got yr note on “Dead Stay Alive Too Long” and etc., and it filled a hole in the mailbox where a rejected poem usually sits. Am sitting here having a beer and staring out the same window, 3 floors up, miles out into the nowhere of Hollywood. If you saw something in the poem (or poems) good. Yet a little praise is a bad thing, and a lot of it is worse. We cannot be too careful. It is better for the artist to work out of a vacuum, going from creation to creation, each a new beginning, until it is all over, until he is dead in the sense that he can no longer create or he can no longer create because he is dead (physically). The latter, of course, is preferable.

Jory is another case entirely, and it would do little good to discuss him here.

Joyce Odam wrote a poem for me about the death of a lady, for which I wrote her my thanks.

I recall seeing a large group of your work somewhere (Signet?). Well, keep going. But we have to, don’t we?

[To Ann Bauman]

[May 19, 1962]

rec. yr letter but I am a bastard and usually do not bother with these correspondii? or haven’t you heard? this has nothing to do with fathead or fat in the frying pan or limping dogs.

all my elements are hung up like a shirt on a hanger and there is not much I can do with them.

Yes, everything I do is “breathlessly new”—for this same reason people continue to make love. I am not interested in history or theory—or argument. The best argument is a new poem.

It is may the 19th somebody has just told me. Fine.

what does one do at poetry festivals? surely, dear, there must be a better way.

I sent yr Friedman at SIGNET a poem but have not heard and she is pretty quick usually. I told her it was a bad poem and this might have her confused. It’s called “Keats and Marlowe.” I told her it was bad and then I rewrote it. It might still be prob. bad.

God, I am running out of beer! this is madness…

ah, hahah ahha ha ha ha ha!

[To Ann Bauman]

May 21, 1962

Getting this off while drinking a beer and listening to a little Sibelius before going to work. I am sorry you do not believe I do not like to argue. I believe you are bothered with too many concepts.

You should avoid these poetry festivals etc. as they are nothing but a melting pot of watered-down talents, high-class lonely heart club for those with typewriters. [* * *]

Study yr keeds. Kids. There are a lot of poems there. But don’t write about yr kids. Write about the human, what’s left of him, where he’s going, what he dropped on the floor.