LITMIR.BIZ

      Hello, the trees are iced with Royal Icing, the snow is several inches deep and squeaks like new shoes and chickadees when you walk on it, and the air is filled with a white mist, and it is Monday morning and I have just written a poem called ‘The Dead’, of which the last two lines read, ‘I smile to see them now,/how contentedly they are clothed with sun’.

      After I had written my verse I collected your letter with its lovely dissolved illustrations—I hope there was no mistake in reassembly or rejelling. I’m glad you heard from Jo. Her brilliance makes me bow my head and grow as an irritation in my mind or heart a minute pearl of envy. No, jealousy. Her mind has an anagrammatic pounce.

      Meanwhile, at Yaddo, home of delicious desserts, we are quite a small family. Dan Curley writer. Ann Kazin, writer, who leaves tomorrow, and later in the week her husband Alfred Kazin arrives. Malcolm Bailey, painter, who is looking forward to the arrival of a young poet, female, described as a Viking with red hair; Kenneth Burke; and J.F. Also to arrive soon are Normon Podorovitz (?) the edirot of Commentary and Douglas Alanbrooke the composer.

      Now read on:

      J.F. no longer attends the cocktail sitting (complete with Director and wife—how much more acceptable she would feel them to be if they were not critics), nor does she stay for the after-dinner conversatione to spend the time discussing ‘who’s in, who’s out in the artistic world’. Her absence is described by Kenneth Burke as playing hookey.

      Dear Kenneth who gave me the impression of being a ‘raving old man’ proved true to form the other night after he had a little too much to drink and after he had written a poem about his lately dead wife. He went insane for several hours and our fear was that he would not emerge from it. The Director and his wife panicked and went home leaving Kenneth in charge of Dan who managed him very well; it was very sad; we all love Kenneth; he is miles above everyone else in intellectual gifts and dreaming power. Dan wrote a poem about the episode and gave us a copy: it’s very moving.

      Meanwhile I’m trying to work out how I can leave earlier than planned and go to Elnora’s apartment in New York where I hope Jo and Elnora will be able to visit me. I can’t think of any funerals to attend; the only other emergency is the act of claiming from the Inland Revenue the 3000 dollars or more they owe me; I could ask someone in New York to send me a cable Come at once, and leave it lying open in the snow when I’ve had breakfast.

      My Mortal Enemy remains absent. I fancied there had been some kind of connection but I must have been on the literary pill, and that has had the side effect of clotting my ideas into oldfashioned verse so I daresay I’ll just go on writing verse while I’m here. I hope you don’t suffer too much discomfort over Santa Barbara—you may even be painting her now as you paint Paul’s student. I keep adding to my verse about it/her.

       Feet walk here from time to time.

       Not often. The foot

       is apt to be caught deep

       in the carpeted swamp of the supermarket.

       In an easy way nobody cares

       that a smoky breath above the Deep Freeze

       is all that remains

       of the sunken walker.

      I love your decorated letters—could you not illustrate a book of Hours, of limericks, with fanciful L’s and O’s and so on? And how elaborate your bee is—I count at least four surcingles!

       I lived among great houses

       in the grey wastes of dread;

       laughter not time destroyed my voice;

       Droop droop no more, nor hang the head.

       I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick

       if as a flower doth spread and die.

       O blissful light, of which the bemes clere.

       Lord, the snowful sky.

       Hath sorrow ever a fitter place

       O Heart small urn,

       Drop drop slow tears

       Tears pouring from the face of stone.

       I lived among grey houses

       in the grey wastes of dread;

       laughter not time destroyed my voice;

       droop droop no more nor hang the head.

      How do you like my collage poem filched from first lines of the great? Rather too many tears.

      I love the photograph of the drawing; it’s immediate and complete. I think that in drawing one must have an awful lot of courage just to make a line and reject the temptation to hide it or blur it. In that way, maybe, drawings resemble poems where you can’t hide between the words, where everything shows.

      The trees outside look like those Christmas trees for sale in the Santa Barbara supermarket.

      Battery has run out.

      As I told you we’re trying desperately to save our Peedauntal business from ruin. For a time we ceased manufacturing. Then one of the shareholders suggested branching into Rays but this has not been the success the management hoped for. Next, the idea of Peedauntal Scholarships was put forward; this may help; so far, unfortunately, there have been few applications (we had hoped to have an article at least in Time or Life featuring interviews with the Fellows. We are now working day and night in the utmost secrecy on the Eternal Peedauntal which we hope to distribute to Morticians as well as to the breathing and peeing public. Also a contrapuntal peedauntal which opera singers may favour more than they have favoured the usual model. Other variations suggest themselves—the parental (3 sizes), the Continental, the Departmental, the Accidental, the Frontal, . . . battery expired

      Please recharge by return and a dessert of love to you 1st and 2nd helpings also Paul & Ned.

       J

      P.S. once more—I love the drawing photograph. It is like a poem because you have to start with belief in yourself when you make a mark on blank paper.

      23. Yaddo January 20

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