Contrast: The blue sky. Alarming fires leap.
Butterflies drift from the broken
windows of cathedrals,
their lung-wings divining
the light. A cat
knowing, unknowing, following
a dream in its mazed
world collides occasionally
with human concern. Shapes
of cloth and skin descend
to ignite the purr-spark,
setting the engine going, but
it’s fairly glad to escape
from the medicinal downpour
the human shovel-stroke
the heavy word-chains of possession, to spring
out, out through the hole in the world
up like a black and white fountain into the tree
to lie in the fork of the tree,
eyes narrowed with sun,
fur ruffled, looking down
like a big black and white bean-blossom.
Undisciplined writing
Yaddo continues to feed luxuriously. With the arrival tomorrow of Dan Curley (where?) a writer who will have the painter’s studio adjacent to mine, we shall be full up no vacancies! Dinner at one table (eleven people, counting the secretary & the director & his wife) is too formal still, but there is quiet wit occasionally with Ned R. making dry observations about face-lifting, the Beatles and Helena Rubenstein. Ann Kazin is also witty. I say nothing but I laugh in the appropriate places my hollow laugh. I who have a dislike of all authority find the presence of authority crippling to the serene blossoming of my organic ego (an organic apple such as I tasted at Santa Barbara).
Last evening, however, I achieved some recognition—nay, call it fame—because I have a sprained wrist which the doctor (in Saratoga) has said (dramatically) I must immobilize & my fingers won’t type until it is better; and thus I joined the ranks, I became an insider, for Ned R has arthritis in his back, Ann K has a sore toe & others have various ailments . . . all acceptable as long as there is no suggestion of ‘germs’.
disused dentists’ drills
or
dentists’ disused drills
‘My Sad Captains’
By Thom Gunn
[quotation of first stanza]
capillaries of disused dentists
I liked the proboscis monkey very much. Everyone in the world—including the proboscis monkey—must miss you, and that, to me, seems natural.
Fortunately before I hurt my tendons (!?) I had typed 75 poems, all bad, really, for a book: about 10 written since I came here. This is a preliminary as it always is for my short novel (Mortal Enemy style) which remains out of reach like a tame chickadee that’s decided it won’t settle on my hand after all although it can’t resist sunflower seeds.
It goes over in my mind though (settles I mean) & becomes grimmer & grimmer & more like a hawk—nightingale—mocking-bird.
I miss the music. Goodnight (it is really morning but goodnight sounds closer) & thoughts for everyone in your household & for you.
21. Yaddo January (handwritten)
Hello again, without restraint while it snows powdery snow & the trees appear to have been visited in the night by Old Age.
I’m enjoying my big light studio very much and now that the missing link, Dan Curley, writer, has arrived I shall work here in the evening away from crowded West House which becomes (yes, Bee) a hive of activity with balls (ping-pong) knocking to & fro & pawns being surrendered or captured ‘en passant’ etc. The sitting-room-library reminds me, then, of Games Night in the looney bin—as the term was.
Last evening when everyone had left the diningroom & the small adjoining ‘conversation’ room I stayed alone to hear Sonata 32 op 111 Beethoven played by Schnabel, on the repaired pornograph.
Ned Rorem who leaves on Tuesday is giving us drinks in his Pink Room on Monday evening. I suspect that he finds Yaddo too formal. I find it even more formal than when Elizabeth Ames was Director, as the new Director & his wife are there among us, from the moment we leave our studios, & though, as I said, they are pleasant people their presence creates its own formality. They have a tendency to want to ‘inspect’ work & here the painters & sculptors, maybe composers, would be most inconvenienced. The young black painter (he’s 22) was disconcerted when the directors asked would he make an appointment for them to visit his studio to see his painting. ‘They mean well . . .’
Tomorrow it has been arranged that we play ‘Charades’ in the evening.
Good God.
Good God.
Good God.
To be fair to the directors, they did say, ‘It must never be said that anyone at Yaddo was forced to play Charades’. The pressure is there, though.
The ‘raving old man’, Kenneth Burke, talks often to me & I like to hear him because I have always respected his scholarship. He translated Death in Venice which is being re-issued. He translated it as a labour of love because he was so overcome by the story. His mind at 75 is agile, full of unusual & exciting analogies; he roves in a rich landscape of ideas.
I can’t help thinking of poor old Harrison K[inney] who seemed to be so limited & struggling with only Thurber as his life-line.
(I had a note from Jean Boudin—remember her frightful niece & the forced ‘poetry’ session?—Arnold Dobrin’s wife has left him. End of gossip transmitted by Steve (the subway fiend) to Jean B)
I am just about to receive 3500 dollars in advance & royalties (this is after 2300 have been deducted in U.S. tax and agent’s commission—gross 5800!)—more than I’ve ever had.
There’s an important Arts Conference in New Zealand in April. It’s part of a National Development Conference to plan the way the country should go & I feel very guilty because having received a special invitation (I’m not going) I’ve been given a chance to help to decide government policy in the Arts & I’m doing nothing about it. I have a remit form & on it I may suggest a place for N.Z. like Yaddo or MacDowell, unrestricted by nationality, where painters, composers, writers etc. can meet & write limericks