Beerspit Night and Cursing

by Charles Bukowski

  Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems 1974-1977 (1977)

  Women (1978)

  Play the Piano Drunk/Like a Percussion Instrument/Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit (1979)

  Dangling in the Tournefortia (1981)

  Ham on Rye (1982)

  Bring Me Your Love (1983)

  Hot Water Music (1983)

  There’s No Business (1984)

  War All the Time: Poems 1981-1984 (1984)

  You Get So Alone at Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)

  The Movie: “Barfly” (1987)

  The Roominghouse Madrigals: Early Selected Poems 1946-1966 (1988)

  Hollywood (1989)

  Septuagenarian Stew: Stories & Poems (1990)

  The Last Night of the Earth Poems (1992)

  Run with the Hunted: A Charles Bukowski Reader (1993)

  Screams from the Balcony: Selected Letters 1960-1970, Volume 1 (1993)

  Pulp (1994)

  Shakespeare Never Did This (augmented edition) (1995)

  Living on Luck: Selected Letters 1960s-1970s, Volume 2 (1995)

  Betting on the Muse: Poems & Stories (1996)

  Bone Palace Ballet: New Poems (1997)

  The Captain Is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship (1998)

  Reach for the Sun: Selected Letters 1978-1994, Volume 3 (1999)

  What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999)

  Open All Night: New Poems (2000)

  Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967 (2001)

  Copyright

  BEERSPIT NIGHT AND CURSING. Copyright © 2007 by Linda Lee Bukowski. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition JUNE 2007 ISBN: 9780061873515

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  1 For a longer account with documentation, see my “Sheri Martinelli: A Modernist Muse,” Gargoyle #41 (1998): 28-54. It can also be found online at .

  rob’t stock: Robert Stock, A&P’s poetry editor.

  Rotting Hill: a collection of satirical short stories published in 1951.

  “now it is…face tigers”: slightly misquoted from Canto 86: “Now my turn for thin ice and tigers” (582).

  “I bid you…”: misquoted from a poem in The Greek Anthology as translated by Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer) in his Paraphrases and Translations from the Greek (1903): “A sailor buried on this shore / Bids you set sail / For many a gallant bark, when I was lost / Weathered the gale.”

  Li Po: Chinese poet (701-762), translated by Pound in Cathay (1915) and popularized by Arthur Waley’s Poetry and Career of Li Po (1950).

  Matz: apparently an editor of a small magazine.

  Hearse…Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail: Hearse was a magazine edited by E. V. Griffith; his Hearse Press published CB’s first chapbook in October 1960.

  Light Year: little magazine edited by Miles Payne out of Spring Valley, California.

  Pain: Miles Payne, editor of Light Year who had rejected CB’s poems. Payne’s 9-page letter is a pretentious sermon on “poetry, superiority, and people.”

  my answer: since CB will continue to refer to Payne’s letter, and because it mentions SM, it is included here:

  Pearson: Norman Holmes Pearson (1909-75), an English professor whom SM had met at St. Elizabeths. She had stored her paintings with him and was now sending work to him for eventual deposit at Yale’s Beinecke Library.

  Portfolio II: CB’s story “20 Tanks from Kasseldown” was published in the third (not second) issue of Portfolio: An International Review in 1946.

  shekinah: in Jewish theology, a manifestation of the visible glory of God.

  Fry: Barbara Frye (1932-), CB’s wife from 1955 to 1958.

  Rockdrill: Cantos 85-95 of Pound’s epic poem were first published as Section: Rock-Drill in 1956.

  gramps: SM’s term of endearment for Pound.

  D.H.Law…statues of wood”: untraced.

  Po Li: the pen name (obviously a play on Li Po) of SM’s husband Gilbert Lee (1928-), whose family’s name was Li.

  hilaritas: Latin: “joyousness.” CB seems to be quoting from a (lost) letter of SM’s, who probably picked up this term from Canto 83.

  Sherman: Jory Sherman (1932-), a poet who published in A&P and elsewhere before turning to writing westerns. See his memoir Bukowski: Friendship, Fame and Bestial Myth (Blue Horse, 1981).

  Quicksilver, the one about doves: “Peace” appeared in the summer 1960 issue of Quicksilver; rpt. in DRA (34-35).

  Hitchcock: George Hitchcock, San Franciscan writer and editor (San Francisco Review, Kayak).

  Bagel Shop: coffeehouse in San Francisco at Grant and Green.

  Heyter’s Atalier de Set: Stanley W. Hayter (1901-1988) taught engraving and painting at the Atelier Dix-sept, an art school in New York City prominent in the 1940s. His students included Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko.

  gramps said: “ya’ kant git outta hell inna hurrrry”: cf. Canto 46: “you who think you will / get through hell in a hurry” (231).

  Knights temp.: the Knights Templar, a medieval order of knighthood eventually suppressed by the pope.

  Jeff and Adams: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, American presidents admired by Pound and the subjects of several of his Cantos.

  David R. Wang: Chinese-American poet whom SM met at St. Elizabeths. He’s mentioned in Canto 96 (673) and occasionally contributed to A&P.

  “it DOES COHERE”: adapted from a line in Pound’s translation of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis: “Splendour, it all coheres!” (New Directions, 1957), p. 50. (One of SM’s portraits of Pound appears as the frontispiece to this book.) Pound later wrote of his Cantos: “it coheres all right / even if my notes do not cohere” (116/817).

  Villon: François Villon, 15th-century French poet.

  Guido: Guido Cavalcanti (1250-1300), Italian poet whose ballads were translated by Pound (1911).

  Kuan Tzu: a book on economics named after its Chinese author (684-645 B.C.). Pound read to SM from Lewis Maverick’s Economic Dialogues in Ancient China: Selections from the “Kuan-tzu” (1954).

  Sacred Edicts: ethical instructions issued by Chinese emperor K’ang-hsi (ruled 1662-1723), translated into English in 1921, and cited often in Cantos 98-100.

  “one sheet in closet…alone”: source unknown.

  Chester Anderson: there’s a Chester Anderson in CB’s “Fleg”
(RM 107).

  father…Van Gogh: Henry Bukowski was a preparator at the Los Angles County Museum, not the art director as he sometimes boasted.

  she ri cantos: Pound told SM that Cantos 90-95 were “her” Cantos because of the part she played inspiring them.

  rochmony: Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Russian composer and pianist.

  Rochardsun: John Richardson, San Franciscan poet and a frequent contributor to A&P

  fr4arligent…ferrygnti: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919—), San Franciscan poet and founder of City Lights Bookshop.

  entonic: intense, overwrought.

  fly-spider pome: perhaps “Death Wants More Death” (RM 92-93).

  Great God Brown: a 1926 play by Eugene O’Neill known for its extensive use of masks. The central character is a successful businessman (without inner resources) who dons the mask of a frustrated artist. Cf. CB’s poem “The Day I Kicked Away a Bankroll” (RM 74).

  fatty Montier: unidentified.

  corso ker: Gregory Corso (1930-2001) and Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), leading lights of the Beat movement.

  Jeffers: American poet Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), whom CB greatly admired.

  Pound…in Light Year: the autumn 1958 issue of Light Year featured “Five Letters to and fro Ezra Pound” (pp. 60-76): four are between Pound and John Theobald, and the fifth is from Payne to Pound.

  Murray used to knock Lawrence: John Middleton Murry (1889-1957), English editor and critic, author of Son of Woman: The Story of D. H. Lawrence (1931).

  K. Boyle: Kay Boyle (1903-1992), American poet and novelist. Contra CB, Boyle admired Lawrence and was moved by his death to write the story “Rest Cure.”

  K. Shapiro: Karl Shapiro (1913-2000), American poet and critic. There is rather qualified praise for Lawrence in Shapiro’s long poem “Essay on Rime” (1945), 11. 580-87, but perhaps CB refers to a different poem.

  Lawrence poem on snake: “Snake” (1923), probably his most famous poem.

  Wm. Morris thing: a reading for a San Franciscan poet named William Morris; see conclusion to CB’s letter of 11 August 1960 below.

  Robert Young…Curtis Zahn: Young was an actor, best known for his lead in the TV series Father Knows Best; May edited the magazine Trace; Zahn was an L.A. poet and fiction writer.

  Breakthru: magazine edited by Norman Winski (mentioned in CB’s next letter as well).

  Pillin’s wm: William Pillin, a fellow L.A. poet.

  Keblah: the Kaaba (or Kiblah), the shrine to which Muslims turn in prayer.

  West Coast of Africa: CB uses Pound’s phrase in his poem “Horse on Fire” (RM 70); see Appendix 1.

  Death of a Roach, Epos Winter 1959: rpt. in CB’s Betting on the Muse (1996).

  A real poet…one fist of love: a line used in CB’s “A Disorganized Poem on a Disorganized Day” (A&P #5); see Appendix 2.

  Clarence Major: African-American poet (1936-) and, later, author of experimental novels; a frequent contributor to A&P.

  “Wings down like broken love”: from CB’s poem “conversation on a telephone” (DRA 43).

  Felicia: Jory Sherman’s wife.

  poor dear dying in Denver: see CB’s poem “a literary romance” (BW 21-22).

  G. Stien…Hem.: Gertrude Stein mentored Ernest Hemingway in Paris in the 1920s.

  woman…old enough to be maw: Jane Cooney Baker (1910?-1962), whom CB lived with before and after his marriage to Barbara Frye. In later letters she is variously referred to as “the old girl” or “the old woman.”

  Garth Allen…Alco”: unidentified.

  Fry…in next Trace: see note to CB’s letter of 5 October 1960 below.

  DeBussy…Evening of a shit: a play on Debussy’s famous Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.

  Koldiay: Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967), Hungarian composer.

  Romonyrock…his final appearance: Rachmaninov fell ill during his final tour of the U.S. and died in Beverly Hills in March 1943.

  Alex Brailowsksky: Alexander Brailowsky (1896-1976), Russian concert pianist.

  Thorne: Evelyn Thorne, co-editor (with Will Tullos) of Epos.

  Quagga…Riot: appeared in its May 1960 issue; rpt. in DRA 51-52.

  Courtney Taylor: a con man; see Sounes 24-25.

  lutarious: muddy.

  Epos: “Down thru the Marching” appeared in the Fall 1960 issue, “The Sun Wields Mercy” in Winter 1960.

  Targets: a New Mexico quarterly.

  Webb of Outsider: Jon Webb, who published (with his wife “Gypsy Lou”) both the magazine The Outsider and Loujon Press, which issued CB’s first book-length work.

  San Francisco Review: three of CB’s poems would appear in its March 1961 issue.

  “The Republic” in Trace 39: in the Sept.-Oct. 1960 issue of Trace (pp. 19-20) Frye quotes Plato’s Republic in a letter to the editor responding to a remark Felix Anselm had made on the effect Frye and CB’s marital troubles were having on Harlequin.

  Texas…Wheeler: Frye’s hometown; see Cherkovski 96-98.

  Tai Yin or Grit Dark: unidentified.

  ‘carbon on filiments of brain’: from an untraced CB poem.

  “oh, let an old man rest”: the concluding line of Canto 83.

  “Le Paradis…then agony”: “Paradise is not artificial,” as in the druginduced state described in Baudelaire’s Les Paradis artificiels.

  “2 a.m.…delecta”: apparently from one of Pound’s letters to SM.

  master thyself…: a paraphrase from Canto 81: “‘Master thyself, then others shall thee beare’” (541, itself a paraphrase of a line in Chaucer’s “Ballade of Good Counsel”).

  Innocente Caro: Italian: “innocent dear.”

  Little Lamb who Laid thee: a play on the opening line of Blake’s poem “The Lamb”: “Little Lamb, who made thee?”

  Shed: nickname given to SM by a British journalist visiting St. Elizabeths in 1950s, and which she used thereafter with friends.

  a-hole palaces: in an earlier (lost) letter, SM accused CB of building “asshole palaces” in his poems. Cf. CB’s letter of 17 August 1960 in SB (21).

  Krusekev: perhaps Nikita Khrushchev, prime minister of the USSR at the time.

  Our Bread Is Blessed and Damned: never published.

  Whit…Burnett: influential editor of Story magazine, which published CB’s “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip” (prompted by Burnett’s earlier rejections) in its March-April 1944 issue.

  Frank Brookhauser: unidentified.

  Omaha: won in 1935, not 1934.

  E.E.: E. E. Cummings (1894-1962), American poet.

  Old Number 9: never published.

  Rommel: Erwin Rommel (1891-1944), German general.

  Nininsky: Waslaw Nijinsky (1890-1950), Russian dancer.

  peine forte et dure: Fr: “severe and cruel punishment,” a form of torture.

  si vis…tibi: “If you wish me to weep, you yourself must first feel grief”—Horace.

  McClure: Michael McClure (1932-), San Francisco poet.

  Ernie: E(rnest). P(aul). Walker (1941-), a young poet SM had an affair with that winter.

  Pond…new book: Thrones (see next postcard), published almost a year earlier in December 1959. (The verse that follows is not from Thrones but CB’s paraphrase of Pound’s state of mind.)

  Catherine Drinker Bowen’s The Lion and the Throne: a biography of Sir Edward Coke published in 1957. (For Coke, see note to SM’s letter of 11 January 1961.)

  Miller: Roy Miller, founding editor of the San Francisco Review.

  greezer…up from Cuba: Ginsberg met Fidel Castro when the Cuban leader visited the United Nations in September 1960.

  Paper…barnball: perhaps “The Paper on the Floor,” rpt. in Play the Piano Drunk…(1979). Barnball is presumably an editor.

  Web Sr….maniac: see CB’s letter of 9 January 1961 below.

  The Sun Wields Mercy: rpt. in RM 158-60.

  Griffith…future chapbook: Griffith later published a few broadsides by CB but no further chapbooks.

  Gi
b: Gilbert Lee, SM’s husband.

  dr. karpman: probably a psychiatrist at St. Elizabeths (not mentioned in the Pound biographies).

  Edge…Agenda: two magazines Pound encouraged his disciples to start.

  Tu Fu: Chinese poet (712-770), a contemporary of Li Po.

  HalfMoon: Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco.

  Bomkoff: Bob Kaufman (1925-1986), San Francisco poet who published in A&P and elsewhere.

  Barny Baruch: Bernard Baruch (1870-1965), American businessman, economic adviser to Franklin Roosevelt. (While at St. Elizabeths, Pound was convinced Baruch was trying to poison him.)

  Literary Artpress…Anthony: appeared in its Fall 1960 issue; rpt. in RM (50).

  Tristan: presumably Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde.

  Larches of Paradise: from Canto 94: “…walking here under the larches of Paradise” (658)

  temenos: a sacred enclosure; the term is used in Canto 97 (701)

  Stanley Gould: well-known Greenwich Village character in the 1940s.

  Mr. Lowercase: e. e. cummings, whom SM knew in NYC.

  Quan Yin: the Chinese goddess of mercy, also spelled Kwan-yin and Kuanon in the Cantos; SM did a painting of her.

  frobanius: Leo Frobenius (1873-1938), German ethnologist whose theories on civilization greatly influenced Pound.

  Laughlin: James Laughlin (1914-1999), founder of New Directions and Pound’s publisher.

  Prana: Sanskrit: “absolute energy,” or the life force. Cf. Canto 94: “Above prana, the light” (654).

  McNaughton: William MacNaughton, a companion of SM’s at St. Elizabeths and later a Pound scholar.

  Linick: unidentified.

  Jeffers…traps for all men…walked upon the earth: the concluding lines of “Shine, Perishing Republic” (1925): “There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he walked on earth.” (Jeffers’ trap is immoderate love of mankind.)

  Such Consoules: Such Counsels You Gave to Me, a 1937 collection of Jeffers’ verse.

  Webb…telling him off: see CB’s letter of 9 January 1961, below.

  “you are…my love”: from Canto 93 (652).

  David Treat: a member of the Air Force Reserve Band that occasionally played for the inmates at St. Elizabeths. He attended Catholic University in the early 1950s with Gilbert Lee and told him that a former Vogue model was keeping Pound company and that Gilbert should check her out.