Larsen’s book is The Popular Mechanics Book of Poetry, published by Blazek’s Mimeo Press in 1966.

[To Steven Richmond]

April 12, 1966

[* * *] got to agree with you on the Larsen book. humor is good when it stems from truth—in fact, truth alone is often humorous in itself, makes me laugh. but the humor of artifice—whose worst device is exaggeration—always makes me a little ill because it is just another con game. confined, my last days in the hospital, with some idiot with a t.v. set he never shut off, I was laid open to what the world considered comedy and at the expense of my dwindling sanity. how they made me ill with their obvious extremisms—lying there with my ass torn open, my beautiful walls taken from me. I suppose that the worst is Bob Hope with his flip little cute exaggerations. and his name droppings. I don’t keep much up with the world and he drops these names I never heard of, all supposing to mean something. about the only lout I could stand was Jackie Gleason—at his best he showed some showmanship, at his worst he was like the rest. but Larsen, Larsen, no.

Bukowski wrote a foreword to Richmond’s book, Hitler Painted Roses (Santa Monica, 1966).

[To Steven Richmond]

April 15, 1966

hang in there on Hitler, the more they holler the more you’ll know you are getting closer to the bone. I remember when I was a kid, 16, 17, I was just beginning to play with short stories. came home one night and here were all my clothes thrown out on the front lawn—coats, shirts, shorts, stockings and short stories. the old man had dipped into a drawer, uninvited, and had become a literary critic. “No son of mine is going to write stories LIKE THAT and live in MY HOUSE!” “Come on out here,” I told him, “and I’ll beat the shit out of you.”

be glad Hitler curls their neckbones. you are there. [* * *]

[To William Want-ling]

April 18, 1966

[* * *] dull letter. sorry. but have been writing a lot of poems, even a review of Artaud for local liberal rag. the libs too are a kind of jellyfish crowd. I want to see the poor man fed, sure. but don’t make me love him. anyway, surprised they took the Artaud, I hung some strong salty lines in there, using the review as a crutch to slip across some of my own demented and boiling ideas. [* * *]

[Addressee Unknown]

Mid-April 1966

Randy, old kid,—

Frances and I separated now. turning your letter over to her. she is good at writing long (long) equivocal things. you’ll probably get a 6 pager full of…wisdom.

I keep writing my poems and waiting, mainly, to die.

Sorry I am a little short of tonality and space here. All I can hand you is a brick. Love works like machinegun fire. I don’t trust it.