so the horses began again Tuesday and maybe a little action can help me forget the whole damn poetry scene. it’s good to drink a hot coffee out there, the ice wind from those snow mountains north chilling your god damn shorts as you work out the winner of the first race. that’s as good as anything. we don’t ask much of the gods. just that they keep quiet for a while.

all right, then. punchy, I shape up to stick more letters. in my neat little shit-cage. and remember the good days past. there were some.

• 1968 •

[To Douglas Blazek]

January 15, 1968

[* * *] Heard from Penguin & Webb relented, said o.k., so it’ll be Norse, Bukowski, Lamantia, Dec. ’68.

The problem with being a poet is that by the time you get well-known you can’t write anymore. or, at least, not as well. but, still, being young & unknown isn’t the answer either. a lot of them grin out machine-made shit that they think is very real only because they like it. then, they quit. to become a good writer takes time & luck & moxie & no special desire to be a good writer. [* * *]

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

February 25, 1968

[* * *] don’t know if I told you but I have been twice interviewed by the big boys in the post office who don’t quite like the idea of me writing this column “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” that column has cost me plenty of woe, as you might know. also somebody wrote in to them saying that I was not married to the mother of my child and that we lived separately. the same person also mailed them a batch of “Notes” with certain passages outlined in ink. they didn’t care too much for something I wrote about the post office, plus a thing on sodomy. I told them that I would have to continue writing “Notes,” no matter the result. “Are we to consider the postal officials as the new critics of literature?” I asked them. I also mentioned the ACLU. they said that they were not sure of what to do with me because they hadn’t had “a case like this in ten years.” ten years? I wonder who the other guy was? anyhow, I am told that the whole business must be taken up higher for review. I was sitting in a large dark room at the end of a long table with just this little lamp there and these 2 people looking at me. I’ll probably be machine-gunned someday as I walk out this door. joke, of course. or, is it? they asked me if I were going to write anything more about the post office. I told them, probably not. so it might be a truce or they might be waiting for me to really expose myself where they could more easily strap me to the cross.

“have you ever had any books published?” they asked me.

“yes.”

“how many?”