“had intended to type new poems or ones I wanted to save in case anything happened to me in the north, so use carbons to send along to you so you can pick out any you think Doug Blazek might want. One was published, “Hunting Season,” but much changed from then…”

well, kid, I’ve read the poems over and can’t separate them and so am sending them all on to you for a look-see. Like Norse, Purdy is a pro, and what I mean by a pro is a man who has lived enough and is still alive. you’re the editor and I don’t want to shove anything on you and it doesn’t mean a damn to me whether a man has a rep or not so long as he can lay it down. the trouble is that when they get reps they soon stop laying it down, most of them. [* * *]

further from Purdy: “I mean, we’re all shits in facets or aspects, our only hope being the sum total of life doesn’t amount to being a shit.”

I’ll write him that I sent the poems to you and that the little ax is in your hands. all right? [* * *]

McNamara has somebody who steals his mail. he found one of my letters in a garbage can with words written all over it like “shit,” “fuck,” and so forth. a bad situation. the worst sin in the world is when the poor try to rob the poor. the enemy is fairly obvious, why weaken our ranks?

hope I have not pissed you in not going overboard on the Want-ling but long ago decided to play it straight (corny, what?) and so I say whatever I say. or like there used to be a cartoon where this guy would say: “I am Popeye the Sailor Man and I am what I am.” It used to cost him a lot of times until he got hold of a can of spinach; me, I use scotch and/or beer, just much beer. [* * *]

On Richmond Bukowski notes: “Reclusive, strange poet, has lived in little house by the beach for decades. Published various magazines and sheets, which included Earth, Earth Rose, and Hitler Painted Roses.” In 1966 Richmond was arrested for distributing an “obscene publication”; the case was not finally dropped until 1971.

[To Steven Richmond]

early june, 1965

gagging on too black coffee. bad image. I am supposed to be dunking my head in a vat of beer. fuck it. I don’t like images. won’t have them. Webb works on the image bit. I enclose a clipping from the Courier. he even has me six feet six. I’m 5 11 and ¾’s. I did drink 30 beers at one sitting but this is the only thing to do when people are talking and looking at each other. it’s the only thing to do. If I drink whiskey I have a tendency to reach over and rip off somebody’s shirt. I don’t care for the interview; it’s juvenile and standard, written by a rich young man right out of college but this is the type of thing that goes in those papers. [* * *]