kind of dusty knowledge and unreality, but some of the critical articles hold little strokes of lightning, the taste and stir of the good long word mixed with the near-slang. This beholds one in an amusing sort of way. [* * *]
----
[To Ann Bauman]
[mid-June, 1963]
if you come to LA someday I hope you come to see me, part of that time anyhow. The only problem being that I work about half the weekends and the other I don’t. If you come by bus, would be glad to meet you at bus stop, or drive you anywhere around town you want to go, or if you don’t want to go anywhere we can have a beer at my place and make dull and polite conversation. However, I know that your idea is only half-resolved, a thought in between many other thoughts while things are going on, and that it prob. will not be followed through.
I am signing pages for the book, a huge stack of purple pages arrived in a box with instructions and this Sunday I will quietly drink beer and smoke and listen to my radio and look out the window and sign the pages.
Webb sent me a dummy copy of the book and it is a real thing of beauty—the paper, the type, the cover etc. etc. [* * *]
----
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
July 1, 1963
[* * *] If you are serious about a 2nd book to follow Outsider #4, I can say no more than that the miracles are still coming, the honor laid out like all the horses dancing in my dreams. Should you people change your minds—because of circumstances or conditions later, that will be o.k. too. I’ve got to go with you. YOU HAVE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO PUBLISH THE NEXT BOOK AFTER It Catches My Heart in Its Hands [ dated and signed ].
This is real nice to say—as if I were giving you a break or something, after you break your backs to make me known! Don’t worry about a notary: my word is good, and when my word is no longer any good then my poetry won’t be either. I’m glad to go with you, much more than glad; you are my kind of people. Not a bunch of phoney literary bullshit or slick-assed business people, but people in love with their work and their lives, asking nothing but enough to continue to stay alive in order to continue to do the thing.
Your danger after putting me out in such fine style in It Catches would not be from the little chapbook operators but from the big boys, the bigger publishers, who might think I would go. But they can go to hell. I’m with you, and same arrangements with 2nd book, no royalties, but would like some copies. I’m afraid, tho, we will never come up with such a good title again, but meanwhile I will be thinking, gently thinking of one, as I go in and out of bars or watch them run. [* * *]
I don’t write letters…too much…anymore, because it was simply it is simply a time of no letters. It may change. But I get to thinking IT IS THE ART-FORM THAT COUNTS , and all the letter-writing in the world won’t excuse a bad poem or make it any better. Then I am still drinking, and the drinking often takes over and I don’t know quite where I am or what I am anymore. Right now this place has newspapers in it that date 3 weeks back, onion stems, beer-cans, coffeepots on the floor. This woman comes over once in a while and straightens up but then she starts in with THE INTELLIGENT TALK , and I let her win her precious little arguments, I hate haggle, but just the same I get a little sick with how PROUD people are with the mind, how they want to ram it through you like a sword, how they want to talk talk talk. Don’t they know that there is simply something nice about sitting in a room and drinking a beer and not saying much, feeling the world out there, and sitting there, sitting there, resting? [* * *]
I will send you a tape of a poetry reading of mine I made on my machine and which was broadcast over KPFK in August 1962. Of course, they deleted a lot of vulgarity, had to, so it is not quite the same thing I sent them. They asked me to come to their studios, which is like asking me to go to
----
[To Ann Bauman]
[mid-June, 1963]
if you come to LA someday I hope you come to see me, part of that time anyhow. The only problem being that I work about half the weekends and the other I don’t. If you come by bus, would be glad to meet you at bus stop, or drive you anywhere around town you want to go, or if you don’t want to go anywhere we can have a beer at my place and make dull and polite conversation. However, I know that your idea is only half-resolved, a thought in between many other thoughts while things are going on, and that it prob. will not be followed through.
I am signing pages for the book, a huge stack of purple pages arrived in a box with instructions and this Sunday I will quietly drink beer and smoke and listen to my radio and look out the window and sign the pages.
Webb sent me a dummy copy of the book and it is a real thing of beauty—the paper, the type, the cover etc. etc. [* * *]
----
[To Jon and Louise Webb]
July 1, 1963
[* * *] If you are serious about a 2nd book to follow Outsider #4, I can say no more than that the miracles are still coming, the honor laid out like all the horses dancing in my dreams. Should you people change your minds—because of circumstances or conditions later, that will be o.k. too. I’ve got to go with you. YOU HAVE EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO PUBLISH THE NEXT BOOK AFTER It Catches My Heart in Its Hands [ dated and signed ].
This is real nice to say—as if I were giving you a break or something, after you break your backs to make me known! Don’t worry about a notary: my word is good, and when my word is no longer any good then my poetry won’t be either. I’m glad to go with you, much more than glad; you are my kind of people. Not a bunch of phoney literary bullshit or slick-assed business people, but people in love with their work and their lives, asking nothing but enough to continue to stay alive in order to continue to do the thing.
Your danger after putting me out in such fine style in It Catches would not be from the little chapbook operators but from the big boys, the bigger publishers, who might think I would go. But they can go to hell. I’m with you, and same arrangements with 2nd book, no royalties, but would like some copies. I’m afraid, tho, we will never come up with such a good title again, but meanwhile I will be thinking, gently thinking of one, as I go in and out of bars or watch them run. [* * *]
I don’t write letters…too much…anymore, because it was simply it is simply a time of no letters. It may change. But I get to thinking IT IS THE ART-FORM THAT COUNTS , and all the letter-writing in the world won’t excuse a bad poem or make it any better. Then I am still drinking, and the drinking often takes over and I don’t know quite where I am or what I am anymore. Right now this place has newspapers in it that date 3 weeks back, onion stems, beer-cans, coffeepots on the floor. This woman comes over once in a while and straightens up but then she starts in with THE INTELLIGENT TALK , and I let her win her precious little arguments, I hate haggle, but just the same I get a little sick with how PROUD people are with the mind, how they want to ram it through you like a sword, how they want to talk talk talk. Don’t they know that there is simply something nice about sitting in a room and drinking a beer and not saying much, feeling the world out there, and sitting there, sitting there, resting? [* * *]
I will send you a tape of a poetry reading of mine I made on my machine and which was broadcast over KPFK in August 1962. Of course, they deleted a lot of vulgarity, had to, so it is not quite the same thing I sent them. They asked me to come to their studios, which is like asking me to go to
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