I tried turning the crank once at something called Harlequin, I sent 3, 4, 5, 6 page rejections to poetry that came in, talking about everything from big-assed women to T. S. Eliot and what came back?: WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? they wrote, I’VE NEVER SEEN YOUR NAME ON ANY OF THE LITTLE MAGAZINES ANYWHERE? WHAT GIVES YOU A RIGHT TO TELL ME HOW TO WRITE? HORSE-SHIT! etc. I was surprised at the venom. these people reminded me more of traffic-cops, bankers, foremen, factory owners, clerks, teachers, and I guess…that is what they were. But I hadn’t suggested to them HOW to write, I’d only suggested why I didn’t care to print that particular group of poems. I never claimed to be a poet. I claimed to be some type of editor who intended to print some type of thing when it came along, but, only once or twice did it come along. I stopped cranking or my wife divorced me, or anyhow, that’s past. but it wasn’t long before I was drunk again at high noon, fallen down in back alleys with dogs sniffing at my feet to see if I was alive or kids poking sticks in my back to see if I was alive and truck drivers pulling up short and getting out to look and see if I were still alive. What decision, they arrived at I don’t know. also, my grammar hasn’t improved since then and spelling is harder than fucking when you don’t want to while intoxicated. [* * *]

There is nothing worse than talking about poetry or poets or ourselves, is there? It keeps us from doing the thing. It keeps us from the knife, maybe, or the red hot poem blue flame smashing, through the wall hollering blowing bugle & slobbering the real good tears that will bring all the priests and whores and clouds and garage mechanics and Sir Winston Churchill into the same quiet bar to talk about mice and waste and grass and towers and strange things like people with beautiful eyes, fine candy bars, new symphony music or the great color of the bartender’s shirt. [* * *]

Bukowski’s review of Layton’s Laughing Rooster appeared in Evidence no. 9.

[To Douglas Blazek]

[December 1, 1964]