so nice to hear your voice on the phone. I wish it were time for me to ‘pass through’ Santa Barbara on my dread way to New Zealand. Hurry up please it’s time.
I’m testing a Yaddo typewriter which has been lent to me as my own is being repaired while I have my strained/sprained wrist, and the Yaddo authorities and I want to find out if my wrist is better, as they are paying the bills for it (the wrist), as it was their nasty Yaddo door which inflicted it. This typewriter goes like a dream, so smoothly, it’s (I declare) granulated, velvetized, enzyme-coated, defatted, defrosted, globulized, saturated, irradiated . . .
I’m glad you don’t mind, in fact approve of, having a dedication. I’ve enjoyed my own slight experience of this, or of being ‘mentioned’. Years ago when I was staying with Frank Sargeson there was a constant visitor, a young poet (Frank used to take young poets under his wing) who later wrote a book of verse in which there was a Letter to F.S. where one line read,
‘And walk in on you telling Janet lies.’
I felt immortal!
I’ve never had a poem written to me, though, as you have. Jim Baxter who dedicated a book of essays on poetry to me (Janet Clutha—and I had to keep explaining to people that it was me—though if it had been initials only I would have had heavenly competition!) once said that the only realities in New Zealand were Rugby football, masturbation, Wilderdd (a murderer confined to the frightful Auckland Security Gaol, who is yet able to escape now and again and is viciously hunted, and who has taken up painting and with the help of local artists had a one-man show); and the other reality—yours truly . . .!
George Wilder was not a murderer; he was a burglar.
So you see Brendan Budgeknot, Barry Bracegirdle, how my ego blossoms . . . And I, too, feel for Velma Weeper and others. Most of my book dedications, if I’ve had any, have been to the kind psychiatrist in London, R.H.C. which some people have confused with Royal Holloway College!
You asked about Ned Rorem. He seemed to me to be in not very good health, but that’s just my impression. At Yaddo he’s been rather subdued, withdrawn, I should say rather depressed. He’s witty and he doesn’t waste words; also he’s kind. He leaves today. I told him I knew a cat named indirectly after him. I got the impression that (maybe like us all) he is being gnawed from the inside out like the Spartan boy.
Ann Kazin (Ann Bernstein) Alfred Kazin’s wife is nice. So is Dan Curley, a farmer-type from Illinois with a similar stance to Tom Frederickson—was that his name—the composer at MacDowell. As I said before, though, the formality of Yaddo makes it difficult for people to be themselves among one another—yet this is no great disadvantage for one’s work, and I think maybe it is an advantage; it means, though, that people get quickly ‘stir crazy’.
(Pause while I undo my lunch, slices of turkey, cheese, lettuce, chocolate-iced cake . . . )
The Director Granville Hicks
was up to his usual tricks.
He bought some hormone
from a Yaddo crone
and grew himself triple pricks.
A funny thing happened said Rorem
today on my way to the forum.
The thing was my own.
It stood up full grown
and laughed without sense or decorum.
Needless to say no-one dreams I have composed these limericks. I might be expelled.
More later.
Hurry Up please it’s time.
I’m glad you received The Pocket Mirror at last. I posted it on 3rd January! It must have touched down or been laid up for Refuelling at Fergus Falls Minnesota or some other place. It’s full of misprints. Also it lacks dignity and beauty—I long to write a dignified beautiful poem; my tone lapses into banality, I tend to leave the dark places where poems are best made and loiter around in the stereotypes and trivialities.
Quote from Anatomy of Melancholy:
‘Great travail is created for all men: Men’s thoughts and fear of their hearts and the imagination of things they wait for and the day of their death.’
End of darkness.
‘Bees are black with gilt Surcingles—
Buccaneers of Buzz.’ee
lines by Emily Dickinson
How nice of Emily to describe your surcingles—what are they?
More later.
When would it be convenient for me to touch down at Santa Barbara (Los Angeles?). And shall I stay 12, 22, 32, 42, n2 . . . days? or a2, b2, c2, n2days where (a2 - b2) = (a—b)(a+b) where sin2A plus cos2A equals 1 and sin is not opposite over hypotenuse . . .
I’ve just had my mail letters from Jo, Sylvie and May Sarton: all very nice indeed. Jo received your glittering rock, as she’ll no doubt tell you or has told you. Both she and Elnora (who’s back at MacDowell) would like me to stay—Jo in South Hadley for a week after Yaddo ‘springs’ me; and Elnora in the N.Y. apartment—oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. Jo wishes you would come East for us to have a reunion before I go away . . . And I’m very eager to go to Santa Barbara, as Blue Jay seeks reunion with Bee in his own Clover attended by Butterfly, Rose, Bird of Paradise, Paul, Pacific, Ned (the Red) and all the live oaks one two three of Hermosillo Drive plus the mountain lions with their gaping golden bones. Maybe I’ll make a break-out from Yaddo earlier than I thought.
Dear Brendan Budgeknot, Barry Bracegirdle, enough of this crazy letter which you are under no obligation to answer, I mean not each one of these daily thoughts which fill your mailbox and accompany (with piano) your peanut butter delicacies.
Love for yourself Paul and Ned
J
24. Yaddo January
Dear