don’t get me wrong. there are a lot of savages out there. killers. shits. dopes. sub-normals. liars. but I mean you get hold of the one or 2 good women out there and Harvard is toilet paper, Blaz. I’ve been lucky. I only met one but she taught me where my arms were and my mind and my cock and my heart, q.t., wuz. I hope to write a novel about her someday but I don’t think I am man enough to do it yet. I may never be able to do it. if I can live to be 60? I hope to call the book simply Whore. [* * *]

• 1967 •

[To Douglas Blazek]

January 2, 1967

the f.b.i.? what the hell? they really think we’re porno? lot of other places they should (?) could go. must be something else that is bothering them and they use the porno as a left jab, as an excuse. what might be bothering them is that we are possibly creating life and nothing makes the dead more angry than this. that has to be it, sweetie. but relax, we are as clean as a desert bone. I guess you never thought your little mimeo machine could make J. E. Hoover twitch in his sleep. secretly you ought to be proud. of course, wives never understand such a thing—they feel it threatens their security, I mean the everyday things: supper, laundry, t.v., the funnies, the fuck, the picnic, the drive to Aunt Sarah’s. but I know you can put her straight. [* * *]

The review mentioned in the next letter of Louis Zukofsky’s A Test of Poetry appeared in Ole no. 7 (May 1967).

[To Douglas Blazek]

January 12, 1967