Their comment at the finish was usually, “Jesus Christ!,” which I took more as a criticism than a vindication.

[To Ann Bauman]

[Tuesday] December 18, 1962

Terrible happenings. Got drunk Sunday night and thrown in jail. Must see judge on Wednesday. Fell and twisted ankle—swollen now, might be broken. Missed 2 days work. Judge might give me 120 days. This is not first offense. Will mean loss of job, of course.

Have been laying here in horrible fit of depression. My drinking days are over. This is too much. Jail is a horrible place. I almost go mad there.

I don’t know what is going to become of me. I have no trade, no future. Sick, depressed, blackly, heavily depressed.

Write me something. Maybe a word from you will save me.

[To Jon Webb]

[December 19, 1962]

I lucked it. Easy judge. Nobody got a day all the time I was in court, but all fined. A good 40 or 50 appeared ahead of me. Jail might be full. Christmas. Whatever. [* * *]

Don’t be angry, Jon, but there are very few editors holding my recent stuff, so I can’t write them. And the other stuff, the older stuff has disappeared and I don’t keep records and/or carbons so it’s pretty much lost. I’ve dropped 200-to-300 poems this way since 1955, and I used to try to get some of these poems back, the larger batches of 20 or 40 that I remembered anyhow, but I have found that the elongated keepers of poems or destroyers of poems WITHOUT EXCEPTION do not respond to polite and reasonable inquiry with proper stamped self-addressed envelope enclosed. There is a mucky dismal breed out there…unmoral, immoral unscrupulous…homos, hounds, sadists; curious, blank children; blood-drinkers…

And then some people wonder why I write an occasional anti-editor poem. You and Gypsy are a pair of the few editors I know who operate in a professional and straight manner, and the gods have been more than good to me in that you have seen some light in some of my work and are handing me this OUTSIDER OF YEAR shining tray of honor, plus the book.

[To Jon and Louise Webb]

[December 21, 1962?]