[To Douglas Blazek]

April 21 or 22, [1965]

have not heard from you on first part of Confessions of a Man Insane Enough to Live with Beasts, but here is second part which I wrote tonight. naturally, I hope it goes. please let me know soon.

tired now. got your letter today which I will get to soon; I mean, answer soon. feel slugged now, and am closing.

[To Tom McNamara]

April 24, 1965

Letters? god damn, man, let’s be careful. all right at outset, esp. for tightheads who have been working in sonnet form, writing critical articles, so forth; it gives them (letters) the facility and excuse for wallowing in the easiness of their farts and yawns without pressure. really, writing letters are easy: nobody likes form, and I know this—that’s why I discard a lot of it in my poetry (or, I think I do) (form is a paycheck for learning to turn the same screw that has held things together). so now we start with the letter as an o.k. thing, and then the next thing you know instead of being an o.k. thing, a natural form, it simply becomes another form for the expulsion of the creative, artistic, fucked-up Ego, like maybe this letter is, I don’t deny it, I don’t deny being a part of the poison, and soon a lot of the boys end up working as hard or harder on the letters than they do on their poems. wherever the payoff lies, what?

now look, for laughs and for instance, I’ve heard a certain old-timer who’s never quite made it with his work but who has always had a finger up some big boy’s crotch or been in some Movement. maybe I’m being unkind. anyhow he has seemed monied and has seemed able to recognize a talent before the big publishers puke over it and kill it with circulation, publicity and $$$. what I mean is, I now hear this man is going to issue a collection of his LETTERS. now, how in the hell are you going to issue a collection of your own letters unless you keep carbons? and if you keep carbons, aren’t you more or less writing a literary essay type of precious thing, and keeping a hunk of it yourself because it’s so good? or if you don’t do that then it’s: “Dear Paul: I hope you have kept all the letters I’ve written you over the past fifteen years as I am now issuing a collection of my collected letters and, of course, would like to include mine to you…. hope you still have them, and, of course I would o.k. any deletions you would care to make…”

I used to think of a letter as something like this: “Dear Paul: Sure hot today and have drank a lot of beer. Martha had a wisdom tooth pulled yesterday. The Dodgers lost yesterday. they just can’t get their pitchers any runs…”