(but many fathoms down
men are walking
in clefts of hacked rock –
are running
jostled in dirty light from5 (far above)
(reflected light) –
are dying
the derelict & the diamond-sharp)
speak to them!
words must beat
(iron heart of the unconscious street)
until a child might echo
6(until a man looks up: angel)
under the unturned stone:
kick it away!
1/ a confusion of my own, i.e., is the rain spitting out words (as a figure, of speech), or are these words, there, like the rain is, on, literally, the pavement (as that impetus, to them, i.e., so available in that ‘place’), or are the words in the ‘men’, implied as being there, because there are words? Anyhow: I confess to no clear pick-up, on the base sense of this section, & further, do not think a poem picks up quickly enough if its beginning is, as this is, a simile.
2/ a minor thing; mainly that ‘cool dawns’ comes to my senses, as a generalized specific, i.e., it implies an immediate sensing somewhat put out into generality—primarily that neither ‘cool’ nor ‘dawns’ are, in themselves, forceful enough to carry the image. The contrast, i.e., where it seems the words do carry such: strident avenues’, tho, again, there’s a little of the cliché in it, too.
3/ I get this ok, now; I didn’t at first, that is, because of my own wondering of who it is, is the subject of these lines (i.e., who it is that is “aware”), I had wondered, at first, if this line was an address to a third person (which seems somewhat ridiculous now). But to make a comment on all of this section: are the avenues strident, when these dawns come?, at that time?, of day? Because there is no ‘superior’ context to enforce the image, against a ‘literal’ truth here, i.e., nothing that can twist the context out of a literal exposition of these dawns, in a literal place; hence, NYC, say, or any city similar, at 5am, & is such a city, then, strident?
4/ my only question abt this section, taken as a lump, is: IS this the central image, is it to be such? I.e., it’s not a question of if it does the work, etc., being, it can as well as any other. The question: how many figurations can you work on this street, before its own actuality is muddled? As, say, image 1: street & the rain hitting it, that cleanness, etc., I mean, cleanness, of the hit (not that is washed, etc.); image 2: hot noisy streets (as opposed to, “cool dawns”); image 3: city, in its height, brute, iron, lust & power, etc.; image 4: a mixture of this sea-light, & an electric light (as of, flashes, perhaps, thunder storm, lights (tho only to suggest, the possible parallel), I mean, electric, flashes, precisely yr: “flashing scattered”; image 5: the sea city, under, pressure of water, light filtering down, reflected, the acts, in that light; image 6: hardness, streets, as of iron, metal, hard core, of the ‘heart’, under, streets, or more simply, that is, we are back to the literalities; image 7: almost the ‘proverbial’, or mythic, i.e., (DON’T leave a stone unturned, etc.), an ‘air’ of this mythic, of angels, & men, as those for whom angels can be, & the child, as the innocent, etc., & so on.
I do all this only to suggest the number of images, thru which a reader is compelled to move, & that further fact, he’s given no central one, call it, on which to base his references, etc. Because the street is metamorphosed from the very 1st line, etc., & is never given time to be: “street”, etc.
(at the end of these notes, want to take up a main head, which comes in, precisely, in this section.)
5/ my only question: is it too vague, this phrase? Perhaps the ‘vagueness’ serves a use, but anyhow, my question.
6/ two senses come to me, here, & I am wary, frankly, of both. Well, 1) that this man, with the stone off, becomes angel, or 2) finds angel [^ under stone]—& the thing, that the gain, of either, seems rather vague, or perhaps only that, angel, strikes little in me, unless substantiated (viz Blake, et al).
To get back, & wd again repeat, that these comments are only my own inexactness, i.e., only where the poem gets out of my reach, etc.
The thing: yr strongest image hits me, as being this sea-one, I mean, it is the one in which action & development takes place—it runs, then, not as an extension, as of, horizontal [^ like this does →]
“the board like a line
the head like a melon
the sand like a sky”
but rather, is, base root: [^ like this →]
“the sea, in its distance, marks
the line of wonder, where rise, the several
angels, or wonder, of
these fish, marking a coastal range
of, etc., etc., etc.”
which is only to show, how angels & fish, et al, might assert a co-existent, a simultaneous, presence.
Which is the problem here, i.e., that this one sea-image, of these men, these lives, under it, takes on a central weight. Now, see what happens as the poem moves on, from this point.
You say, mark you: “speak to them!” That is, speak to them, these men (and where are they???), ‘many fathoms down’, & that’s the damn rub, i.e., that they are, these whom you wd address, very much in the substance of this prior image, & no immediate way to get them out. So yr speech, involves men still under the sea, as far as yr reader is concerned, and so, frankly, all subsequent action is trying to shake off such, as no man cd reasonably kick off a stone, many fathoms down, etc.
You see the kick? Well, myself, I take it as the result of a [^ developed] metaphor which has been treated as tho it were a simile, that is, as tho it did not, itself, assert a continuum, of action, etc.
(To explain same: a simile has no reality beyond that which it’s the ‘extension’ of: to wit—a head like a melon. The underlined has no existence, minus head. MORE, it can allow of any number of OTHER similes attached, as it is, to the SAME referent. As: a head like a melon, like a football, like a overripe peach. That is, each, in turn, in turn ride back, clearly, to head, & there’s no fight, of any import, between them.
But, metaphor: is something else again. Take it so:
“(Sun) The ball of fire falls & gashes against the substance of the land, burning there, its myriad fuels . . .”
I can’t then say, with out trouble.
“The place where all are warm, where
there’s no heating problem, where it’s summer every day.”
You just can’t side, against a developed metaphor (as yrs is), any other action that doesn’t admit of its own ‘conditions’.
Well, metaphor can be so sided, IF its referent runs clearly at the head. Like this:
“He was a brute, a lion, a beast, of courage, a veritable jungle of lust” (altho, even there, the shift to ‘jungle’, & that other ‘basis’ for action’ is apt to disturb . . . )
Well, the rub, as I take it, here: that this metaphor, of the sea-land, sticks too good, its too damn fine, if such can be! What it does: fuck up all other similes, & actions in the poem, as it does fight with them, for the BASE reality. Ok. And that seems abt it.
(But note, anyhow, that in the poem, the “main action” (in literal terms of, he bought 7 apples, & then went to a movie & then, came home), occurs in this passage. Hence, the effect of such does impose its presence on all other ‘actions’, & most notably: that of the end.
Wd say, either 1) make of this sea-image, the full thrust of the poem, i.e., make it the center, & push it to the limit; or 2) break it back to simile as (as rain’s first spitting, or even as other adjectives, etc.) such. Now, there are too many scatters, of adjective, of metaphor, of action, etc. And no prime, to which to refer same, but that implied, implicated in, such phrases as: “pick out the core of violence, etc.” You don’t have sufficient force, in these, to carry the relation of these other things to them, i.e., one slacks off.
To hell with it, for now—I say too much, anyhow, & expect it’s: total confusion. Anyhow, do think that the problem is: 1) over-reach of this section noted (as developed metaphor, etc.); 2) under-play of base referent, action, for reader to string these metaphors, actions, on. Ok.
It’s almost torture, to break these things out, at this distance. I see my own slackness, but how to get them back to 5 pages later without making it a morass of confusion (a veritable jungle! ha). Anyhow, it does seem finally, gain, to clear these things somehow, because I do insist: 1) an idea of what ‘energy’ is, in a poem, 2) What can break this ‘energy’ down, 3) all the related heads—all these things must be got to, not, finally & lord help us if they become so as dogma, as that rigidity, of attitude or practice, but altogether as the necessary clearing of a few possibly pertinent premises on which the act, final, of poetry might come to rest comfortably. And it’s into this same collection, call it, the notes of metaphor, et al, can go. Only a few damn things, christ knows, that seem to re-occur in poetry & seem, as well, to make trouble each time they do. And so, the tentative observations. Ok.
Which ends me, for the moment. (I never thot I’d get thru it, damn frankly! I mean, my notes—& make same plain. I don’t figure the poem can’t be cleared. Myself, I wd be curious to see what this undersea biz might get to, pulled out whole, that is, let loose to run to whatever force it contains: that thrust, of same. Now, she’s a poem, within, a poem, & it’s a tough one, etc. Well, I don’t want to take off all over again, so will drop her, just here.
Will bring the Olson bklet/ also, hope soon, or someday, to have the new one—Emerson has been damn near a yr on same, as it is. Someday. But will have stuff, anyhow, with me. Very much wish I cd bring recording of his reading—is the end! But, cannot at the moment see the use of lugging along such equipment as wd be necessary to hear it: to wit—recorder unit, simplifier, & speaker.
Also, a copy of ORIGIN off to you, with this mail.
So abt it. Figure Bereaved is a good one, & don’t want to finger same further, i.e., you have all I cd think of, to object to, in same, & this can get ridiculous, if I set out to badger, etc.
I find I didn’t mail that other letter, so will stick it in here. So / this for now. Will get back to it soon.
Yrs/ in chaos:
Bob
[note above salutation] Have not read any Ford—will be borrowing some from you when we get in.
•••
[Fontrousse, France]
May 23/ 51
Will check with Gerhardt on the Levy directly; also, will keep my eyes open for Sordello edition. Also, postcards, et al. Ok.
(Saw part of G/s 1st issue in print, & substance of same, pretty fair. But, lacks Cid’s flexibility at this point.)
Dear Paul,
An incredible number of hitches & delays to getting here, but with all possible anti-climax, we made it. A very beautiful place—& the rooms (3) very wonderful, i.e., a winding stair up, to these 2 bedrooms: high weirdly angled ceilings, & all a fine flat white (&/or : whitewash), & the kitchen, below, very fine as well. These rent for $5 per month, which is somewhat high for the locale, but we can hardly kick with a conscience.
Well, very hard, at the moment, to give you very much more of this place. The land is fantastic, & a fantastic ease to it all—we look out of our bedroom, to the south, & a very odd mountain, something like a boat, beyond which, or at the foot, is the place where, so they say, the Romans had put an end to the invasion of the barbarians, & all such things.
And, as there wd be, acres of grape vines, which, it turns out, are not high or on trellises, but are closely cropped little “trees” which stand abt 2 ft high, & all very neat & fine.
Really, a wonder, this place, & tho both kids are, now, screaming in my ears, & both of us, beat with the travel, which is the worst possible (to mean: the most hopelessly miserable & confused biz imaginable)—is real cool, even so. In fact : the end. Ok.
(Font Rousse, is a very small town, of some 6 families, & our place, at the end of the street, stucco, joined, as they all are, to the ones before it, etc. We have a small plot of ground, to ourselves, & our kitchen door opens out to the road, where, for example, someone’s loading hay from the place next to ours. Sort of a ‘dutch oven’ like arrangement, where our gas stove sits, a small 2 burner one, & tile all over & the room, itself, very cool & pleasant tho it’s hot as hell outside now. Roman ruins all over hell.)
I wd advise, immediately, that you put in for a Fulbright fellowship, which, on the strength of yr translations (1) & yr poetry (2) you can certainly get, & come to hell over because it is very great.
So, this for the moment, to thank you again for all yr kindness in NYC—& my own very certain pleasure at having had that time with you. It holds.
Will write soon again. I find mail is an expensive biz, so will hold off eloquence till we have more loot.
Write soon, &, if it’s not too expensive, wd very much like to see what comes from now on. Was very much taken by what you showed me, & the 3 copied, & here—very fine. (The SUMMER one: very cool. Which is abt it—being, my head somewhere back in le Havre, & very glad to be rid of same.
All our love to you, & thanks again.
Write soon/
Bob
c/o GOODMAN, LES CAMUS, PUYRICARD, BOUCHES DU RHONE, FR/
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Fontrousse,
par Aix en Provence,
Bouches du Rhone,
FRANCE
June 29, 1951
Dear Bill,
I’d heard from Paquette and Olson that you’d not been feeling so well these past months. Very, very sorry to learn of it and very much hope it’s done with by the time this letter gets to you. There damn well seems enough on your shoulders without that too.
A difficult thing to put, but anyhow—on the boat, coming over, jammed as we were with the kids and a cabin about the size of a public john, I was going through, again, your IN THE AMERICAN GRAIN. Damn well cannot tell you, or tell you enough, how it hit me. Well, sitting out on the deck, and neither here nor there, just that passage between—it all stuck, cut in with a fantastic strength. So, thanks. Which is the point.
Here, we make out. Cheap living and very damn fine surroundings. We’re in a small village of some 6 or so families, and very decent people. I was even offered a job on one of the farms near here, so if we go broke, have an out. But it’s what we needed, at least for the time. Living in NH had got too tight, too cramped for all of us, and there was no damn rest in it, no chance to figure it. But I very much miss the openness, the kind of room one can’t find here. Everything seems worked out, drained out—no room. And the kind domesticated landscape isn’t going to keep us too long. But certainly no kicks for the time.
Had good news from Laughlin, though no hulk ever made port on fainter wind. Anyhow, he’ll print the 5 stories I’d shown you last fall in the coming ANNUAL along with a preface by Chas Olson. The latter is damn fine—it notes the kind of commitment now possible, now damn well necessary, in prose, and why it hadn’t got said before, I don’t know. Anyhow, he says it, and that’s what counts.
I’m damned if I can figure why Laughlin prints them, or listen:
“Frankly, I find them awfully dry and dull reading . . .” But his business. Ok.
Hope all goes well with you, and that you’re better. Anytime you have time, let me hear from you. But know that you’re rushed, so only when you can.
All my best,
Bob
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
August 1/51
Dear Bill,
A copy of PATERSON IV, sent on here, finally got in this noon, and I had been waiting for it, certainly, because of the fineness of the first three.
In any event, I was sitting down, having read it, too quickly, and my wife getting supper ready, etc., began to read it to her, trying to figure, frankly, if it was you, or it was me, was off.
How can I put it—but as, straight, did read it, the works, sitting there, to her, and damn well heard it, myself, got the whole thing hard, and how it damn well came in. It is difficult to say it, because, for one thing, I revere you. I take you as something I can take, very much in my own hand, and very exactly there. The difficulty is that one supposes a thing, a man a thing, like yourself to be complete, to be a fix, as Olson would say it, beyond inessential intrusions.
But here, this distance from what comes to sit hard in my own guts, anyhow—here, I have to make it anyhow, or say it—the fineness of this writing.
The sea part, the opening of ‘III’ & many many other ‘places’ are as beautiful, as firm as the ground that makes them. Damn simply—it is an organism, a continual growing in the head of whoever can listen.
Very damn wonderful to know you are there.
All my very best to you,
Bob
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Sept/27, 1951
Dear Bill,
Yours in, and many thanks for the permission. Gerhardt will be equally grateful.
France: beat, dead place at this point, and the people are simply without any energy. What can one expect, I damn well suppose. But depressing—a very mild word for the present sensation. I think we can stay on, mainly, because it is a cheap living for us, and, too, I can use the perspective, although it is a deeply bitter experience. We don’t see, frankly, very many, i.e., we have kept more or less in this town (small, farming, etc.) but going out, now & again, it strikes in as the same thing. No one can be moved very much; no one has that part of him left.
What it does do: make the US a damn clear thing, unavoidable. Americans here, or those I’ve met up with, don’t really know quite what to say to each other.
But cheap, certainly that, by any US standard. We do very well on some $30 a wk, the 4 of us (2 kids), and that covers everything. The present place we have rents for $6 (a little under) a month, and serves fair enough.
I don’t know where one can go; I really don’t trust place, anyhow. I am certainly young, but have never felt it did anything more than catch me up, trip me, into assumptions, etc. It is hard to keep clear, in any case.
Otherwise, I wish I could see India again, as it was the 1st time, a damn war, etc. They were fine, fine people; they were on to something, it seemed to me then.
What about any of the other places, although I wonder what they come to, now. But I can’t see Europe, not with this death on it. They say, Italy, and oddly, Spain, are better, i.e. the people, though deadened by simple hunger & lack of clothing, do rise even so. A friend just now in Italy writes with a great deal of excitement, about the movement in architecture, how he feels they have struck on to something that can hold them. But France—jesus, you are well away from it, or it doesn’t offer a place.
(Again, we hang on, because it makes a gauge, for us; but you know it anyhow, and what is new, to us, would not be so, for you.)
Should make very clear that I say any of this from a very limited knowledge; we are very isolate. We see, really, very few people. What we would know about—small farming town. Useless to generalize about the ‘country’, France, even though I suspect parallels.
Very kind of you to make the comments on the work in ORIGIN; it means considerable to me. Have never forgot your kindness, all of it. Thanks again.
Will look for the AUTOBIOGRAPHY with all possible excitement; I damn well need something just like that to lift me out of this for awhile. Very grateful.
So, this for now; and will write soon again. You make a damn fine place to put these things. Glad that the novel does come. And all best luck on it.
All best to you,
Bob
Have you seen Olson’s APPOLONIUS OF TYANA*—I think he has damn well rung the bell again. Very exciting thing, and prose,—really he hasn’t handled it this firmly since CALL ME ISHMAEL. I know you’ll like it, and hope you can get hold of a copy, there.
Cid told me abt your letter to him, re ORIGIN; very damn kind thing. That magazine means a good deal to me, to any of us, finally, like Blackburn, Olson, and the rest. The sheer wonder of having a sympathetic outlet—what that damn well does do.
The damn ones like KENYON, the big-wigs, they trap you, but quick; they took another story, of mine, and when, getting here, etc., I felt it was finally a little easy, and asked for it back, I take it they felt themselves insulted, or I have never had a damn word in answer, from them.
In other words, the younger one is, the more they assume the favor they do, in printing, etc. And the more they assume one should damn well have NO feelings, about his OWN work. Fuck them all. Good that Cid gives us just that chance.
[note in left margin] *issued there at Black Mt/College; book. He is staying on there for the time; they expect their baby anytime now, I think—theoretically, October. He also got out, LETTER FOR MELVILLE: protest against the recent Melville Society business, which seemed a rather cheap commercialization—“birthday party”, etc. The usual.
•••
October 3, 1951
Dear Denny,
Your other letter just here, & do think it a very good idea to do just what you say, i.e., to write Williams. Finally, all one ever gets out of it: those readers who can get it. Ok, and the address: Dr. W. C. Williams, 9 Ridge Road, Rutherford, N.J.
I felt nervous, frankly, writing about the poem, and particularly, because I am as apt to generalize as anyone, and get off into certain backwaters (so they are, usually, in the face of the poem) that are not much more than my own; in this case, the whole problem of description, and what it relates to in my own things, etc. In short, did not feel I did very much, in that reading, or that much of what was said, after, could be of help.
But more abruptly, or at least now: the fact that I have a stronger sense, of the content, from the little note you put on the back of the poem, i.e., read it for yourself, and tell me which of the two ‘instances’ (the poem, or this) come to the actual substance you are after.
“The point is supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure I haven’t shown it, that the wonderful crammed future we leaned into for a moment, almost believing in it (“Let’s go round the world together when the war’s over”): our “Youth” in fact—was right there to hand just then in that very idea, in our eagerness, in the unspokeness at that time of love. Does it seem to say that at all? or have I left it all out in trying not to stuff it? I don’t want any feelings of nostalgia in it—just to pin it. for a moment.”
Difficult to say much more, than just to put that there, i.e. how else. The one thing, “art”, and of what use to pretend it is anything if it cannot give this same exactness, even in the loopings, or the passage of, a feeling.
Id est: why worry about ‘art’, or anything, if one can make a clarity on any occasion, on any way,—really, if there only be something that does say it, that does get it over, poem or whatever? If the note seems to me more exact, more a thing than the poem finally does, perhaps I do read in, too easily, knowing you, etc. But I doubt it. I would want the poem to be better, etc., I have that hope for such things.
Well, enough, I figure; any one time doesn’t really matter, or if it does, it is not that ‘every time’ be a success, etc. All of which, saying it this way—sounds too much, much too much, like leaning on this poem, too hard, and trying to damn it, etc. Not that—many things in it I like very much, but against the note : it can’t quite hold, I think.
I always keep talking; I damn well never know exactly when to stop.
Etc., etc.
No sign of Aldington, and can’t figure what happened; i.e., no letter, or any sign that he doesn’t still mean to come. In short, still wait for him, though I begin to wonder if he will show, etc. A matter of vanity, at this point; can’t still think of what, finally, to say to him. The feeling of Lawrence, all of it, gets very much in the way.
Well, no matter. Otherwise, not much excitement. Ashley [Bryan] will be in Spain until November, or thereabouts, I think; I’ve had two letters from him and his own excitement, at being there, sounds very much like the release you felt, getting out of here & into Italy. I sometimes think we’d be smart to follow suit; but I hate to move Dave again, or any of us, for that matter, having this foothold now here. D/ makes out very well with the language, and the change might be too dirty a trick to play on him. As well, do get in a little, feel somewhat more settled, and so suppose it wiser to hang on, hoping we can get around to some extent once we have the car.
(A/ sd: people very, very poor—& unmistakable horror of their position, etc.—but tremendously warm & kind, and that means a great deal to him, after the flavor here. He says the children all flock after him, come to the place where he stays to get him out; trying to buy something (just your own experience) he has it given to him, nine times out of ten.)
Nothing more re a house; a few more leads, but nothing substantial. We have heard there might be a place vacant by that chateau opposite the farm where we get milk, i.e., that one sits up on the hill there, to the left, and has all the fine trees in front of it—1st place on yr left, in fact, after the shrine. Would be ok, if we can’t find anything in Aix; am anxious, in some ways, to get into Aix, i.e., could see more people, and move a little faster, etc. Now & again, the isolation here gets a little rough, though I can’t say I really kick about it. Altogether used to it, after NH. It has its advantages.
Now gets cooler, and we’ve all been having colds, what with the dampness; kids especially, and see we can’t hang on here too much longer. Upstairs rooms, with those high ceilings, couldn’t be heated by any means I can now figure; would all go up, etc. Otherwise, we can heat the kitchen ok, with the little stove, and not much work picking up wood for it back on the ridge—burns a little easier than coal, & is, of course, no expense, etc.
Emerson wrote, he could put out a small booklet of my poems, come spring or thereabts. Don’t finally trust him too much, i.e., he did screw up Olson incredibly, and I think O/ now wants out altogether (something like almost a year over-due on the book in question). But I don’t really care how ‘fast’ they come out, etc. No hurry that I can see, and he does print decently (viz. Williams’ PINK CHURCH) & wd make a good book, etc. Not much matter; prose interests me much more, etc.
Which is abt it : the news. What with the other letters. Will write again soon, and you do the same. Certainly will try to get down, to see you all, whenever it’s possible. Damn delay on car (all the mess of papers) makes it now difficult to say when exactly. However. And will keep you in touch.
All our love to you all,
Bob
POEM:
This feeling about it, mainly, granting you anyhow its fineness, of content, and wish to see it all held. That it could move a little faster, through the details, i.e., the adjectives, perhaps, and certain nouns that strike me as a little abstract. Will copy it out, anyhow, and then can say more abt. it:
Perched on bristly grass, a shaved steep slope:
“Africa” . . . “islands” . . . Forcing belief
almost belief . . .
What succession![possible place for this emphasis?]
Of continents, migrations . . .
dark-faced cities in another
sunlight—and details!
Awaking to the shrill voices, the shadows leaving
a certain street.
Even perhaps
partings: again, again[perhaps: again and again. No matter.]
Even that far for anything, and all of it.
And after night, one quiet
Morning
The sun meanwhile raised odours—tar & cinders—from[circle around
“meanwhile”—Necessary?]
the track, the glittering rails now gripping [Don’t feel altogether easy about this one.]
the east & the west. [Keep “fierce tensions”—Ann goes for that—and I do myself.]
And something we made from [circle around “And”—Don’t finally need that.]
what lay to hand: the unspoken
and love.
Which is the usual problem, of me intruding, etc. But several things anyhow. First verse: I wish that the belief could be brought down from the abstract (i.e., this noun) to an action which would give the particular instance or anyhow, grab ‘belief’ more tightly. I thought perhaps, “Forcing belief to
almost belief . . .” or something, perhaps, more action, there.
The whole problem, or what it usually is: to wrap in details so that they don’t jut out as a horizontal, call it, from the poem’s main line. Viz., for one thing, the possible problem of “awaking to shrill voices” which define further, the line preceding, or that last of it, but don’t move the action of the poem too much, even so. I felt the same way about the, “renewed, a rhythm . . .” since the rhythm at least is so clear in the two words, “again, again . . .” I.e., some doubt in my mind about repeating, or stating their overt ‘meaning’ in the line subsequent. Also, would, perhaps, avoid overt definitions, like: “Future: . . .” It is a little out of the main line, i.e., juts out, and seems to say: I can only say it, not contain it, which may be, I know, true, but I think it takes, even so, saying in the actual language of that block, and not this sudden plunge out into, the general, as this word must always be. Looking back, see no real reason for that last “and”, i.e., just to get those two possible senses, and the line break gives them to you anyhow, without hammering it in, like that. I.e., unspoken / love.
Main headaches, as I feel them: 1st verse,—perhaps to redo all of same, to get it off, a little smoother, and not so much lean on the descriptive, which is always, a little static. Perhaps the 2nd verse, where you bring in, “awaking . . .”, tho I don’t really kick much at that, but only feel it, against, or after, the 1st verse; i.e., it juts out, now, because it has that first verse with much the same thing in it, i.e., the same kind of description.
3rd verse—very important, or I feel it so, and so, very important to have it moving as quietly & as deeply as possible. I.e., it is, in some sense, the poem’s crux? I feel it that way.
Let-off of 4th verse—ok, with me. I.e., I get that and feel the necessity.
5th verse: again the suggestion that ‘future’ be not overtly given; that you do it, more simply, and perhaps only by, the bare statement of, the feeling, i.e., what was done.
something we made
out of what lay to hand: unspoken love.
Or perhaps quick, say, as in this copy:
and something we made from
what lay to hand: the unspoken
love.
Always the job, tho pardon the damn tone, of : keeping description IN. Not letting it EXTEND beyond the main line. Description most usually supplementary, i.e., most usually a question of one or two minor details, necessary to a complete grip of the action, i.e., of the feeling coming over.
Figure the thing as the novelist has to (ask yr husband!): he knows that John Jones will come clearer, to any reader, by picking up the ax and letting his mother have it, than by any talk about the rather sinister cast of his face, when his mother happened to be present, etc. I know one can’t always ‘anticipate’, but wherever the action can do this work of description, without going into it directly, then there is considerable gain. Description means, sadly, putting down the action to describe; action keeps the reader on, i.e., never lets up its hold. Action can be any thing, i.e., can be the tweaking of the thumb, or raising of an eye-brow, etc., but has to move, something has to, move. Same headache in poetry, I think, as in prose. Figure how the damn prose writer can bore you stiff by talking ABOUT his characters rather than letting them come thru by their actions. It comes to much the same thing. One action: worth a million descriptions. It simply says more, quicker, more hard.
Very damn hard to say much, without getting you into my own headaches, but that you know. So, this much, anyhow, and hope it doesn’t ride too far off it.
(Check Olson’s comments on description, in PNY piece, i.e., he gets it all very clear there; the way it can slack attention, the way it is apt to run loose.)
•••
October 3, 1951
Dear Mitch,
Getting the letter off to Denny, etc., wandered about this room, banging my head; miss you all very much, as must be apparent from these frequent communications, like they say. But doubt if I could get thru, very well, to anyone at the moment; get blurred, not so much in the divers intentions, as in the feeling, under, that I am not up to much.
But sane, but always, sane. Even so, putting aside the more basic considerations (food, clothing, heat, & the modicum of love, call it)—something well under, and much deeper than anything. Would you feel that? I think it is, finally, what I try to reach thru to in the stories, a kind of sensing, if one can say it without pretension, etc., of the separation that comes, even, of any two together. I think, and forgive me, that perhaps in coitus two people do get as far away from one another as is ever possible; Lawrence used to harp on it, always the ‘dark river’ which he made, at last, into ‘gods.’
But it is love; I mean, one doesn’t sentimentalize that, or queer it by any such statement. No one can know very much about it, who depends on a glowing sympathy, etc. I really give the novel up, now, because I take myself as too much in passage, too much on the way. If ever I feel, or say, that you can likewise afford to give up your own, it will be that same sense of it. No use whatever in making a tyrant for oneself; that is, too much that obliterates & dulls us as there is. But it is great (& I do, by god, envy you) to hear it comes; this must sound pretty grey against it.
Right now so much rides in that I wish to christ we could talk about: I miss you very, very much in that way. Not simply a ‘listener’—or not the simple ear, put it, but one who digs, who makes the basic communication. I damn well thank you for giving me that, for insisting on it, when you were here. I get, now, beginning to have it hurt a little, i.e., the way things can balk, can go dull, I get the way you must have felt the first months. It’s a question of holding, I suppose; and there’s little pleasure in such a static position. I can’t see that one can ever enjoy it, or feel himself to be deriving profit, as some might insist, etc.
I keep wondering what Bob is doing; perhaps a way out for me, to think of his own hell. Too often delight in someone whom we take as being worse off than we are, etc. Our social standard, etc. Anyhow, I wish he would write, I keep thinking of him, feeling impotent, unable to get thru to him, or so it seems.
Buddy [Berlin] sounds a little careful; I know the sound, etc., know what pushes it. I do it myself, etc. Anyhow, one is more sensitive to any caution, to any kind of reserve, at this point of hanging on, or really, of slipping in spite of himself. (No matter, finally, and this is of course for yourself—Buddy is someone I never speak of very easily; he is very close to me & I have the confusion, sometimes, about thinking of him.)
What the hell I did want to say—keep on with that concision you came to, in that one comment on S/ Lawrence, and you’ll never have a damn thing to worry about.
I wish to god you were close enough to be reading this Fenollosa, i.e., his base sense of verb. Very damn fine and rather than talk, etc., will attempt to wind up on it, and get it off to you. I’ve hesitated because I think I have another copy coming, and wait to see if it will.
This to whet your appetite:
“A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points, of actions, cross-sections cut through actions, snap-shots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one: things in motion, motion in things, and so the Chinese conception tends to represent them . . .”
Which is still in the beginning, i.e., still before that point where he really picks up speed, and weight. A very clean thing; a very helpful one for considering the base character of language. And like it or not, we have to. Well, enough here; will have it on to you as soon as I can.
Etc., etc.
Novel: all possible digression (I still feel that); all possible sequence from a to b to c. The whole problem of: sequence—is there ever any use in trying to deny anything that does happen in the actual writing, i.e., if one thing does ride in upon another, even though we have intended something else, what can we do by forcing, or what can we do but follow? Which is the old song, etc.
The thing: to hinge oneself by a ‘plan’, an intention flexible enough to allow oneself growth in the act; i.e., the embarrassment of change, of how one does change, can’t help it, etc.
And yet, can’t write ‘all out doors’, etc. Have to begin, etc. The question seems to continue: how? But only to, begin—i.e., the 1st word, right or wrong, gets that out of the way?
Two problems:1)to be able to follow the depth, the actual plunge of any perception (any thing coming to find its own character, in yourself), to be able to get down to that depth, somehow, to make it straight dive;
2)to be able to move, with all swiftness, between the divers perceptions, to be able to change, to shift, to play it like any broken-field running—because nature abhors, among other things, that gap between perceptions, etc.
Ok, and I only repeat, Olson’s Laws, etc. I used to have those 3 main dicta nailed to the wall over that table back in Littleton; perhaps I should have taken that part of the wall with me.
Write soon, or anyhow, when there’s time. Great pleasure to hear; I look for them.
All love to you all, & will write again soon,
Bob
•••
[Published as “A Letter from Robert Creeley,” Goad 2 (1951–52): 16–19]
[late 1951]
Dear Schwartz,
A few notes I’d wanted to get into the last but there wasn’t time.
Anyhow, it’s about the Pound article. Certainly it’s a more honest position than any I’ve yet met with. All the usual blatting about this and that which has attached itself to the “Pound controversy” hardly clears any of the necessary ground—or makes the least sense.
But here’s what I’d like to put against the implied judgment—“How many powerful, illuminating lines are found in the published work of Pound? If you, like myself, have not found many, then you too may want to forget the whole thing.”
1) very simply, 50 years work, and at what? Criticism. Translation. Hauling over into the English of at least 3 major areas of thought, including American.
2) a principle of verse (kinetic) which has made, literally, the basic condition which now makes it possible for us to go on with it—Retrospect; How to Read; The Serious Artist—this hardly begins it.
3) a body of work, of verse, which I can mainly defend, or only, in terms of my own respect for it—it is based, surely, on a man’s actuality, and isn’t that what, precisely, poetry is supposed to be?
There’s no defense for the anti-semitism, not even your own. There’s none that I can, myself, admit. And so, perhaps, I have an even greater difficulty than yourself (if you stand back of your own statement) in adjusting to the concepts of certain of the Cantos; and honestly, I don’t adjust—I go to that work to get what seems to me of use, and the rest I toss out, condemning it just by that act.
What else? If we forget the other insistences of that same book, forget the emphasis on the Confucian ethic, on the literal horror of the Usury we inhabit, of all of it, one man’s hardness, his ability to hold to himself, what the hell ground do we have left, to stand on, to call him: traitor? Well, tell me, because I don’t know.
There remains, in any case, books that you should have there, to be going at, to answer your own problem of ‘powerful, illuminating lines . . .”
Take off on the criticism: POLITE ESSAYS; MAKE IT NEW; PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS; ABC OF READING; KULTUR; etc. I mean, go at these, and see if there isn’t as hard and as direct a mind there as you’ve ever met with. “Damn your taste, I would like if possible to sharpen your perceptions, after which your taste can take care of itself . . .”
Have you read his things on Dolmetsch? Did you know that he picked up on composers like Antheil, et al., long before any public had thought of looking for them?
You should dig into these things; not be put off by a disgust with all the present palaver—it means nothing, and it will come to nothing. It’s demonstrated exactly that capability already. So, to hell with it—go about your own business as you’ve absolute right to.
But don’t lose any chance for additional clarity, which is to say, don’t toss out this man’s incredible sharpness. I damn well say it’s there to be got—and any of the aforementioned books will give it to you straight. The CANTOS are, first of all, an incredible condensing, as speech is, no man is going to pick up easily or quickly. They take work.
I’d say: XXX, XIII, XLVII, XLV, and the section marked libretto on the end of LXXXI –all will give you a straight pick-up, quick, of what is here going on. Anyhow, please read them, or read them again, if you already have—tell me if I’m full of shit, and that’s ok with me. Only try it. Ok.
But (lord/god) let’s not suggest, even by murmur, that Housman, who (did he not, damn well right he did) sold out, and cheap at that? The pretty lyrics, the cheap little sentiments, of horror, of death, of all the tremendous LOSS, of death—that such is to be put against Pound, the implications to be: he is more?
Goddamn it, I had no sympathy there. I could not stomach that. And yet you have to mean it—you have no right to write what you do not mean, and do not mean exactly.
Anyhow, Housman? Christ, he is a cheap little prick; with two-bit rhymings, all the easy penance of a bankrupt man.
(Read Pound’s HOUSMAN AT LITTLE BETHEL—I mean, that’s a much kinder attack than I could myself make.)
Listen:“There died a myriad
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,
Charm smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,
For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.”
Write when you can.
All best,
Creeley
•••
[undated, 1951]
The truth is: I smoke hashish & fuck a good many women other than my wife? The truth is: I read 24 hrs a day, sometimes more, & make extensive notes, exhaustive notes in what time’s left me?
Dear Larry,
Yr notes very cool. Figure we cover that, at this point. One thing, tho,—comment of mine abt infinity of form relates, only, to this belief: form is the extension of content—content, I take to be, infinite. Content: each man’s IN, inside. Here’s where the “idiom” can exist, ONLY here. It has nothing to do with idiomatic language.
Neither understand nor see the point of: this comment. “I’d say, though, that you and Cid, for instance, handle more stuff than I seem able to . . .” What’s your grounding, say, for that comment? What do you know abt (1) what I read and (2) what do I know abt what you read (you’ve noted abt, say, 4 bks, and I’m not certain I’ve noted even as many as that). Just to point to this, i.e., what you have that sentence lead into: “And it wd seem that the more stuff you read the higher your floor and perhaps the more types of experience you have no use for . . .” Well, shit, I certainly can’t speak for Cid here, and wish to hell you wdn’t bracket us, since WHY? I.e., let’s deal (1) with what we KNOW and (2) with ONE at a time and (3) keep these to SPECIFICS. Anyhow, that statement. I’m no Horatio Alger, that is, I haven’t a wish to refine myself out of existence, nor, say, does one experience cancel another cancel another, so on & so on. What the hell are you on to, there? I.e., why not this, man as continuum, accumulation, powered by, say, pitch & intensity of that complex: self/emotion/intellect. Just that.
Don’t mean to bug you with this biz, abt yr sentences. But for what, eh? I mean, what you do here, it seems, is only duck out on something that relates, finally, to neither Cid or myself: and/or: what you figure you’ve read & what you figure you can get out of it. I mean, what’s that to do with me, yr ‘floors’ and all, like flying carpets, yet. You can’t measure this biz, on the wall, like I grew 2 inches this past 6 months. Or, say, to drunk sits next to you, I’m sorry: I’m no longer interested in the experience which you constitute. I just don’t get it. I damn well assert, the FLOOR is the FLOOR, and if it is worth talking abt, at all: IT’S GROUND. Dirt. GROUND. That stays PUT. Well, like this very good example, for what, by yr standards, yr scales, am I writing to you? I.e., you wd suppose, I take it, since I am beyond you in point of reading (which is yr statement, brother, NOT mine), you wd be a type of experience I have no longer use for. Riddle me that. I mean, I am not that in love with my own platitudes, & I figure I’m getting as much out of this biz, certainly, as you are, & probably, & why not: a hell of a lot more. You’ve got to set up something else.
Let me put it this way. As for writing poetry, reading it is the secondary thing. Very secondary, when you come to the act. I don’t, by that, throw it out. But I assert : not, in any sense, at root of push.
A good many people read poetry, read books. Very damn few write ones worth their reading. Why.
Who wants to be calm, analytic. Frozen. Sd Pound: lot o’ eunuchs with tape-measures busily measuring the Venus de Milo . . . you see, the alternative to yr diagram, which comes to, I take it, a belief that ‘experience’ is mass, i.e., exists in same sense that block of iron might, & governed, also, by that law proposes: no 2 objects of equivalent mass & volume can exist in the same ‘place’. Shit. It’s REACH, we don’t leave HOME, to extend so, to make that thing. Vide: “I have travelled much in Concord . . .” Thoreau didn’t move on dogmas, didn’t lay down one thing to pick up another, abcdefg. Experience is Extension, is the grip, or so one might hope, on RELATION. The reach of a man’s experience comes to his apprehension of the RELATIONS (the what happens between himself, objects, himself AS object) posited by the ‘happening’ of experience.
Again, for what: try to figure editors, opinions of other, other people, UNLESS you figure their direction has its points of contact with your own. By ‘direction’: not ONLY, say, we’re all going to heaven and/or: hell.
Am sending you a copy of POETRY NY. Because I want you to read Olson’s article there. Nothing else in it.
Am not an editor of anything that I know of. Cid had asked me to go on as a contributing editor, on this new gig, but I cdn’t take it on.
So it goes,
Best to you,
Bob
•••
Sunday [May 25, 1952]
Dear Rene,
No time to say anything yesterday. As said, everything is ok—no damage that matters, or, only, one of the matts (the one on the larger pastel) got a little torn—that can be repaired in Freiburg, i.e., simple enough to give it another if it’s ok with you. (Could keep the old one for customs’ stamp, etc.)
Which is dull—the thing I damn well want to make clear: how very incredible these all seem to me. We put up the five drawings, on the wall back of me (big stretch—lets them all have room) and fantastic how they hold on.
Really, you teach me a very great deal. One thing: variation, how christly infinite its use can be. I thought of,—take a black square (or form of that kind) & there it sits, static, without ‘time’ or movement. Put one of these against it, that juxtaposition, and it’s a christly WORLD—it has that dimension.
‘Time’, variation, the rhythms which effect it—your work has incredible hold here,—it is as dominant in this particular as any painting (or verse, or anything finally) that I’ve ever known. Hence, my own excitement,—to have them there, insisting on that,—that one know it, be forced to know it.
I hate to be too damn subjective about it, that is, it would be easy enough. No man ever gave me this before. It has that shock in it,—to know it is possible.
In any case—character of the one for 3rd part of 3 FATE TALES: it defines me, damnit, it allows me into my own content in a way I’d never had given before. (And how,—but by just such an act as this drawing is?)
No damn use saying one is ‘nicer’ than another, or any rot like that; ‘IN THE SUMMER’, ‘THE PARTY’,—christly GROUND they maintain, force out—just fantastic damnit, there isn’t a way of repeating it here.
(Only regret that, in the note, I could not more insist on this character, now so present to me—that structure in these things is no damn simple matter of ‘oppositions’ (like black to white)—that black, say, in these has precisely that same ‘infinite’ as a sound (like, I had heard a record of Casals, a Bach sonata for unaccompanied cello, etc., and one note became an infinity under, literally, his hand.)
It’s damn hard to say it all, all that I do get now. In that way, you do teach, you force conception to instance, to literal presence. The arbitrary, the conjectural, both damn well have FORM, have (what form is) presence in these things.
(Olson always saying,—those who don’t know confusion,—how lucky perhaps, but how goddamn not ourselves. Not anything we can allow,—i.e., these two simple equations, like color for its redness, its singleness, and NOT engaged as FORM.
I do damn well remember the paintings (and very anxious to see them again),—how, there, color (the single character of any—all that rot that Kandinsky was gargling in those notes, etc.) became ‘structure’, and the headache is, for me, defining it actually, i.e., not letting it go as ‘impression’, etc. What I intend: that, in those, color was line, if that makes sense—that it was not to be separated, could not be, from its precise instance in the work.
Like, you can say, there goes a lady with a red dress, etc. And then, it’s like the color of my coat, etc. And ‘red’ in such a place, has only itself—it is distinct from its occasion, or what, say, is carrying it.
But that is not at all the way in your work—you can’t say that, then. Color, there, is not to be ‘color’ as these separate ‘values’ of the eye, etc. It is as much ‘line’, that position, that character of rhythm, as it is ‘red’ or ‘blue’ or whatever.
Well, what the hell TO say. You knock me out, no other way of putting it. The wall is damn well MOVING, wish you were damn well HERE.
(Sometime, would very much like to pull all this out, i.e., to do something allowing me more room, more space for a definition of these impressions, i.e., what now hits me.
It is very damn exciting; the fact of an authority (altogether beyond usual notions of ‘power’) is always that. What else.
Character of the paintings only more, I think, than what these drawings are, because more, literally, is present, is being used—but to suggest that there is any superiority, etc.,—can’t do that. Like saying, man & horse, more interesting than man, etc. Just isn’t true. Or isn’t ‘true’ in a sense I can admit.
Anyhow, thanks, thanks, thanks—never will be able to say it right. But they are so very very good, so damn much their OWN fact.
Looking to seeing you,—am sure that we will now get to Paris, I’ll keep you in touch about when, etc.
Will take all these with me, if that’s ok with you (i.e., drawings along with pastels, etc.) Hope that we get there when it’s being set up, etc. That is, to make sure they are set unequivocally. (In this respect—would it be ok to substitute fresh matts on the drawings, ie., something not white (since that wd throw off the lights in the work, etc.) but something of your own order—only that these matts are a little bent, etc.,—wish to have them set real hard, fresh, there in Freiberg. Ok; not, I expect, the major issue.)
Anyhow, all our very dearest love to you, you are incredible!
Bob
•••
[Lambesc, France]
June 22, 1952
Dear Paul,
Yours in, and that poem is real, real cool. Verbs and whole slide of it, too much. You make it altogether. In fact, let me put a bid in, if you haven’t sent it out, etc., for this gig with our boy SS/—his magazine. But time enough, but if it is free you got yrself a deal. Ok.
That letter off to you at the old place yesterday. Hope to god you can see it. Reading here about the HUDSON biz,—makes more sense than ever. Whole damn context of such as that magazine isn’t it,—the booklet would give you the whole room, and cut out that damn dribbling in the corner, etc. Well, what you think—it’s there if you can use it.
On Lash, etc. Write him, I’ll tell him to write you anyhow. He is apt to be slow,—I suppose there’s some damn reason for it though wouldn’t grant him it anyhow. But he’s amiable, and you can count on it. He got John Husband for the poetry editor,—I was somewhat sad about that, or thought if one of us could get in, it would make sense—not just the outlet, etc. But I guess H/ is ok, or I don’t really know a damn thing about him. I see Wms/ makes him the ‘listener’ in the end of the AUTO/BOG. O well.
I forgot to say G/ is still hunting down that Levy,—he’s a tough one. It turns out the publisher is in East Germany, and that’s not good—or takes a bit of doing to get the book out. Or so G/ reports. Anyhow we’re on it,—never fear. I tell you what,—I got contact now with a bookseller, etc., in England, and prices are pretty cheap on the exchange—I’ll give them the Sordello title, also the Levy, and also ask ole SS/ to see what he can dig up, since he’s on it I guess himself. (I damn well thought he was, come to think of it, seeing that one poem I sent you,—it’s part of it in any case.)
Things here ok, though I am not so cool as I might be. The baby coming, though that isn’t it. What it is, is the damn wall on all four sides of this place,—I just noticed it yesterday. They have a whole field of flowers, planted for seed, etc., just the other side of it, and I can’t see a thing.
Very nice last night though,—part of the garden space, almost all of it, we’ve given over to friends here, man is Spanish and wife French, and some nice kids too. He’d been out hoeing, and came in after, for some wine, etc., and was telling us about Lorca, who it seems he grew up with,—this time for real. Anyhow was saying how L/ at this Grand Concourse des Poetes, etc.,—guitar starting up, plunk etc., in the background, L/ was about 17, everyone saying, you go first Garcia, and Garcia blushing, and saying no, no, no, etc. But they keep pushing, and he reaches over & drains a bottle of cognac, and then starts off:
The church is a bizness, and the rich
are the bizness men.
When they pull on the bells, the
poor come piling in and when a poor man dies he has a wooden
cross, and they rush through the ceremony.
But when a rich man dies, they
drag out the Sacrament
and a golden Cross, and go doucement, doucement
to the cemetery.
And the poor love it
and think it’s crazy.
[CP I, 121]
Really too much,—gestures he was making, and always those sounds. I made this trip to Perpignan, about two months back, with two friends here, and all the way the man was reeling off Lorca,—and it was damn fine. And also G/, or his wife said, how he could look through any collection of Spanish poetry, and knowing none of it, could still pick out L/ by the sounds.
He also said, how L/ didn’t write them down, etc. He made this movement with his hands, writing,—but had them in his mouth, whereupon he put his fingers close together, and made this movement toward his own mouth, just a little open. [note typed in left margin: Same man won’t learn french, he don’t like it, although he’s also tried to translate all of Lorca into french, so his wife can hear it too.]
Well, what’s new. Just see that the poem is slated for Cid, and that makes sense. I have had such a goddamn dull time with him, the past week,—I know what you mean by evasive, though I don’t suppose he ever damn well means it. I’m damn sure there’s something about this in the Analects,—not that it matters that much.
I don’t get much done, I had that sort of push, I guess, just before we left Fontrousse. Going over there a few days back to see the people and give them some pictures, etc., Ann was saying, it was very, very lovely now. It always was, really—but the house, or the three rooms didn’t give us any room, to make it. But the place is a damn fine one, hope I can show it to you sometime.
Mostly that I don’t have much ground under me right now. And that’s why, too, my place is so much on the paper, and not where it might, even ought, to be. I’m real portable these days, like the fucking typewriter. I argue against ‘place’, and that false sense of what it counts as, which is usually generator for an altogether dead memory, etc. But I don’t even mean that,—or not that sense. I miss where we were very much,—isolate, it only makes sense where there can be a use, in it, and one likewise used. That was some of it in NH, though about the time I met you, in NY, I’d had too much, and was too damn close to screaming. Anyhow I guess we’ll be coming back, sometime this winter—probably go to BMC, and hang on there for awhile. I’ve been reading some of these books from the middle 1800’s, i.e., US—Dana, Crevecoeur, and had read Parkman one winter in NH; they had the whole string in the library there. It must have been wild, though god knows that’s a sterile track.
I am beat in some ways, mainly the way of being too damn tired too much and no reason at all for it; and also tired of a lot of sterile and repetitive thinking. I know my hole pretty well at this point, anyhow I know some of it—what Olson calls, ‘the shaft’. What blocks the kill, it is a damn kill at best, is having to parry so much, by way of my body, really, instead of my tongue, or hands. I can’t talk here, and that is a kind of dullness. Too I stand on the damn ground of a ‘tourist’, and that is nothing at all; sometimes I can get through, one time, for example, I had gone in to look at some exhibition in Aix, and a young girl came up with some programs, sort of a sheepish smile, and offered them, and I started to take one, then said, how much are they, and she said, forty francs, and laughed. And I did too. It gets that simple at best.
Otherwise it is hell. You goddamn well can’t picture, I think, utter dullness of almost every damn word I hear. Or what christly patter of idiots, etc. It makes me damn complacent, I think that is the damn horror of it,—can’t even make an edge.
That lyric is too much, too—where I get gas, for the car, etc., man always saying,—c’est moi. I guess it is at that.
If I could load a thing, like this of yrs to hand, I mean make it right down to the damn letters, like that—phew. But anyhow. It’s a real nice one.
The ‘poetic’ is, for yrs truly, a damn hard nut,—every now & then I get scared that I don’t make enough of what, at least, I’ve heard of,—if I don’t know. In prose, never this embarrassment; I believe, right or wrong, no one can show me a cadence I haven’t, to some extent, been aware of. I mean of course in english.
(I’d thought to write it like these characters playing the piano these days, though that is perhaps idiotic to hope for. The way one pulls into chords,—changes,—so that sequence becomes the kind of quick ‘siding’ this gets. It’s the ideogrammic method at that,—but even so a little otherwise. Olson quoted me something from a young Fr/ composer, Pierre Boulez, on ‘series’—Fr/ have the phrase I think ordre seriel, to mean 12 tone scale, and, anyhow, B/ aiming against the vertical-horizontal positions of usual composition, and/or, more clearly, that most people depend on that order of up, & down, & along. There is another sense. I am sure of it, in prose, or sure that an ‘order’ need not be to the ‘end’, or that, say, a climax is a necessary structure for definition. Well, allons. Sometime or other.)
Here’s something. Last night, too, when we’d got onto poetry, what it was then, I’d tried to say, music of Lorca, i.e., sounds, and he jumped me for making it that simple, i.e., went on to say, music of the actually sung (one kind of poetry), and then that chanted, (or the dramatic), and then that more simply spoken. Of course that is a familiar demarcation. Odd to get it from him, though I don’t think so at that.
Wouldn’t Ez’ comment on all Gk/ art moving to: coitus,—be a comment on ‘climax’ generally. It is what we use to define it, or that relation. There is an impact of a somewhat different character—light suddenly on a leaf, or outside this window, now, just striking in—it comes to a thing something else. Climax is apt to destroy a poem. And what is it honestly that happens in Eliot’s Sweeney—that poem has stuck in my head ever since you were talking about it, back then. It is an ironic extension,—but hardly that. Of course they would say, this sudden juxtaposition of two emphases, etc. But it is wilder than that?
Did you get to see that article by Elath? It’s in INTRO, double number Vol/I, #III & IV—1951. Very damn good prose. I wrote him c/o of the magazine, and got an answer—but don’t yet know what to do with it. He is well into Korzybski,—also this Wm/ Hull,—see current issue of INTRO, who I don’t make at all. I hate the goddamn leaning on irony to this effect,—I take it as damn well a cheat. Anyhow E/ is very cool in many of his statements, in sd article.
Here’s a poem for you:
THE DRUMS
How are you harry the
last time we met it was
in heaven
surely
or so I remember.
[CP I, 29]
C’est moi . . . .
Otherwise I don’t know. Emerson is finally going to put out the pamphlet of poems, and is THAT premature. Got a real crazy drawing tho, i.e., E/ asked for a photograph, and fuck that, so I twisted my boy Ashley’s arm till he did this THING. Phew. Scares hell out of me & will you likewise. Anyhow,—that’s the poem. (I looked very hard in the mirror afterwards, but couldn’t see it. However, I am still cheerful.)
THE RHYME
There is the sign of
the flower -
to borrow the theme.
But what or where to recover
what is not love
too simply.
I saw her
and behind her there were
flowers, and behind them
nothing.
[CP I, 117]
Maybe silly, but always wanted to write one poem like Thelonious Monk playing piano; second verse is it. But he is prettier. I guess.
Look, write soon, letters are letters,—it’s all we’ve damn well got. I’ll keep on anyhow,—things are cool enough. Once baby is here it will be more of a piece. Voila.
All our dearest love to you,
Bob
•••
LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
Route de Caire
Lambesc, Bouches du R/
France
June 27, 1952
Dear Bill,
I’m sorry about the silence, i.e., that’s our new address up above, etc. Finally got something and it’s an improvement over the other place.
I heard from Rainer Gerhardt, they had another damn miserable stretch of luck; they lost that one damn room in Freiberg, kids had to go to the grandparents, and not good for anyone. But they are going to get out the 2nd issue of FRAGMENTE, I think it should be done very soon—or he said about 2 weeks after this last letter.
Olson had written we could all go there, to Black Mountain, this winter; it makes a lot of sense to me. That would be Laubiès, the Gerhardts, and us. Perhaps it’s too literal a ‘vision’, I don’t know—but would be very great to be close to all of them, and to see what could happen. As it is, everyone dulled by the distance, and god knows more than that, current hell of money & all. Feel rotten with the G/s there, and no damn solution. Perhaps this BMC idea could be it.
My sister writes she heard you read at Brandeis, and how wonderful it was. “He sat to read, just turning the papers & looking at the people. Everybody I could hear near me responded in a way that staggered me.—Dead silence, tremendous applause—and the people who have money to go to these things don’t read poetry. Common speech—and he really got to everyone. I was maudlin, with tears in my eyes—at the whole idea.”
My mother was there too, I think it’s the first time she ever went to anything like that. She used to worry about me in that way, i.e., ‘I like to think Bob could work, if he had to.’ Sometimes, in a kind of usual, I guess, desperation, because we couldn’t get on the same place, there, I used to read her some of your stories, i.e., those from Life Along The Passaic River. My father was a doctor, and after he died, she went back to nursing, and still does.
Things come ok. We’re waiting for the new baby to get here,—my wife very distrustful, put it, of french medical procedure. Finally have the doctor here in the town, very decent man,—first one we tried was a pretty damn common type, i.e., lots of rich ladies,—he treats them cold & rough, etc. I guess they like it. She’d told him about Rh factor, etc., perhaps to take the count, etc.,—but he wasn’t interested. It isn’t, I guess, that one can, or could, do too much, in this place, and also with no history of trouble, I suppose he thought, to hell with it. But I damn well didn’t like it, i.e., one visit prior to delivery, didn’t even tell her how to get hold of him should the baby start coming, etc. Not very cool.
As it is I’ve got a little piece of paper from the one here in town.—Villa Pouget, accouchement, venire le docteur le plus vite possible. I hand that to whoever answers.
I’ve been reading a book called Introduction to a Science of Mythology; by Jung & Kerenyi—and very interesting, in part. K/ quotes something from Malinowski, that Olson had:
“The myth in a primitive society, i.e. in its original living form is not a mere tale told but a reality lived. It is not in the nature of an invention such as we read in our novels today, but living reality, believed to have occurred in primordial times and to be influencing ever afterwards the world and the destinies of men . . . These stories are not kept alive by vain curiosity, neither as tales that have been invented nor again as tales that are true. For the natives on the contrary they are the assertion of an original, greater, and more important reality through which the present life, fate, and work of mankind are governed, and the knowledge of which provides men on the one hand with motives for ritual and moral acts, on the other with directions for their performance.”
Further on, Jung makes this comment:
“Psychology therefore translates the archaic speech of myth into a modern mythologem—not yet, of course, recognized as such—which constitutes one element of the myth “science.””
It’s an interesting emphasis,—or simply attitude; at least it clears for a moment the pervasive sense of end with which such attitudes, i.e., ‘scientific’, more damn usually present themselves. It is also a comment on writing, I think; or could be.
It could hardly be ‘conscious’, or call it descriptive—I don’t think one could face the archaic like a ballgame, etc. But it makes very clear that this centering on one’s self, or just what to call it, is neither egocentric nor necessarily isolate in effect.
Come to think of it,—it is a pointer for Hart Crane, too. I’d read an article by M. Elath in an issue of INTRO, and was the first one that I’d seen giving any recognition to this particular side of it. More often,—to say, Crane was ‘reconciling’ himself to ‘science’, etc., etc. This is a more pertinent sense, I think.
Anyhow, hot as hell here at this point. Sun is very damn strong these days, I guess that’s what it’s supposed to be. Everyone off to hear Casals, and wish I were with them. I got a card from a friend there,—“. . . during the past months I’ve felt it growing, a terrible lack of interest in dissatisfaction; which is perhaps just the pulling of myself together for the anything I will do . . . and that I am here.” It must be fantastic,—I’ve heard records, I wish I could hear him there.
I hope it all goes well, it’s ok here now.
All our best to you,
Bob
I wanted to note this, but may be only an imposition; am in touch with an Englishman who’s doing a series of pamphlets, Brit/ & Am/ authors, for distribution in US, Canada, & England—I think between 16 & 32 pp/ in length, well printed. Would you have any material free, for such issue, in event it seems worth any time. He asked me to help with Am/ end, and thought to ask you in any case. His name is Martin Seymour-Smith,—lives in Mallorca. Material would be for this coming spring; am not now sure if he can pay anything. I’ll try to get more details if it has any use in it for you. Ok.
•••
[Fontrousse, France]
July 15, 1952
Dear Charles,
Poem is very cool, like it very very much. Last two lines are real close. All through,—play is working with great great care, and effect. Look, if this is free,—could you try [Raymond] Souster with i.e., he seems serious at least? I just got a letter from him, with your two, and he wants material,—he does keep straight enough to say the work is ‘hard’ for Canadian reader, but that of course is his business, and not at all ours. Anyhow, I’d try him—it’s a fine damn poem,—see what he does. (I sent him THE QUESTION, but he hasn’t yet made up his mind—I also sent a short note on ‘poetry’, but that is minimal, i.e., poems worth so goddamn much more, to anyone.)
Souster’s address, in case you don’t have it there now, etc., 28 Mayfield Avenue, Toronto 3, Ontario. (Again angered by Cid’s deceit, i.e., this man reprinted, as you’d know anyhow; material from ORIGIN, and supposed Cid had got it straight with divers men printed. Bronk kicked, to Souster, and so made clear Cid had by no damn means cleared it with the people involved. WHY Cid can’t simply forward addresses, and arrange direct contact, etc.,—I’ve yet to damn well know. I’ve damn well sworn off him many times now,—but god strike me dead, like they say, if he ever gets another word out of me. Fuck him utterly.)
No word yet from SS/—I wonder if he’s damn well scared off. It could certainly happen. In any case,—now relevant to get some of these things together? I mean, if we can get in there this winter, a magazine, of the kind we clearly don’t have, now, would be worth trying. I hope SS/ pulls out, i.e., comes thru. At least no news, good news, etc. Many damn thanks for the help.
Here’s an item,—I’d sent, way back, your the ring of to Vince, and of course he’s using the same in this anonymous gig. When he sent mss/ of the whole thing, looking thru it I found yr poem with this line at the end, like this:
“. . . . . of like
elements.
Very wild movement, very fine thing.”
I.e., in writing it out, I’d put that on, to underline that fact—I didn’t damn well trust him I guess. Anyhow, seeing it copied in there on copy for printer,—thought he might have done it in haste—certainly hard to figure otherwise, so wrote back saying I’d cut it off, this line (and I quoted it for him). (As matter of fact,—I didn’t then feel as sure as Ann did, that it was an ‘oversight’, i.e., I figured him capable of such idiocy,—it was a touchy point anyhow, and in 1st draft, call it, of letter then written him, I explained it all so laboriously Ann thought it would be insult to what intelligence he did have. So I made it a joke, i.e., what a compliment, ho, ho.) This is, anyhow, what I get back:
“cant make out what the problem was with charley’s the ring of? did you both collaborate, and you strike out your lines, or what? anyway hope that the poem is coherent and entire unto itself.”
What does one do now. Problem of Vince is exactly problem of a man, with very decent & kind intentions, literally incapable of that job or act to which he has committed himself. Man who cannot see the disparity of line in question, in body of poem, otherwise,—is not so much idiot as simply incapable of judgement, i.e., he just don’t get it. He’s printing the poem on no grounds relating to his own understanding of it. This is both goddamn well ridiculous & could be at least, embarrassing. Editor who prints what he does not understand with some thoroughness is up to something that doesn’t interest me—and how can it, anyhow, interest anyone. Familiar enough. Cid never of this category, no matter other faults, i.e., he made a point of knowing what was up—his own tortured work, call it, some testament of that knowledge. Ferrini, of course, is utterly unaffected,—beyond a few superficial senses of ‘spacing’—by any poetry. I think he is a genuine primitive to that extent. Primitives are hard to work with, and they should never edit anything. I like some of his poems, and that seems more importantly his business than anything like this to hand; the collection is not only tripe, but actively bad tripe—Cid has one of the worst poems I’ve ever read (SAGA) in it—it could kill an interest on the part of any reader, ‘company’ to that extent difficult. Says Vince: “I think we can all be proud of that brig! can you imagine the noise it will make!’ Just sd ‘noise’ I know, and I don’t like it. Damn late in the day to kick,—it’s at the printers, by now, and yrs truly who ‘arranged’ that, etc. If I’d known, like they say, to what lengths Cid’s ambitions were going to haul him,—I would have cut loose way back. As it is,—dubious damn pleasure of helping a man make a complete asshole of himself. That hardly helps anything.
What do you know about this ‘ORIGIN’ gig for Brit/ magazine, ARTISAN. V/ lists the ‘nine young american poets’: “Charley, you, levertov, blackburn, duncan, enslin, wilbur, cid and yrs t.” I get sick of it, in fact I damn well won’t play I think—I don’t like it. Neither this ‘group’ sense, and its implications, nor in this case the actual components. Look at it,—levertov is, to begin with, British, she will hardly like that category here suggested; Wilbur is utterly separate from Origin, and does not need any such relation; blackburn & duncan are worth printing, I think, but I don’t see that either fit into any such ‘group’; enslin is I guess a nice man but his poetry, or one I saw, is not; cid & ferrini are holding on for what it’s worth and all it’s worth to anyone is, what it’s worth to them. You are damn separate—I am claim that right, in any damn case,—no matter. This ‘group’ sense would only be possible in straight context of a specific & like commitment. I would knife Wilbur any day in the week; and also Cid & V/ himself, at least in this role. Well, fuck it—it is DULL.
[note typed in the margin: Maybe that ‘autobiographical’ notes biz, wd/ allow chance for dissociation, but messy biz in any case. Wd/ like to know more abt it, I’ll write Cooper (who’s editor) and see what comes. I suggested he print you Duncan & Blackburn, in bulk—also give you space for overt comment, if wanted. Leave all others out. That wd be ‘American poetry’ a hell of a lot more significantly. What do you think. Nine piddlers,—no good.]
One pleasure anyhow,—yesterday walking along the Cour Mirabeau, with Dave & the Hellmans, I was gawking as usual, and saw a man sitting with his family, i.e., wife & two kids,—table in front of one of the cafes. No one much around, they were only ones at the tables. I looked at him, and was so hit by his eyes, I kept looking, and must have stared at him all the way by, and he also, looking right back at me. It was very fine, i.e., sudden quickness of it, man so placed, there, and crazy intensity of his eyes beyond any embarrassment, or any sense of staring me down, and myself naïve enough, then, to look too without any nervousness,—I guess because he allowed it.
Getting past, feel that I ‘knew’ him came stronger, as he was by us, etc. And then woke to who he was, i.e., Picasso. Beautiful, beautiful thing,—absolutely. Going back, as we had to later, of course we looked, like they say, but then it was no pleasure, he had turned, and it was looking at any ‘great’ man, and dull to that extent. Otherwise, sheer sort of memory, of his face,—I had it straight at me for about a minute, it must have been that long. He sat with utter damn solidity, and at that point I knew him only as a man sitting there. His eyes are lovely damn things,—you would never forget them. Even in photographs, there is that quality—but faced, they are incredible, and his whole head is an intensity, and a fine kind of humor which I mean to mean balance, and presence, just there. Not big, Spanish in his body, or Catalan,—old suit, or usual French one, poorly cut always to my sense; wife, younger & pretty, and him so crazily separate, and yet them all in it too. Kids about Dave’s age, sort of diminutive,—looking French which he can’t much like. Well, fuck it,—it was pleasure, I wish you’d been there with me too.
It’s worth as much to me as boatfare, etc., to have seen him precisely like that. What the hell should I ever say to him. That was the one damn way. It was damn well worth all the christly hell of the past year, etc. It was very great.
Ok. I hate to read of your own worries,—you make that distance honestly, and would be only man capable of knowing them. A christly kind of curse, to be at that point of knowledge. I don’t know it and maybe I never will. You anyhow take yourself to that edge,—and cannot stop because you made everything to it, and it would seem, and I would insist, must be that that same pitch would throw you over, into content now bearing in.
Anyhow just now trying to shift myself, in the chair, found I was hooked on to it, by tear in the seat of my damn pants. It isn’t simple. It is frightful at times.
Many, many thanks for notes on the Jung thing; also for this letter. I hope to god I can print it, I mean it in any case. Very damn good of you to haul it out for me,—and more than that god knows, to have given it to me in the first place. Ok.
Write soon, I’ll do likewise. Take care of yourselves, I wish we were all there, & kick my ass when I think we could have been. Dull to have missed that.
All our dearest love to you all,
Bob
Skeats has, irony, at Gk/—this dissembler, but better, “one who says less than he thinks or means.” Also Gk/ equivalent of straight noun irony, i.e., Gk/ noun for which this ‘dissembler’ is also a root—means, dissimulation, eipwveia.
[New page] Chas/ yr letter just in, with poem, and E/s and B/s letters, etc. Poem is very damn fine, I think up to the middle passage, i.e., to part which swells. Character of flat statement very damn firm, and gives reader full impression, or call it mark of the acts involved.
Problem of sd part, otherwise, i.e., that middle -“Why they are,”—thru there, is I think that it begins to say things about him, more than like ‘the red-headed man’ which is so damn clear, like that. But it isn’t whole thing there, i.e., what does hit me, of like kind as the parts to there:
Why they are . . . .
he,
up to then, often in the glaring sun had sat
. . . . . . . . . , nor found
tranquillity to ease his yearning, always
sleepless cares within his soul wore him
away, the while he looked
all thru to the end of sd stanza. Maybe relates to rhythms too? From there, to end, time it takes to go thru details relating to peach trees. Only kick there. From end of sd stanza, to end, very cool; particularly that beat on, would never forget/ their hateful deed/ of blood. Very damn fine. First four stanzas are what goof me, in any case—and this close. Middle part most of the problem, my own reading—and peach trees details—i.e., time of them,—in one following.
Content, no matter, clear. Very damn fine,—who else could write it.
[pasted in photograph of two hands shaping pottery on a wheel]
Just saw this photograph. Someday wd be very great to do book, i.e., not to ‘do’ book, but if it happened so, with just such things interspersed without comment.
So that text would have equivalent in visual, i.e., pictures. Both as ‘rest’ for the reader, and pulling out of his sense of content generally, i.e.,—so he gets it everywhere, is present in a multiplicity of things.
Not as ‘illustration’ but as like things. It could be good. I mean, real wide play,—of things like this, bits of cloth, anything that had relevance.
********
Wd go with you all the way on that biz of romanticism & realism, i.e., both are content-ual, and I think the same ‘content’ at root. Classic/ is method; emphasis on,—‘cold doing’ finally. Sense of, good enough to hold I guess. The ages & all . . .
This thing on irony,—re anger & all. One thing wd be I think the Poe essay noted,—and really not so much Williams there using that irony, but his emphasis on Poe’s use of it. Note particularly Poe’s reply to Lowell—and then, though apparently it did not actually then happen—how W/ says, “Poe might have added finally, etc.” i.e., that then we get the straight statement, of what P/ thinks IS the way out,—and then irony-in-anger is component of a further position.
With irony-in-despair,—you have no ‘further position’. That’s it, and any act a man commits, in despair,—in that place, is peculiarly his act and he will have no other. Despair I think to mean without hope; and so an end, if the act be there negative. Or else, man is all act—and only that,—and so he is what the act is, purely.
It is here, again, that Hull becomes frightful, in his act—that it is irony,—and there cannot be any hiding. Irony then immense in its very smallness,—and so a human act, particularly, according to some definitions of the ‘human’. At least one could have it so, be so—and have likeness to many others. [note typed in left margin: Irony: ‘expression of one’s meaning by language of opposite or different tendency’—so that H/ adopts the laughing, or what to call it, surface for a content of horror. He does not say as he thinks.]
Crane* tried to trust to act of poetry,—and feeling that go, his life was all that—all he otherwise had were friends who began to drop him with almost sole exception of Slater [Brown] and his wife, and homosexuality and his drinking—he could not go anywhere. Williams’ sense of, man thinking
*(Crane trying to use poetry for ALL objects of his emotion,—note range of ‘subject’—huge difference from Pound—in this respect. It was all he had, all he meant to have—it was full content, all he could attempt.)
with his poem, and that to be the ‘profundity’, is here what happens; or the tragedy in Crane, that he took it to fail him. A man would not fail seeing himself, or so using himself, that in the base act of his breath he was already that substance from which a poem could, of an exact necessity, come.
Irony in despair is an end,—because all acts there have this finalness. They must carry back, or [^ not] back but to another, life. Irony has no such capacity of generation. Conjecture, and statement of such an act, could maintain a man in any place,—it is the very ‘hope’ that was supposed lost.
Irony in anger is small in another sense, i.e., not the major attitude. At best, a weapon, or a means to dealing with some aspect of the surroundings,—but never the whole of them which despair would predicate. Williams in AUTOBIOGRAPHY ironic often, i.e., in hitting at some minor detail, an annoyance—like Poe angry at his own misuse by Lowell, who did not appreciate what that use was—but neither without further statement,—as Williams DREAM OF LOVE, or poems. Or Lawrence in something like essays on Whitman, or on Melville. And the break-over, like, ‘I have seen an albatross too . . . ’
Irony, in character you note, i.e., dissembling, is what it gets to; and if it means the end act, the last,—hopeless in utter sense. And so beyond the human, completely. Though human in that exit.
[note typed in left margin] Sarcasm wd be possible component, or instance, of total, irony. A use. Irony is root process of a sense of expression; false. Also I figure adjective, ironic, to shade word as it wd be read by general reader, i.e., the noun.
•••
Route de Caire
Lambesc, Bouches du Rhone
France
July 19, 1952
Dear Mr. Duncan,
I’m trying to find material for a series of pamphlets of British & American authors; i.e., an Englishman is putting out the series and has asked me to take on American component. The emphasis will be on poetry, I take it, but some hope to get to related material as well. The length will be 16 pages, well printed, decent format, etc. Would you have something we could use. To be distributed in England, US, and Canada.
I know your work from one book, and also two, at least, of your later poems, AFRICA REVISITED (very fine job) and SONG OF THE BORDERGUARD. I like it, and hope that we can arrange something for this present series. The probable date of issue, granted you have something free, would be sometime the first of this coming year. Could you write me what you think.
All best to you,
Robert Creeley
Robert Creeley