“New Orleans Webb” ved goodttt & now is grow. dusk & must light fires & cook/ was down on beach for 1hr1/2 walk & playin with new pup who is adorable
& so long dear Buk & lemme kno about tellin’ Cl. Major/ the trees are singing right now & they sing every night & all day—off & on/ they are musical have a melody & sound human but none of us can understand what they are saying/ you’d have to hear it to know what I mean/
love love love
Sheri
[postcard dated by SM 11 February 1961]
Deah Shed:
Yes, the trees. There is some lore there, even Tree Gods, but only so much can be discussed upon a postcard because by the time they have reached base 400 people have had a reading. It’s a good way to reach the masses, but you know what I think of the masses (cld w all f m), but back to La Martinelli, cd you look into your little book of roaring paintings running into my mind, and I say there is one…according to this…a Ra Set a claypewter idol sitting bound in say red cloth upon pedestal…can I be wrong AGAIN? This appears between Ch’iang and E.P. Not Isis, I would not do you the injustice of inaccuracy. Hello to Gib. Hope to get up to see you guys in mid-April. But not sure: health very bad, and in trouble on job…Because the rocket to Venus is going slower, it’ll get there faster.
L.,
Buk
L.A.
Feb. 11, 1961
Muh Sheerie:
Still sick, practical world-stuff, outside pressures, cosmic, comic, diabolical or wot…doing me pretty much in. I have been eating much, trying to get strength, but only getting idiotsoft and flabby; oh, Atilla will run me outa his army!
But wait: I will straighten the shelves yet without the bullshit of wailing. A bestial wail is all right but human simpering and sniveling will not do. But I have been feeling bad god damn god damn.
Well, on Major and the letter-thing, Mozart etc., if you still wish to use parts in some future A’n P, please use what you want and cut the rest. What I write you I write the world only you hear better than the rest. There’s a lot in Major that’s extemperanious and he tends to overshoot the mark. There’s some gluttony. And being black bristles him a bit. The trouble with the black is that they want to be white. If I were a black man I’d want to be as black as possible. Being is simply being and if you do it well that’s all that matters. Dreaming white girls in parks behind the bushes is mental masturbation. I would get myself a black girl and sing black songs and have black children. But I know what Major would say: “It’s easy for a WHITE man to talk like that.” But nothing is easy to say; and I measure what I say out of what I am out of similar plus and minus, yellow and green, black and white situations. In fact, I would call this present time in America…The Adoration of the Negro. Now a black man can do many things and we let him do many things that a white man would be chastised for…but we do not call the black down for it because then it would be “racial discrimination”. I measure men one by one, individually, and I am not afraid to say that I have met some Negroes who weren’t worth a damn…You see how STRONG that sounds, as if I were saying something wrong? Substitute the word “Whites” and you would call it an understatement.
And Major must not confuse an involved poetry with intellect. If Clarence would ever bother to take a paint brush in his hand he will find that the most difficult thing in Art is to make something simple. All the great secrets of the world are simple secrets, never spoken but felt.
Van Gogh was not suave. I remember when I first saw his paintings just around the corner and up the green hill on Vermont Ave., silly old gals chatting and not even looking. And at first look I was disappointed. Shit, these were the paintings of a child-idiot. I don’t know. I expected music and fire. And yet and yet, I began to see the heavy child strokes. And when I got back to my place I saw them better yet. And now they have grown in me like the rings of a tree trunk. Beware the intellect: the closest line between 2 points of creation is a straight and simple line.
And talking about Art will not get it done.
Shed, on the Pound-thing…what he does with his Greek or his wot or things he might copy out of a book something dead supposed dead because it sounds like part of the words he wants to say that fit in with the words going down through him onto paper is nothing wrong and because he wanted a red shirt and got one, makes him all right enough. And because some scholar who is a scholar and not a poet finds technicalities that do not fit into the technical crossword puzzle of his TAUGHT brain is just too bad. But when we listen to scholars the taught brain teaching, we are listening to the dead, not just the dead in death for there are many good there but the dead in life, and this we cannot have and will not have and will NOT have. There is nothing correct about correctness because it is only the courage of the ex-stricken, ex-halved mob. Scholars orderly as pidgeons shitting in the park will have their small Sunday afternoon of victory. But things go on, like a red shirt walking in sunlight thinking
I would rather have my sweet,
Though the rose-leaves die of grieving
Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men’s believing.
triple carbs and triple love,
Buk
(lost pen…again)
[postcard dated by SM 14 February 1961]
Deah Shed:
I see where someone in power says Kenn[ed]y’s program for medical aid for the aged is the “Idea of a bunch of socialist jerks from Harvard.” It appears to me that the reactionaries to common intelligence and decency are defeating themselves with their vocabularies, Walter Winchell style. I was not for Kenny too strongly at first (the face, the good-boy unsuffering appearance) but Lord, in his first few days in office he has really rolled up his sleeves. It is a shocking and heart-warming experience, and although I have never been interested in politics, I cannot help but notice. Which disproves a lot of malarky about the rich not being able to see through to the real problems. How slowly we learn, and when we have finally learned it is oh so often too late.
L.,
Buk
L.A., mid Feb. [17] ’61
[postcard]
Hoy, Shed!
Got yr val[entine]. Youse is good gal, SaRet. Most a the cussin u give me, I got comin. Just haven’t tried the olibanum yet, but will wait til my mood is peace. I don’t like to force, an that’s a good secret whether in poetry or life, you good gal u….my my but plenty of troubles in simple practical world now rattling old Buk’s string, but I am shouting down the petty and lifting the ol’ beer high to light and love…Fine on your trees, I like that stuff. I must find you a tree god. Don’ wurry bout wat I say on this postcard or others, knowbuddy wd unerstand b. u, good gal. Heard frum N.O.Webb, he say he takin 5 for sure outa batch I sent him, and is goin to try to work in some others. He stick type 18 hours a day, working up 4000 copies. U hard wurker too, Martin; only I iz lazy lousething, L.,
Buk
L.A.
Late Feb. [26] ’61
[handwritten letter with drawing of
CB at table, bottle in hand]
Dear Sheri:
Jon Webb mailed me this mimeo of kaja, and not knowing what to do with it, I pass it on. kaja is a little too pure for me—there is a little too much trying—Whitman, I guess, plus the Bible. And yet she writes simply, which helps.
Also Jon sent along some pages “46,” Bukowski. It appears he is working me into the end of his book, which I take as a compliment.
Anyhow, the kaja + 46.
L.,
Buk
28/feb/61 sm pobox 46 san gregorio cal
buk dearest one/ for kaja thankew
I needed something new to chew on & writ th’ gal letter to straighten her exposed cunt that she taketh for a mind…she has an undressed & pissyassed mind…poor infant sittin’ on front steps playin’ wiff hersalf…& is that all of Buk to appear wots on sheet of yellow? it is very funny…I fogot ah lo’d yew “moth going by 1/2 mile an hr”…oh godtttt…& Pay Yr Rent or Get Out…you funniest ye
t…my kid…let the kid have his bottle pop…my kid need dot shit fo’ fuel…I want one when comes out & how much is & who “Jon” & wot “46”…aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…Babe read Selected Poems of H.D. Oh Buk she is a better poet(essa) than Ezra/ she is the number one Scribe for god’s sake get her…$1.45 Evergreen with her pix on front/ get get get/ & I mail her yr book soon’s arrives/ now in switzerland she is…are you going to write something for her????? the coming issue???? and I love you my goodtttt kidtttt/
youse mamma
mah ma
Sheri
March 2, won 9 sickswon
Oye, Sheerie…
I guess with the kaja, she is trying to say too much, and in too goodpure a way. Could be she wants the whole populace to swoon and ask wat’s ’er name? Katherine Jones? I don’t understand quite why Webb should send me this thing, unless he thought it was good and I thought so too. I tried to see what I could, and I appreciated the simple line, but I don’t take any sugar in my coffee or my beer.
No, the sheet of yellow page is the beginning of several poems by Buk. Jon mailed them to me because he is that way about things, he is not standoffish. The Pay Your Rent or Get Out poem at the bottom is the beginning of another poem. I don’t remember what the rest of it says or what the other poems are.
Jon is Jon Webb, Outsider, 46 is page 46, and I rather suppose he’ll mail you a copy gratis because he knows you, although I don’t know if he has your new address. When I say he knows you, I mean he has mentioned you. You are our new Gertrude Stein, only you don’t look as grubby or travel around with another lady.
Aw right! Aw right! I git H.D., I get Hilda Doolittle, IF she at bookstore corner Western and Hollywood bull, they have almost everything but I am not one of those mail them in and wait boys.
Sure, I write something for new A and P. Only I figure new AP far way off. There’s plenty of time, right? You sure as hell aren’t going to crank off another one right away? Nobody that tuff.
Your Wilder Bently or what’s his name. I didn’t try to contact him. Time I don’t have anything of. What I mean is, sometimes just not being anything or doing anything for 5 or 6 hours or 5 or 6 days or 5 or 6 years is most important. You take in air and space and stems and roots, and if that’s all you take in, you have made it.
Not much else today, mama.
lufftwaffe,
Buk
[followed by a drawing of CB watching a woman walk by his window.]
L.A.
March 8, sixwon
Hoy, Shed:
I kant get your h.d. Enclosed 2 bucks, if you have copy or know of one, ship it on down. The bookstores down here carry the Sat. Ev. Post, Time and murder mysteries.
You gona pull kaja’s hair? You might straighten her at that.
Been hearing from a prof. at L.S.U., first letters ok. Last one he got confessional and I heard all about it. Also enclosed some poems for me to read. I don’t run a magazine or a confessional booth.
Sherman did the same thing to me. Got very homey.
Your rock-salt letters never miss. Why don’t you teach these people to write LETTERS, mawwma?
IF THEY CAN’T WRITE A LETTER WITHOUT GOING HOLLYWOOD, THEY ARE NEVER GOING TO WRITE A POEM.
kaja, I believe will be in Outsider which will be out, I hear, in April. Webb is a tough boy but he can be fooled because he works so hard trying to get it done that sometimes it doesn’t give him time to see. It’s hard to see when you’re running.
He has things banging against the walls with his energy.
On Ernie, I don’t know what the hell. Those things sometimes run in circles, and he may yet circle back on you. And I told you Po Li was stronger’n any of us. In his way, that is.
This is short. Some outside workings have ganged-up on me.
H.D. is H.D. why name it?
LOVE sure,
Buk
March 8, 1961
Deah Sherie—
If you can’t use these in a future A & P, please return them so that I can try ’em elsewhere. O.k?
Buk
10/march/61 pobx 46 san gregorio calif/
yes will get the H.D. for buk/ and will enclose some herbs/the hops are plain ol’ hops & buk is to make a tea of them…not many as bitter/make tea for resting the nerves…the same for chamomile flowers & the wormwood…wormwood bitter needs honey
am keep. poetry for next a & p/ poem for the dead whore very moving
Yes “got very homey” the pore americans/ no manners/ no ‘distance’ Ez on subject “when yr nearest neighbor is 100 miles away it is gonna make ya friendly…the britts got dif. manners because the island is crowded…”
H.D.: “but do not delay to round up the others
up & down the street; your going
in a moment like this, is the best proof
that you know the way;
does the first wild goose stop to explain
to the others? no—he is off;
they follow or not,
that is their affair;
does the first wild goose care
whether the others follow or not?
I don’t think so—he is happy to be off—
he knows where he is going…”
The Flowering of the Rod
How moi lamb…can I better teach these people to write letters (as yr req.) except by doing it myself…as a model…even if it interfer with my own work…it was the humblest task I cd think to set myself & teach ’em…
but Buk…a voice from the aether…& a command…& I am painting again…my Lux in Diafana…(canto 93 the Kati Canto)
“Lux in diafana
Creatrix
oro
Ursula benedetta
oro” I am at work on both of them…the Ursula & the Lux & Ra Set
am sending you the hole you’d wear in the sock anyhow (to fit yr poetry) (as requested)
rest of
SOCK
will follow/
Los Angeles, March eleventh
nineteen sixty one
Hoy, Sheeerieee…
I Yam sending you these set of blurbs Webb sent me because
spirit-love
I don’t know anybody
and can’t stick them in the mail for this gruff old goat, and I thought anyhow, you’d be interested. Your law is always to have a reaction and I thought you’d have a reaction to these. Maybe Jon sent you some.
My reaction is why 3,500 copies?
What the hell’s he gona do with ’em?
If I had a little machine like that, I’d turn out 200 copies. Or if I had a mimeo, I’d turn out 20 copies. By doing 200 copies I could turn out 17 and 1/2 magazines in the time it takes him to do one. It’s rarity that makes things valuable. Who in the hell saves old copies of The Saturday Evening Post? What’s Jon trying to do? Post us up? Or trying to turn a buck? Still he’s a hard worker, and I guess in his own way he’s grinding in the fire, and he is an individual of a sort, and he’s not trying to turn a buck at all. But Jesus, threethousandfivehundred copies! It’s not necessary. It only takes a sculptor one sculpe. This mass-production business strangles its own meaning. If it can be worked off a press with a worker-bee doing the work and not the artist, well, all right, ten thousand copies is all right, if the content is all right, even if you never get rid of them, it doesn’t matter. But Jon is virtually assassinating himself in order to get out a mag.
Nothing else much new. Somebody in New York thinking of bringing out a 2nd. collection of my poems—Longshot Poems for Broke Players. It might be a mimeo, I don’t know. The title is tentative and, of course, as awfully usual…Mid-Victorian. I typed him up a group of the latest, including those in the last issue of A & P review. The Flower, Fist group was mostly my earlier, and I will feel closer to home with these, no matter what he takes.
I won’t come up in April. I feel it might spoil something. As Jory might tell you, I don’t know how to TALK. I just sit there like a frog on a leaf, blinking. I’m not even thinking. Mo
st of the time I don’t think. I long ago tired of thinking.
Going through the mags typing up poems for New Yawk friend came upon Mr. Wang writing about photo Mr. America 1951 stuck in mag, The Naked Ear. Mr. Green (Mr. America) is showing his cock and his muscle and, believe me, he has more muscle than cock. But why does Mr. Wang worry about such things…Mr. America 1951 in a 1959 magazine? And the editor has changed the title of my poem Layover to read Lay Over.
To show you what this does to the central essence of my poem, allow me upon the next page to show you the poem.—
Making love in the sun, in the
morning sun
in a hotel room
above the alley
where poor men poke for bottles;
making love in the sun
making love by a carpet redder than
our blood
making love while the boys sell
headlines
and Cadillacs,
making love by a photograph of Paris
and an open pack of Chesterfields,
making love while other men—poor
fools—
work.
That moment—to this…
may be years in the way they measure,
but it’s only one sentence back
in my mind—
there are so many days
when living stops and pulls up
and sits
and waits like a train on the rails.
I pass the hotel at 8
and at 5; there are cats in the alleys
and bottles and bums,
and I look up at the window and think,
I no longer know where you are,
and I walk on and wonder where
Beerspit Night and Cursing Page 18