Allen DeLoach edited Intrepid magazine from Buffalo, N. Y. Bukowski was a contributor.

[To Allen DeLoach]

February, 1967

[* * *] poetry is survival, sir. it throws some of the stink bombs out of my room. if it comes as rhythm fine or physic, fine, any old way. I think of it more as a loaf of bread, a long fat hot loaf, sliced in half down the middle, spread with pickles, onions, meats, garlic, chilies, old fingernails…add ice beer and a shot of scotch, ram it down under electric light, forget the mountains of faces and eyes and wrinkles and bombs and rent and graves, get it in, warm, smelling, filling, light a cigar, blow the whole room paint the whole room blue with smoke, play the radio, think of the bones of Chopin’s left foot—that to me, is poetry, or zingplay, or the rays. [* * *]

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

February 29, 1967 [?]

[* * *] here I seem to be going through AN INTERVIEW STAGE, kind of a silly treadmill but while going through it I try to talk as straight as possible but I suppose many men going through the same figure they are talking straight too. you never know quite when you’re dying but you can get the feeling of it. I’ve felt quite a few death rays lately. [* * *] I’ll send you copies unless you’d rather not see them; I mean they might make you sick: after all, I am a monster almost of your own creation. the Bukowski Vogue, one of them asked me, it’s the Bukowski Vogue, what do you think of the Bukowski Vogue? I don’t remember what I answered but I do hope my answer took some of the pin curlers out of his hair.

the idea remains the same. I am attempting to work with the poem; I am attempting to stay alive. I find it easier to work with the poem than to stay alive. all these interviews are beside the point. the typewriter is still there when I run a sheet of paper into it and I sit there and I begin again. there isn’t any background. there isn’t any cheap excuse. [* * *]

Marina growing growing and we are closer than the grass and the earth. it is a very good feeling, an easy feeling. no trouble, no strain. loose and free; creative without fanciness; real without flags.[* * *]

the novel The Way the Dead Love has stopped at chapter 5, but no problem. easy to write. about this skid row hotel I lived in for 2 years. it’s just a recording of the people, and all the scenes come to me that I have forgotten, they all come up on the paper as I write. it’s like being reborn, living it again. very strange. have been on gambling horse-binge which has eaten up my time. but no problem. a free day or so and I have 5 or 10 more chapters. chapters very short but filled with the distillation of the action. best this way. less yawns. [* * *]