Letters to Jargon : The Correspondence Between Larry Eigner and Jonathan Williams [1 ed.] 9780817392253, 9780817359348

Citation preview

Letters to Jargon

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY POETICS Series Editors Charles Bernstein Hank Lazer Series Advisory Board Maria Damon Rachel Blau DuPlessis Alan Golding Susan Howe Nathaniel Mackey Jerome McGann Harryette Mullen Aldon Nielsen Marjorie Perloff Joan Retallack Ron Silliman Jerry Ward

Letters to Jargon The Correspondence between Larry Eigner ­ and Jonathan Williams Edited and Introduced by Andrew Rippeon

The University of Ala­bama Press Tuscaloosa

The University of Ala­bama Press Tuscaloosa, Ala­bama 35487-­0380 uapress.ua.edu Copyright © 2019 by the University of Ala­bama Press All rights reserved. Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Ala­bama Press. Typeface: Garamond and Courier Cover image: Detail of letter from Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams, April 3, 1974; courtesy of The Poetry Collection, University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo Cover design: David Nees Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Rippeon, Andrew, editor, writer of introduction. Title: Letters to Jargon : the correspondence between Larry Eigner and Jonathan Williams / edited and introduced by Andrew Rippeon. Description: Tuscaloosa : The University of Alabama Press, [2019] | Series: Modern and Contemporary Poetics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018059621| ISBN 9780817359348 (paper) | ISBN 9780817392253 (e book) Subjects: LCSH: Eigner, Larry, 1927–1996—Correspondence. | Williams, Jonathan, 1929–2008—Correspondence. Classification: LCC PS3509.I47 Z48 2019 | DDC 811/.54 [B]—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018059621

Contents

Acknowledgments     vii A Note on the Text     xiii Introduction     1 The Correspondence     13 Additional Prose     167 Appendix A: Images of Selected Typescripts     191 Appendix B: List of Correspondence and Additional Prose     205 Notes     209 Selected Bibliography     305 Index     315

Acknowledgments Well, not too bad by now, the world lost as it is, for singers to be unsung, maybe, the great thing to hv daily companions, people with at least half a ear if you need to live with em or to be alone, so you can be [e]asy. —Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams, April 3, 1974 Oaks from small acorns. Forests of possibility. —Larry Eigner, note in A Controversy of Poets (1965)

Writing one of his many wonderfully gnarled biographical notes—this one collected and reprinted in areas / lights / heights—Larry Eigner rather aptly describes his own archive: “Oaks from small acorns. Forests of possibility.” I was working on another project at the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo when two folders were rather inconspicuously placed on the corner of my table with the comment “You might be interested in these.” They contained a portion of the materials collected in this book. Recognizing almost at once the “forests” therein, I have at every stage since depended on the participation and support of a large community of readers, researchers, and writers. Eigner’s archive is indeed a wilderness, and if not for those named below and others like them at similar institutions, the incredible possibilities contained therein would be scattered, so many acorns by the wayside. For those folders, that comment, and years of prior and subsequent support in research, I would like to thank first Michael Basinski, who was then curator at the Poetry Collection. James Maynard, then associate curator at the Poetry Collection and now curator, has also been an indispensable source of knowledge regarding the provenance of the materials presented here and their many centrifugal threads. Aaron Goldsman, former assistant curator at the Poetry Collection, provided press-­ready scans of manuscripts for the images in this book (and coincidentally, prior to his station at the Poetry Collection, also chaired an MLA panel on epistolary poetics, where material from this project was presented). Many other curators and archivists have also been essential to this project, and to the preservation of materials such as those collected here: Melissa

viii Acknowledgments

Watter­worth Batt, curator for the Literary and Natural History Collections at the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center; Elspeth Healey, special collections librarian at the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spen­­cer Research Library; and Robert G. Trujillo, head of Special Collections and the Frances and Charles Field Curator of Special Collections, and Nan Mehan, reprographic assistant in Special Collections, at the Special Collections and University Archives Department of Stanford University Libraries. Alexandra Rihm, research and first-­year experience librarian, and Reid Larson, research and digital initiatives librarian, at Hamilton College’s Burke Library were instrumental in tracking down many of Eigner’s interests in periodi­cals and popu­lar media. Laurel McPhee Dougherty, supervisory archivist in the Special Collections and Archives Program at the University of California San Diego Library, helped locate a remarkable 1961 review by music critic Peter Yates of both Jonathan Williams’s work as publisher and Eigner’s ON MY EYES. Sandy Moltz, head of reference and young adult services at the Swampscott Public Library, and Lisa Kulyk-­Bourque, reference librarian at the Lynn Public Library, helped me search for items in the Swampscott and Lynn local media. Edric Mesmer, poetry cataloger at the Poetry Collection, and Sarah Marino provided important and timely assistance in tracking down and mapping out Eigner’s small press context by examining many little magazines and fugitive publications when distance and circumstance prevented me from doing so myself. Martine Guyot-­Bender, professor of French at Hamilton College, provided some essential translations of Eigner’s French, as well as remarkable insight into his practice of the language. For permission to reproduce for research purposes a letter written by William Carlos Williams in support of Eigner’s writing, I thank Declan Spring at New Directions; for permission to here reprint in my notes that same letter, I thank Daphne Williams Fox, managing agent for the estates of Dr. William Carlos Williams and Dr. William Eric Williams. That letter, transcribed verbatim and sent by Eigner to Jonathan Williams, was a misplaced document (cataloged under “Williams”); there are certainly others. By virtue of his foresight both as publisher of the unknown and avant-­garde and as collector of materials such as these, Jonathan Williams was indeed, in the words of Hugh Kenner, “the truffle ­hound of Ameri­can poetry” (quoted by Dennis Hevesi in “Jonathan Williams, Publisher, Dies at 79,” New York Times, March 30, 2008). Since I cannot thank Jonathan Williams, I would like to thank Tom Meyer for his guidance through some of Williams’s material, his answers to many ques-

Acknowledgments ix

tions, and his gracious permission to quote and reproduce selections from the surviving Williams papers. Eigner’s writing is heavily larded with allusions to his contemporary poets; his readings in Shakespeare, the Romantics, and the Transcendentalists; his consumption of contemporary print, televisual, and radiophonic media; and his own catholic interests in a variety of issues of the day. For assistance in tracking down references of every kind, I thank Judy Anderson of the Marblehead (MA) Chamber of Commerce, Jennifer Bartlett (whose own biography of Eigner I eagerly await), Larry Goodell, Jonathan Greene, Onno Oerlemans, Nat Strout, Ian Tyson, and Steve Yao. For assistance in the development of this project, I thank Myung Mi Kim, Cristanne Miller, and Krzysztof Ziarek (the three of whom shaped the direction of this work in its earliest stages), and Charles Bernstein, Michael Davidson, Steve Fama, Curtis Faville, Robert ­Grenier, Hank Lazar, Stephen Ratcliffe, two perceptive anonymous peer reviewers, and above all my editor at the University of Ala­bama Press, Dan Water­ man, for later and continuing commentary. I also thank Kelly Finefrock-­Creed, project editor at the University of Ala­bama Press, for detailed and careful copyediting of a difficult manuscript; any errors that remain are of course my own. I have had the opportunity to present and discuss selections from this manu­script in vari­ous stages of completion in a variety of contexts: “Larry Eigner, Lyric Ableism, and the Metaphysics of Lyric Sound,” a paper delivered at “Sound and Unsound: Noise, Nonsense, and the Unspoken,” an English graduate conference at the University of Virginia in 2011; “Introduction: Larry Eigner: Letters to Jargon,” an article in Eleven-­Eleven, no. 17 (2014); the Penn State Center for Ameri­can Literary Studies First Book Institute in 2015; “ ‘Well, it was a few lines 15 minutes ago’: Larry Eigner, Jonathan Williams, and Epistolary Post-­Projectivism,” a paper delivered at the MLA convention in Austin, Texas, in 2016; and “Eigner’s Televisual Impressionism,” a paper delivered in 2017 at the University of Louisville during the 45th Annual Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900. Thanks to Annie Swafford (conference chair) and other organizers at UVA; to Hugh Behm-­Steinberg (faculty editor) and everyone else at Eleven-­Eleven; to Sean X. Goudie (co-­ organizer), Priscilla Wald (co-­organizer), Derek Paul Lee (graduate assistant), and other First Book Institute participants in State College, Pennsylvania; to Aaron Goldsman (panel chair), Joshua Hoeynck, and Heather Treseler in Austin; and to the organizers of the Louisville conference and to Jennifer Bartlett (panel cochair), George Hart (panel cochair), and Linda Russo, my copre-

x Acknowledgments

senters in what we believe may have been the first “Life and Work” panel on Eigner. In the early stages of this project, I had the benefit of a wonderful peer group of poets, publishers, and critics (many of whom were all of these and more). I am grateful to the following for their companionship and commiseration along the way: José Felipe Alvergue, Michael Cross, Stephanie Farrar, Zack Finch, Rich Owens, Siobhán Scarry, and Divya Victor. Rich Owens deserves an additional note of thanks for his 2009 compilation with Jeffrey Beam of an endlessly useful feature on Jonathan Williams and the Jargon Society, which is available in Jacket, vol. 38 (2009). While this project grew out of my time in Buffalo, I would also like to thank Hamilton College for research and travel funding in support of this project, as well as for affording me the opportunity to work with wonderful students and colleagues, many of whom listened to and commented on the work. I hope always to be so fortunate. Before I extend my final thanks, I would like to pause and turn to my family. My father, Rodney Rippeon, lived long enough to hear me discuss this work, but not long enough to hear of its acceptance, its delivery to press, or its eventual publication. Of course I wish the case were otherwise. In the early stages of research, I had a sudden memory of a time long past—I was maybe five years old—regarding a relative on my father’s side of the family who lived with severe cerebral palsy and who, like Larry, was born in an era when services and cultural understanding were inadequate (to say the least). In the months before my father’s sudden death, we talked long and of­ten about our relative and about how this relation and my study of Larry’s work complemented each other. Some fruit of those conversations is borne here. My mother, Nancy Spangler, and my grandmother, Dorothy Spangler, have likewise always supported my work; reading of Bessie Eigner, I am grateful for these strong and supportive women in my own life, and I wish too that my grandmother, who lived long into this project but passed away before its end, could see this book completed. As to strength and support, my wife and partner, Lisa Forrest, has been by my side for what feels a lifetime; in less than a decade we have taken in stride dissertations, dogs, a new residence every other year, two children, jobs (and the lack of them), and projects such as this one that have led us to be distant in time, place, or mind—of­ten all three at once. Lisa’s steadfast support and encouragement both humbles and strengthens me. Our sons, Eli and Oakes, and their brother Matthew, have given me the most intimate of communities, nothing I could have ever imagined, but now that which I cannot live without. Finally, I would like to thank Richard Eigner, who from the first has sup-

Acknowledgments xi

ported and encouraged this work and who has graciously granted permission to reprint his brother’s remarkable writings that here follow. As these letters indicate, Richard has long been an advocate for Larry’s life of writing; that support continues here, and for this, all of us who are interested in Larry’s work should thank him. For my thanks, I dedicate what is mine in this volume to him.

A Note on the Text

Textual Apparatus This book represents nearly a decade of work. No small part of that time was devoted to building, tearing down, and building anew a sys­tem capable of representing Eigner’s typographic practice. This may be the fifth complete rebuilding of the manuscript (I confess that I have lost count). I believed from the first and continue to believe that Eigner’s thinking at the scene of typing is itself fascinating in its dynamism, improvisation, and response to contingency. His idiosyncratic abbreviations, elisions, and compressions, for example, are sometimes, but not always, a result of his awareness of the impending margin as his prose line advances to the right. Other times, these same features represent Eigner’s efforts at quirk or colloquialism, writing to Williams and others in a vernacular that is part New England, part avant-­garde poet, part aural magpie, and entirely his own. Despite my commitment to Eigner’s manuscript page as such, I have taken to heart the advice of my editor and two anonymous reviewers, and the at times painful results of my own experience building this edition, and I have made the decision to silently standardize many of Eigner’s typographic and orthographic gestures. I realize this will disappoint many—myself not the least among them. But let me explain why I have made this choice and how the apparatus below helps (I hope) share Eigner’s letters and prose with a larger audience. When I began this edition, I first attempted a keystroke-­for-­keystroke ersatz facsimile. What I quickly discovered in this attempt was that Eigner of­ten exceeds the purported 8.5″ × 11″ frame placed around his work by others, as his letters run margin to margin in sheets wider than 8.5 inches, and that he of­ten uses the margins of even those more standard pages in ways that exceed

xiv / A Note on the Text

contemporary word-­processing software. Despite my hope for high fidelity to the manuscript page, the keystroke-­for-­keystroke attempt broke down as I discovered myself making small, silent adjustments. If I had hoped for fidelity, I came to believe that those adjustments represented an unacceptable perfidy. My next attempt sought to simply match the wrapping of my lines with those on Eigner’s manuscript page, since I believed that Eigner’s practice represented a negotiation between content and expression as those two impulses rode along the line of the typewritten prose. I wanted to show that Eigner’s practice was not bound and determined by the standard sheet of typewriter paper, and I hoped my ragged right-­hand margins would trace the contour of the vari­ous sizes of Eigner’s paper stock. This model, too, became unworkable, as I needed to account for Eigner’s vari­ous exits and entries into the same manuscript—through emendation, superscripting, subscripting, postscripting, and even re-­entering the manuscript at perpendicular orientations to the previous entries. These difficulties led to yet another attempt, one marked by a byzantine editorial apparatus of carets, chevrons, virgules, arrows, and tab and return stops all designed to convey an experience of Eigner’s manuscript but actually impeding anything other than an entanglement in the briar of my editorial efforts. So I have arrived, with reluctance and resignation, but also new resolve, at a largely standardized edition. As I detail in the list below, I render my edition of Eigner’s letters in an equivalently spaced typeface, and I retain Eigner’s spelling and punctuation. Rather than incompletely reproduce his page size or his orthography, however, I offer brief explanatory notes at the head of each text and, in a few necessary cases when the manuscript itself is singularly acrobatic, through bracketed editorial insertions in the text itself. I have largely avoided the use of the tab stop, except for cases where Eigner is inserting poetry into his letters, and at his valediction, where he of­ten uses the tab to suggest ongoing or lingering comment in the moments before and after he types his name. And, for purists such as myself and others interested in Eigner’s actual page, I have included several photoreproductions at the end of the volume. For all readers, I present the following textual apparatus: 1. Following the precedent set in previous collections of Eigner’s ­poetry, I have chosen to render his correspondence in Courier. 2. Roman is used for passages typed by Eigner and italics for handwritten passages. 3. New pages are distinguished by a horizontal rule.

A Note on the Text / xv

4. To render Eigner’s unique invention of the opening and closing ­parenthesis superimposed upon one another, and which he of­ten uses to bracket text within his letters or to mark asides in the margin, I have used instead the vertical bar ( | ). 5. Eigner almost always began his longer letters (as he did many of his poems) with his home address typed at the top of the page, usually at the left margin. I have chosen to omit this feature. 6. All idiosyncrasies of spelling, capitalization, and punctuation are Eigner’s. 7. Unless otherwise noted, all marks and inscriptions, such as parentheses, ellipses, hyphens, dashes, and so forth, are Eigner’s. Hyphens merely indicating line breaks have been silently deleted. Eigner often x-­ed out passages he was unable to correct by overtyping. When it is possible to discern the overtyped text, I have rendered that text struck through. When the origi­nal text is illegible, I have inserted struck-­through x’s (xxx), though Eigner used x, s, and other characters for this purpose. In either instance, Eigner’s correction follows. I have retained these moments of deletion because I believe they indicate another aspect of Eigner’s thinking at the scene of typing. 8. Editorial insertions are indicated via brackets and a different typeface from that used in the letter text. Bracketed editorial insertions are used in three instances: a. Dates: Eigner irregularly dated his correspondence. Postcards are of­ten (but not always) dated on the reverse, near his valediction/­ name and address. Many are also undated. When I am using Eigner’s date for a postcard, I have placed this at the top of the text, rather than at the bottom. When I am dating a card or letter from a postmark, the date is rendered as an editorial insertion at the top of the text. b. Legibility: When text is illegible, whether due to the physical condition of the manuscript, poor type quality (e.g., an old typewriter ribbon), or unclear handwriting, I have provided a bracketed gloss; a question mark indicating uncertainty may follow my gloss in instances where I am less certain or unable to rely on context. c. Orthography: Eigner’s orthography is of­ten unconventional. When it is excessively so, and/or suggestive of meaning or the process of Eigner’s thought (e.g., indicating how and when he

xvi / A Note on the Text

typed things), I have entered an editorial insertion describing as succinctly as possible the arrangement of the text. Shorter passages are contained within the bracketed editorial insertion, with my text and Eigner’s distinguishable from one another via typeface. Longer, more complex passages are preceded by the editorial insertion; the descriptive text clearly identifies the boundaries of such passages. 9. Letters are individually numbered and cross-referenced accordingly. Page numbers for individual letters and prose pieces are provided in appendix B.

Provenance of Materials The material transcribed, cited, and discussed below comes from several discrete collections. The primary letters, written by Eigner to Williams, are held at the Poetry Collection at the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York: Larry Eigner letters to Jonathan Williams, Boxes 208–209, PCMS-­0019, ­Jargon Society Collection, 1950–2008. Larry Eigner manuscripts, Box 35, PCMS-­0019, Jargon Society ­Collection, 1950–2008. Extant letters from Williams to Eigner presented below are held in another collection: Letters from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner, 1960–1967, Larry Eigner Papers, Box 2, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. Additional material used to contextualize references in the correspondence or unpack what might otherwise be opaque comes from a number of collections at the Dodd Research Center and at the Kenneth Spencer Research ­Library, University of Kansas. At the Dodd Research Center: Letters and postcards from Larry Eigner to Charles Olson, Oc­to­ber 20, 1956, April 27 and August 12, 1957, Box 152, Archives and Special Collections.

A Note on the Text / xvii

Manuscripts and correspondence ( June 18, 1957) by Larry Eigner, sent to Jonathan Williams and enclosed in letter from Williams to Charles Olson, August 15, 1957, Box 221, Charles Olson ­Research Collection, Archives and Special Collections. Letters from Jonathan Williams to Charles Olson, July 2–­November 8, 1954, and August 15, 1957, Charles Olson Research Collection, Box 221, Archives and Special Collections. At the Kenneth Spencer Research Library: Larry Eigner Poems and Papers, MS 39.J.02 (Box 14, Folder 2), MS 39.J.04 (Box 14, Folder 4), MS 39.J.08 (Box 14, Folder 8). Larry Eigner correspondence with the Paris Review, letter from Eigner to Tom Clark, editor of the Paris Review, April 20, 1965, MS 55A: 11.

Introduction But as to letters written at the same time as poems: I’ve always been scatterbrained enough—though for quite a while I tried not to be, it’s been one day and another—that if my letters have relation to concurrent writings it’s coincidental. And only two or three times have I made carbon copies of letters—a big deal that would’ve been—same as it’d be to hunt up and list addresses of correspondents I’ve eventually been unable to keep up with for an editor of a letter collection. —Larry Eigner, in conversation with Peter Bates, 19771

Larry Eigner (1927–1996) was a poet of­ten associated with the Projectivist tendency in Ameri­can poetry. Anthologized in the “Black Mountain School” section of Don Allen’s epochal The New Ameri­can Poetry: 1945–1960, Eigner published frequently in the little magazines that brought together Projectiv­ist poets in the late 1950s and 1960s. Eigner’s fellow writers in this tendency included the movement’s founder and primary theorist Charles Olson, as well as Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and Jonathan Williams. Eigner and these other writers of­ten appeared in such magazines as Origin, Black Mountain Review, Migrant, Sparrow, Floating Bear, and Yugen, among many others. As the era of the New Ameri­can poets began to pass, in the 1970s, Eigner came to be celebrated by younger generations of writers—most notably, the Language poets, who coalesced in a similar manner around small magazines and presses such as This, Tottel’s, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and Tuumba. Where the Projectivists had formulated a speech-­based poetics that sought to register through the use of the typewriter the prosodic pressures of the poet’s in­di­vidual voice and body, the Language poets were instead frequently interested in a lexical, even graphemic poetics of the material word. Under a Projectivist rubric, Eigner’s sparse, spatially arrayed texts were of­ten read as emblematic of his own particular experience of embodiment as a person living with cerebral palsy; a generation later, the Language poets came to read some of the very same typewritten texts—with Eigner’s minute attentions to character spacing and placement, snatches of overheard audiovisual media, frequent collaging of vari­ous textual sources, and paratextual glosses—as exem-

2

Introduction

plary engagements with the material qualities of discourse. From the late 1960s until his death, Eigner enjoyed steady publication in some of the most important little magazines and small presses for vanguard poetry. When ON MY EYES was published by Jonathan Williams (1929–2008) under the Jargon Society imprint in 1960, Eigner was just over thirty-­three years old; Williams—also a poet, as well as a photographer and essayist—was thirty-­one. Eigner had published a small chapbook of ten poems, From the Sustaining Air, in 1953 with Robert Creeley’s Divers Press and had assembled, mimeographed, and self-­distributed another nineteen-­poem pamphlet, LOOK AT THE PARK, in 1958. Though Eigner was actively circulating poems in manuscript form and appearing in little magazines, and despite his active correspondence with and the encouraging approval of major poets of the period, publication of a full-­length manuscript had thus far remained elusive. In 1960, Williams’s Jargon Society was just shy of a decade old and yet had already made an inestimable contribution to vanguard writing, with the publication of signal works in beautiful formats by Charles Olson, Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Duncan, Mina Loy, Henry Miller, Irving Layton, Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, and Joel Oppenheimer. By the end of the 1950s, as Kyle Schlesinger notes, “had Williams chosen never to publish another book, his accomplishments would be more than commendable.”2 When ON MY EYES arrived, on Halloween 1960 in Swampscott, Massachusetts, at the home Larry shared with his parents, Bessie and Israel, Larry and Jonathan Williams had been corresponding for nearly a decade and had been working together on the manuscript for almost five years. With nearly all of Eigner’s more than three thousand poems gathered together and published in 2010 in the four-­volume Collected Poems of Larry Eigner, it is important to note that at the time Eigner and Williams embarked upon the production of what would become ON MY EYES, Eigner had become so discouraged in his efforts to place a full-­length manuscript with a reputable press that he reported to Williams his ambivalence about continuing his work as a poet. One should be cautious of overstatement, especially in matters of hypothetical literary history, but had Eigner not published ON MY EYES and, that same year, been anthologized in Allen’s The New Ameri­can Poetry, we may not have today the more than two thousand poems that followed. In a certain sense, then, the story told in these letters, of the development and aftermath of ON MY EYES, is the story of Eigner’s emergence into and assumption of the role of mature poet.

Introduction

3

• And of course there have been crackpots in the world, and there are signs that J Wms and L.Eigner are among em. —Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams, February 3, 1960

The material collected in this book represents a span of approximately twenty-­ five years and includes almost one hundred pieces of correspondence between Eigner and Williams and four unpublished prose statements by Eigner (two essays and two letters to the editor). Also in the Jargon Society Collection but not included in this volume are two heavily emended typescripts of Eigner’s ON MY EYES and, depending on how one defines a poem or a poetry typescript, approximately three dozen additional poems independent of the correspondence text and not appearing in Eigner’s Jargon publication. Though he did travel during the period circumscribed by these letters (notably, to visit his brothers in San Francisco and St. Louis), all of Eigner’s contributions save one (dictated by Larry to his father from Larry’s hospital bed in 1962) were sent from the Eigner home at 23 Bates Road in Swampscott, Massachusetts. The last of Eigner’s extant letters indicates his impending move to California (occasioned by the death of his father and his mother’s increasing difficulties in caring for Larry), where he would spend the latter half of his life. Eigner’s relative fixity is complemented by the fact that in much of this decades-­long exchange, Jonathan Williams was on the road—returning from his military post in Germany, peddling Jargon’s catalog on long road trips, hiking the Appalachian Trail, exploring the United Kingdom on foot, holding residencies, or attending readings and book launches across the United States. Williams described his travels in an interview with Bary Alpert as “travelling 40,000 miles a year and being everywhere at once and knowing infinitely too many people.”3 Though they met in person only a few times, it is clear from Eigner’s letters to Williams that their correspondence and the published output of the Jargon Society were deeply important to Eigner. What must be pointed out first is that though the letters collected below represent the full holdings of the Larry Eigner letters collected by Jonathan Williams and held at the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo, SUNY (where the Williams/Jargon Society archive is housed), the letters collected below are incomplete. Though there exist nearly one hundred letters and cards from Eigner to Williams, fewer than ten pieces from Williams to Eigner have

4

Introduction

yet been found at Buffalo or at other manuscript collections of Eigner’s material. While the resulting, mostly one-­sided correspondence therefore is at times opaque, the lack of much of Williams’s side of their communication is interesting in itself. Reasons for the disappearance of Williams’s letters to Eigner range from haphazard loss to interception by members of Eigner’s family to Eigner’s own specific difficulties in managing a paper-­based archive. In the first letter collected here, for example, from Eigner to Williams, De­cem­ber 29, 1953 (when Williams was stationed in Germany as an army medic in a psychiatric hospital), Eigner noted that he had “lost all [Williams’s] mail [. . .] and hence was waiting for MAXIMUS’ arrival in order to write and answer [him].” Addressing him as “Jon Williams” in that letter, Eigner had yet to adopt the more informal tone that appears later in the letters. As Eigner’s literary production increased, and as his role of correspondent grew in proportion, Eigner reported to Williams several times that letters, books, and other objects had been moved into the basement in order to clear space: “And mother especialy,” he wrote on April 26, 1964, “is glad when I see my way to lightening a shelf. I avoid like anything putting any paper down cellar or throwing it out, but have always bn rather happy to loan it or give it away, myself.” Though separated by only a single floor and a few steps, such items “down cellar” were as difficult for Eigner to retrieve as if had they been physically far removed. Other contingencies declare themselves as well—namely, that in an era when textual reproduction was still largely a manual affair, requiring either carbon copies or prohibitively expensive xerographic processes, the quickest way to circulate the content of a letter among additional parties was to send the letter itself. Indeed, in the first years of their correspondence, Eigner and Williams traded among themselves a scrap of a letter from Charles Olson; later, as vari­ous publishers sought to reprint Eigner’s ON MY EYES (notably, Coyote Books), Eigner and Williams shared those letters too. Carbon copies were difficult for Eigner, owing both to the strength of keystroke required to make effective copies as well as to the extra paper handling; for a period in the letters, Eigner spent significant thought regarding what it would take to obtain his own wet or dry reproduction process machines, and when it came to preparing for Williams four copies of his manuscript for ON MY EYES, Eigner did so by retyping four times the entire collection of more than eighty poems. Thus, if at any point Eigner wished to share the content of one of Williams’s letters with another correspondent, he might have simply forwarded that letter along.4 Given Williams’s incessant travels, some letters undoubtedly were lost, mis-

Introduction

5

directed, or simply destroyed through use and transport. This contingency is represented in the present volume in an exchange between Eigner, Williams, and Bill Brown, of Coyote Books, during a sustained discussion of a proposed reprint by Coyote Books of Eigner’s ON MY EYES. Williams wrote from Ros­well, New Mexico, to Eigner on March 16, 1967, “Enclosed is my letter of yesterday to Bill Brown, which I hope is a decent clarification of my present feeling about On My Eyes.” In that letter to Brown (a carbon of which he ­stapled to his letter to Eigner), Williams wrote, “I’ve been carrying a letter from Larry Eigner around with me through vari­ous blizzards, across mid­ west­ern rivers, and in the midst of too many gnat-­filled english departments— 6300 miles of same for the past 10 weeks. So, I should have written sooner but couldn’t.” Williams included in his letter to Brown a shipping address in care of the Aspen Institute in Colorado (where he would hold a residency for almost a year and a half, starting in April 1967), as well as an address for immediate correspondence in care of the photographer Frederick Sommer, in Arizona. Despite the pace of his travels, he closed his letter to Brown with “Keep in touch,” and his letter to Eigner with a similar invitation and something of an apology: “Keep in touch. I travel so endlessly I’ve lapsed badly in my letter­ writing. But. I’m still here, etc. Wherever that is. Onword!” Finally, at least one additional—and more specific—context for the absence of Williams’s side of the correspondence must be mentioned here. The nature of Williams’s work as an independent publisher of vanguard literature meant that in general his Jargon Society was of­ten financially stressed. Publication was frequently delayed until Williams could arrange for funding to pay his vari­ous printers. Sometimes this meant that proceeds from one book went directly to support the publication of another. Other times this meant that Williams solicited work and sold it on subscription before anything was actually sent to the press. Williams would also ask authors to help subsidize the cost of their own volumes or to agree to purchase at a reduced rate a large portion of the print run for their own distribution. In many cases, all of these conditions applied. While today many of the books in the Jargon catalog command prices upwards of several hundred dollars,5 Williams was forced to fundraise ceaselessly in order to stay in operation. With specific reference to Eigner and his ON MY EYES, the perpetually unstable finances of the Jargon Society caused no small amount of friction—between Eigner and Williams, but also, and more importantly, between Williams and Eigner’s family, with Larry himself in the middle. The first extant letter from Eigner to Williams, noted above, is in fact a sub-

6

Introduction

scription. Throughout their correspondence, Eigner placed frequent orders for Jargon titles, well in advance of their release. This put no small strain on his finances (in­clud­ing a modest “allowance” of a few dollars a month that he received from his family; see letter dated February 3, 1960, where Eigner commented on “deciding how to spend my dollar a wk”), yet Eigner went beyond even this exemplary literary citizenship. In addition to purchasing books and magazines with regularity, Eigner also deferred some of the very small royalties he received from his other publications (notably, the Allen anthology), requesting of his publishers that these be sent to Williams. But the greatest financial friction between the two came when Williams actively sought funding for Eigner’s ON MY EYES. As the letters reveal, in order to secure financial backing for his manuscript, Eigner solicited members of his extended family for cash and attempted to convince his father to agree to a purchase of a substantial portion of the eventual print run (see letters from 1959 and 1960). As Eigner’s family began to contribute small sums to Jargon, Williams appeared to let slip that funds then being collected were being directed not toward the production of Eigner’s book but instead to relieving debts incurred by previous books. “My folks saw your letter,” Eigner reported, March 25, 1959, “where you say, in type ‘Cant do anything till $4,000 are paid up, ’ and then, in print, ‘ at least ‘$1,000 ’ for a single item, with $200 designers fee.” And he admitted to Williams that this made him appear quite foolish to his family in light of his own fundraising efforts: “I’m considered an inexperienced fool around here already, and to make myself more foolish , look like it, isnt exactly why I wanted to ask, and I did want to ask [his family for funding].” Eager to publish, Eigner worked both sides of the issue: he continued to solicit his family while reporting to Williams his interest in working with other, cheaper or more financially solvent presses.6 Things reached a crisis in early 1960, as Eigner’s mother discovered that larger sums had continued to flow from the Eigner household to Jargon (with the help, it seems, of Larry’s father); Eigner reported in a letter from February 3, 1960, that in frustration and anger, his mother then “went down cellar, etc., threatened to leave in th morning, etc, to tear up all yr mail as it comes (which she’s done before). -­If you let on I’ve told you this,” he cautioned Williams, “it may be the last time I’ll get yr messages.” Eigner ended this letter on a note of contrition that, interestingly enough, encompasses both his relationship with his mother and his relationship with Williams: “Everything [Mama] does or sez is for my benefit,” he wrote, “and I ought to take it gratefully to heart.” “So,” he told Williams, “you cant depend on anything, $$, fr here, though I may well ask agn.”

Introduction

7

Several letters follow in which Eigner, perhaps strategically, relates to Williams not only the terms of publication he had received from other presses (“If you can’t arrange an edition under the above terms of reimbursement, — shake hands, ol man?” March 25, 1960) but also his growing literary footprint in the magazines of the era. Carrying on his own covert correspondence with Williams that nevertheless necessitated that he ask his family for help posting letters and cards, Eigner also began occasionally to write potentially sensitive content in French.7 And, on at least one occasion, Eigner enlisted the help of the Eigners’ cleaning woman to smuggle letters out of the home without the knowledge of his parents (see card dated Janu­ary 29, 1960). And soon after this multifronted crisis—between Eigner and his family, between Eigner and Williams—the Eigners and Jargon struck a deal. While sensitive, letters reporting these financial difficulties give broader context to the interpersonal network that surrounded Eigner and also indicate what happened to at least some of the missing Williams letters (one imagines, certainly, that the letter from which Eigner quoted above was among those destroyed). Throughout the crisis, Eigner articulated and respected the tensions that surrounded him while at the same time advocating for what he himself wanted: “I consider that you fig­ure that theres not much reason in being ayt all reticent, abt difficulties as abt discovered joys,” he wrote to Williams, February 3, 1960, regarding the latter’s insistent soliciting of funds. “But other people [. . .] don’t see things this way. They are struck by the chip on yr shoulder, and ask wherefore, etc. And of course there have been crackpots in the world, and there are signs that J Wms and L.Eigner are among em.” • I still get occasional yen to pass a paper around, as with th enclosed. —Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams, February 22, 1965

After the flurry of exchange that characterizes the development, production, and arrival of Eigner’s ON MY EYES, and concerned as those letters and cards are with the business of the book—cost, arrangement of the poems, proofing, delivery, and distribution—the ensuing correspondence changes somewhat in tone. More so than when he was seeking to publish with Jargon, and (interestingly) more in the spirit by which they weathered together the crisis of publication (as two “crackpots in the world”), Eigner shifted to address Williams more fully as a peer. He reported visits from younger writers and publishers

8

Introduction

(“Must make you feel terribly venerable?” Williams replied on De­cem­ber 13, 1960, in one of his few extant letters). Eigner shared his own consumption of music (in­clud­ing Debussy, Delius, Ives, and others), popu­lar media (especially the nascent development of educational television), and periodicals and other prose (from the Saturday Evening Post to Rachel Carson to Thoreau to McLuhan). Of course, Eigner’s running commentary on the poetry, poetics, and poetry publications of the era continued. And finally, though he and Williams were no longer in discussion over publication, and Eigner had moved on to publish with Black Sparrow, Circle Press, Fulcrum, and others, Eigner continued to discuss his developing writing and to send his poetry and prose to Williams. Letters such as these complicate and add nuance to Eigner’s bibliographic record. What’s more—and despite Eigner’s disavowal that “if my letters have relation to concurrent writings it’s coincidental”—this previously uncollected prose and correspondence in fact establish and expand the broader character of Eigner’s thinking at the time. One final point should be made to gently correct Eigner’s own self-­assessment: these letters do in fact contain some rather remarkable intersections between Eigner’s epistolary and poetic practices. On the prose writing, the four pieces here show a number of features of Eigner’s thought. In the earliest piece, “Religion in the Big World” (an essay on Olson), Eigner articulates a nuanced ethics concerning the consequences of right actions—not their consequences in the world, but rather on their ethically motivated actor. How, Eigner asks, can one act ethically without at the same time being motivated by one’s own personal desire to be and self-­conception as an outstanding ethical agent? Though they are not thematically related, broader ethical investigations carry through several other of the prose writings here and certainly inform readings of his poems. In that same essay, Eigner also distances himself somewhat from Projectivist poetics; in direct critique of Olson’s argument in “Projective Verse,” Eigner suggests, “There are more problems involved than preventing ego elephantitis.” Given that this essay was written in 1954 and well prior to his anthologization with the Black Mountain poets or the publication of ON MY EYES, it is interesting to consider how this essay may bear on future readings of Eigner’s work. Other prose pieces collected here, written in the early 1960s, range from Eigner’s responses to pub­lic debates on birth control and population sustainability (“On learning something more, recently, of the population raises”) to his engagement with civil rights issues (“United we sit divided we race”) and, following lighter notes, his reaction to a hoax played on pub­

Introduction

9

lic morality and general social conservatism (“The plea that clothing be put upon cows”). Clearly prepared for circulation, these pieces offer additional thematic contexts for his poetry. What’s more, for the ways in which his thinking in these pieces undulates, moving from point to point in a manner not unlike improvisation in a musical performance, we might observe that his prose obeys a prosody similar to that which we find in his poems. Other than these intriguing prose inclusions, Eigner’s correspondence also contains a number of poems that are included with letters sent or, interestingly, begin in, are copied into, or develop alongside the text of the correspondence itself. Numerous ephemeral or occasional poems, early drafts of “Frederick Douglass” and “The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe” (which dramatically expands in the course of a single letter), and the fascinating holograph manuscript of the poem “I am a machine for walking” all appear in these letters. As Eigner “pass[es] [these] paper[s] around,” such pieces quite literally emerge from and develop within this epistolary setting and eventually find their way into a variety of Eigner’s published volumes— in­clud­ing not only ON MY EYES (1960), but also another time in fragments (1967), air / the trees (1968), and The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe (1968). This material thus offers fascinating context for genetic criticism of specific poems while on a larger level calling for a reexamination of the chronology of Eigner’s published works during this period. Though letters have been separated from their inclusions, it is occasionally possible to identify relative or even specific dates for poems and prose sent with letters. In every case, all effort has been made to do so. In addition to chronology, these materials also ask us to reconsider Eigner’s relationship to the typewritten page. While the 2010 Collected Poems presents Eigner’s work in large-­format, 8.5″ × 11″ pages based on the premise that Eigner’s poetic field was a standard sheet of typing paper and that his materials were those of the QWERTY typewriter keyboard and equivalently spaced letterforms, these letters suggest that if Eigner’s poetic canvas was 8.5″ × 11″, his sketchbook was far more varied. There are numerous letters in this collection that share the dimensions of what we know of as Eigner’s poetic page. Yet there are others, far outnumbering the “standard” page, where dimensions vary widely—from letter to letter, and at times within the space of a single document. From larger leaves of paper to smaller stationery sheets to folded, torn, and otherwise altered sheets of typing paper to the 3.25″ × 5.5″ postcard, Eigner’s contributions in this correspondence always explore the limits of their

10

Introduction

material form. Such variation and its attendant constraints produces some remarkable effects in the realm of epistolary poetics. Here let me add a personal note that, as editor of these materials, I was of­ ten more intimidated by Eigner’s shortest and smallest pieces than I was by his lengthy letters. All of Eigner’s writing has a challenging depth as well as breadth of allusion and reference, but when it came to examining his postcards, I of­ ten found myself asking on both the referential and the purely typographical levels, “How did he get all that in there?” Sheets and leaves rotate, text flows in unexpected order, marginalia comment on and occasionally take over the direction of a letter, and cards especially are filled from edge to edge. To truly represent Eigner’s interaction with the materials of his epistolary practice, a facsimile or photoreproduction edition would be necessary. Of course, such is also impossible on any useful scale; thus, every effort has been made in the following to describe, represent, or indicate Eigner’s engagement with the material form of his correspondence, and several fig­ures have been included for those interested in the appearance of his letters and typescripts. Williams was certainly not alone as recipient of many of these poems and prose works; at many times through­out this correspondence, Eigner notes others to whom he has sent or plans to send a particular work. One might think therefore of Eigner’s correspondence (at its most capacious and widest address) as its own form of epistolary publication. In this sense, Eigner’s letter-­writing practice is at once richly rewarding and almost certainly permanently gnarled. The breadth and scope of Eigner’s letter-­writing practice makes a “collected” letters impossible, and even a “selected” letters suspect for what it might omit. Yet future volumes might follow the pattern established by this one and consider carefully demarcated sets of letters between Eigner and specific individuals. With all attendant possibilities—“oaks from small acorns,” as Eigner might say—those volumes of letters remain to be collected. • Reading matter in quantities way beyond my capacitykeeps pouring out ofthe blue perplexingly -­how seldom it rains!! —Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams, July 20, 1978

“Eigner studies” is not (yet?) a field; Eigner’s own confessed “amateurism” may serve as a model: “An amateur is a lover of a subject,” he said, in conversation with Jack Foley, “What’s the use unless you really feel like it?”8 Nevertheless,

Introduction

11

for the poets, critics, and readers seeking to embellish the context in which they read and respond to Eigner’s work, several key volumes that have aided this edition will be of use and should be mentioned here. First among these is Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier’s edition of The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner (Stanford University Press, 2010). With an essential chronology, very useful introductory and concluding notes, facsimiles of several typescripts, and—of course—the now-­definitive edition of Eigner’s three-­thousand-­plus poems, the Collected Poems is a must for the futures of Eigner studies. In volume 23 of the Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, Shelly Andrews collects into a single location a variety of disparate materials on Larry Eigner, in­clud­ing not only extracts from Eigner’s published poetry and prose (from areas / lights / heights and elsewhere), but also Jack Foley’s interview with Eigner broadcast by KPFA-­FM in 1994; Foley’s transcript (also published in Poetry USA in 1992) of the 1973 documentary about Eigner, Getting It Together; the last interview Eigner gave before his death in 1996; and a useful bibliography of his major works. Ben Friedlander’s very thorough biographical essay on Larry Eigner in the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Ameri­ can Poets since World War II, 6th Series, edited by Joseph Mark Conte (Gale Research, 1998), is also an important reference. The edition of Eigner’s prose edited by Ben Friedlander, areas / lights / heights: Writings 1954–1989 (Roof Books, 1989), serves at once as useful volume and cautionary tale—as Friedlander’s note acknowledges, the book began as a selected letters volume but was soon taken over by its materials, and it has since become the single most useful repository of Eigner’s poetics available. As the edition here in hand makes clear, there seems to be no easy line between Eig­ ner’s letters, poems, and criticism or essay practice. Only the carefully controlled limitations of the present volume allow it to sustain as an edition of “letters.” A volume of letters, presented as a facsimile edition and in minimalist format, precedes this edition: Larry Eigner Letters (to Joseph Guglielmi and Claude Royet-­Journoud), edited by Robert Kocik and Joseph Simas (Moving Letters Press, 1987). As a facsimile edition of approximately a dozen letters, this little booklet is extremely useful for showing Eigner’s radically plastic letter-­writing style, as well as how his letter writing and poetry composition interweave with one another (poems of­ten begin midletter or in the margins alongside letter text). Another edition of Eigner’s prose, Country / Harbor / Quiet / Act / Around (This Press, 1978), contains prose pieces from a few pages to upwards of twenty

12

Introduction

pages, ranging in genre from short fiction to autobiographical reminiscences to descriptive prose sketches. This volume offers a useful complement to Eigner’s poetry: the autobiographical material contextualizes some of Eigner’s work, and the fiction and descriptive sketches serve as corrective to the idea that Eigner’s “minimalism” in his verse is symptomatic of his cerebral palsy (Eig­ ner’s prose is colloquial and fluid). Finally, there are two important bibliographies of Eigner’s writing: A ­ ndrea Wyatt’s A Bibliography of Works by Larry Eigner: 1937–1969 (Oyez, 1970) and Irving P. Leif ’s Larry Eigner: A Bibliography of His Works (Scarecrow Press, 1989). Both are useful for their meticulous description of Eigner’s many fugitive and rare book publications and their lists of poems appearing in periodicals. As Eigner states in what follows, however, regarding the Wyatt bibliography, and as my own research shows of the Leif bibliography, both contain significant omissions—admitted by their compilers as well as by Eigner himself—­and should not be taken as definitive records. With an archive so richly gnarled as Eigner’s, perhaps the following should be said of all such publications, present text included: despite best efforts, we await the discoveries of additional letters from Eigner to Williams and from Williams to Eigner. On that note, having spent nearly a decade with these materials and following Eigner’s example in his “Method from Happenstance,” I can say with a happy resignation that “I know enough to feel naïve.”9

The Correspondence

Here follow all extant pieces of correspondence from Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams as gathered in the Jargon Society Collection at the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, State University of New York—nearly one hundred cards and letters—and all currently known letters and cards (eight total) from Williams to Eigner. Of the latter, six are held in the collection Letters from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner, 1960–1967, Larry Eigner Papers, Box 2, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. Also among those pieces is a carbon copy of a letter from Williams to Bill Brown (editor of Coyote’s Journal), which Williams forwarded to Eigner (see letters 85a and 85b). Two more pieces from Williams to Eigner are held in the aforementioned Jargon Society Collection. Both present cases where Eigner used correspondence he had received from Williams as substrate for his own responses. In the first instance (see letter 11), Eigner responded on the reverse of a letter from Williams; in the later example (see letter 60), Eigner entered interlinear and marginal proofing notes among Williams’s own questions regarding the typescript of Eigner’s ON MY EYES. An additional mailing from Williams to Eigner, not included here, is in the Larry Eigner papers held in Stanford University’s Special Collections. Eigner acknowledged receiving that item in June 1978 (see letter 97); the full text appears to have been a photocopy of the New York Times obituary notice on the death of poet Louis Zukofsky together with a mass mailing from Williams calling for contributions to a memorial volume on Zukofsky’s life and work. To be called Postcards & Valentines for L.Z., it was slated for publication the following Valentine’s Day and intended for circulation only among contributors and confidants.

14

The Correspondence

Eigner’s side of this correspondence is presented chronologically, as best as can be determined using Eigner’s own dates as well as postmarks and (when neither of the previous are available) internal evidence from the correspondence itself. In one significant instance, either Eigner’s date is markedly incorrect or what appears as the date is in fact an allusion to something else not yet established. That letter, apparently dated by Eigner as “Xmas & 5 60,” seems instead to be from late 1963 and has been placed accordingly. Brief descriptive notes, in­clud­ing the physical proportions of the page and vari­ous states of emendation (usually typewritten but occasionally handwritten), preface each piece. Williams’s letters are interspersed among Eigner’s beneath clear descriptive headings detailing their provenance. Rather than placing these in their own section or appendix, they have been collated among Eigner’s letters to demonstrate that this was in fact an active exchange (though Williams’s side is largely missing), and to make clear how singular Eigner’s letters actually are in comparison to those of Williams. As placed in this order, the letters are also numbered; in the back matter, explanatory notes, corresponding to those numbers and keyed to letter text, attempt to unpack allusions, give bibliographi­cal reference, or add his­tori­cal context to material in the letters. Eigner’s writing in this correspondence is dense, richly allusive, and deeply socially situated; every effort has been made to identify names, publications, and allusions to literary and cultural topics. Images of selected typescripts are available in appendix A.

(1) One-­page letter typed on typing paper torn to a size of 5.5″ × 8.5″ Tuesday, Dec 29, ’53 Dear Jon Williams, Maximus look great, not to speak of th tremendous format. Soon as i glanced at a couple of lines, the difference from the previous versions, which were a little headlong in central turns. . . . I haven’t seen much of the bk yet (that will take some time certainly), but I’d sure like the rest of the letters. And I was real curious abt the the Patchen, and now i feel rich enough for that. But I somehow

The Correspondence

15

got the idea it may be all gone. I guess the best thin smoothest arrangement is now just to ast you if you still got it ?? Here’s the $3 for Letters 11-­ 22. You cd send the other when thats ready, so the shipping be just as neat as ever it wd ever have been. No hurry abt it, i mean. Just to get this under the wire. I lost all your mail with all your aydresses, and hence was waiting for MAXIMUS’ arrival in order to write and answer you. That Laubies cover is quite a thing at that, I’m be ginning to see. Elements of Nature, NOT geometrical lines. And the relationships. I sure wish i cd fig­ ure whether the V in the upper right is part of the origi­ nal or not. yours Larry Eigner

(2) One-­page letter typed on a torn scrap of typing paper with handwritten emendations from Larry Eigner and Israel Eigner 1/ 26 / 54 Dear Jonathathan Wms, Here the loot XXXXXX for the Patchen, JARGON 6, which I see from CONT is still being advertised, anan JARGON 8; $4.75. -­1.50   $3.00 Larry Eigner Bob sent me a copy of Jargon 8 LE By IE

16

The Correspondence

(3) One-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper Friday Oc­ to­ ber 29th 54 Dear Jonathan W m s : As Creeley suggested, or instigated, I tried a theme on Olson for the symposium he says you’re getting together. So here it is. It looks pretty chaotic and made me ignorant one more time. It isn’t a first draft but neither a complete rewrite. No doubt abt the best I cd do in any case. Hope it helps some. If you want to do any cutting or anything, go ahead. Seems superfluous too-somewhat saying the same thing different ways. Ow. Recently read of Gerhardt’s death; much bad news, among the general messes. Creeley’s writing of his visit back there to Aix-­ P rovence, set me off on OCCASIONALLY. Apparently the only thing I could do. No doubt. Ugh. B,pellegra, or something like that, I shouldn’t be surprised. And there was that family of his, I wonder how there were getting on. I haven’t been doing too much since Spring. Stings and itches, etc., et al, it seems, off and on. But a couple of things. Good luck

Larry

Saw yours in CONTACT 6. A racy, extent incorporant phenomenon or something so to say   Well   ?o? Say I take it you got the dough for the Patchen book and the MAXIMUS 2nd volume a year or so back. Though maybe I shd’ve written to check

The Correspondence

17

before this, as I remember you were on the double to acknowledge receipt of the check for MA X 1-­ 10 that first time, befor the items arrived. LE/1 I submit also Olson’s note which I quote, so you can check on the handwriting. He wrote it in bed in some kind of position.

(4) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Dec 29 54 Dear Jn, Congrats on getting out o th’Army, probably. XX I wonder what kind of job you got at that. My brother has bn out in SF since July, working right there in the post office bldg having got through with school. xClerking to Fed Ap Crt there (Circuit) Tells me Rxroth on one of the FM stations... I am he whose brains/ scattered mor e more whn i let go. I forget Olson again, e it wdve bn rathe gd if I’d kpt a copy o that essay. I feel i did fumble arnd considerably, as i sd. At any rate i do seem to have lost the power to make like Frankenburg. Hope you gut enough material as it is .. etc, boy. Last winter i was doin ok tho. Story--69 pp, spaced. Wd go nice with the 3 in 11x8½, dble-­ ORIGIN, in the order 1 2 3 4. Luck. DIVERS cant do it. Wht abt you? e when wd u like to see it? .. I was thining abt not distracting you fr 2nd MAX etc,but guess theres no danger of that.

18

The Correspondence

Has Cid sd to you wht he remarked to me: MAX bks so Big [its?] a further tend t get left, get lost. True. Another unfortunate paradox as well as sign of th time./ Then anothr problem, for me,at least, tho minor,how to kp it, in particular, fr getting battered, ragged-­ edged, dirty, et al But wonderfly apropriate bkmaking Happy N Year

(5) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card uncharacteristically dated on the front Wednesday July 13 55 Dear JW, I got the ad for Stefan Wople today (which ijust cant go in for)--what’s YR connection with recording? Yesterday the Fielding Dawson ad, that masterwork. I want to sign that check and check summer sloth. But wd also like to know if I can get Creeley’s LOVELY,at this late date, and if it’s available at your Carolina box. XX Anyway save those 150th copies for me. (Everybody’s getting this sense of space nowadays. S having come in baroque now--says Mumford. No doubt too abstracted, as undoubtedly with everything we reach nowadays. I’ll see--maybe; will be able to.   ) Where are you  ? What abt that other stuff? How’s it coming? Good Luck

Larry Eigner

Have just read that vol The Later DHL, et al./ What’s Olson trying to do, proceed beyond LADY

The Correspondence

19

CHATTERLEY the politics of  ? Certainly not PLUMED SERPENT   ? ?

(6) Two-­page letter typed on three-­hole, lined, 6″ × 9″ notepaper with vertical additions running top to bottom in the left margin of page 1 Friday Aug. 12 55 Dear Jonathan, The trouble is, when you write, you dont (seem to) answer questions, so you make things more confusing or are strongly apt to. And here, my father let alone myself, who am getting or have been something like him (though for instance i myself wdve sent the $2 to California, at any rate if I’d aknow THAT LOVELY ARE to be still available, which i bet it is), he is just frozen stiff, practically, (to be slightly hyperbolic), when he is confused. For instance he checks back in his checkbook and sees i paid for MAXIMUS and perhps (I forget now) the Olson MISCELLANY, and want at first doesn’t see why that money shdnt be applied against an or[der] from me for the Dawson stuff. And now, for instance you put an ad in BMR5 which offers a lot of items in­ clud­ ing this one for $25 but without a separate price for any one of them. [The following appears in the left margin, running from top to bottom around the holes punched in the leaf: How you like 1st poem ORIGIN XVI? It cdve bn anonymous, ok, but it’s bad mine. Very the puzzler, as i got 3 copies for one thing...] I admire your vegetal nature, at that, especially when i have a business mill to compare it with

20

The Correspondence

lik GOLDEN QUILLxPRESS, a business mill like GOLDEN QUILL PRESS, which Stefanile has got me onto, though it’s pretty unfortunate if the two are infinitely incompatible, but it’s quite a question how far i can kp up with it all, of course, not knowing which way you’re jumping. Publishing as interruptedly as writing. Ok. Good idea. The difficulties are just me, my difficulties, and you. But that’s it. And I shd think anyway you could find some way of answering questions, when you do write, so as not to waste yr effort, and do work not only theoretically but also actually. Do you just try to keep questions in your head? Or how much paper have you got room for? I wonder how you make your living now youre out of the army and are back from San Francisco, etc. You see that, I mustve thrown out the BALLAD FOR HELEN ADAM ad, and forget the price. Idont know but what i better skip that anyway, though the wonderful selection of Duncan i have here will make me want more in at least the middle future. I’ll try to get the $2.50 for the Dawson books in here, and also the $2.50 for theAWLS. But I dont know. Anyway I’ve forgotten what A.T.I.L.I.M. is. Maybe it’s Creeley’s bk, which I sent him the dough for at Black M’tain, in July. (The return address on that card, Macon County, NC, or something, was another puzzler, something of one. A lot of this is repeating--the confusion of yr addresses, 344, 518 box, etc,--what i wrote Bob abt July 25th, and its rather surprising, again, that you dont say he has mentioned it.) Anyway, all sorts of things pile up here too. And i dont see what time you get for poker.

The Correspondence

21

Thanks for that Olon letter scrap back. I’d forgotten about it. Havent redeciphered it yet and dont know when i will. I’m thinking right now you cdve given it back to HIM. My god! You see how confused I’m becoming. Anyway, I havent got an y copy, didn’t make any, or did i, maybe i sent one to Ch at that --of the article, so if you havent thrown it away yet, dont, if you can. That bit of verse there,? Nuts, Scraps. Yes, Stefanile is doing a chapbook from me, verse, of course, NOT the prose volume i spoke of to you. I havent done a thing on that and it’s still available, to anybody who may hear abt it and wd l ike to busy themselves with it, but nothing at all necessary. The 70pp main piece, which Bob has a copy of, is a mess, XX my opinions on it boil down to now, like Bob said, and it’s sure rather disgusting that I havent got the guts to rewrite or even do much cutting. I did some alteration, which Bob also has there. Abt the only changes he hasn’t got,maybe The only ones, are on page 64, a change of “Bollson’s” in line 4 to, say, “Bollison’s”, and after line 8 an insert & c: ” Inside or outside No, not you, he said, or anything, at the same time,        ... Which maybe you can show him, just for the heck of it. I failed to make a typed copy of theXX alteration i sent him, and now finf at least one of my penciled phrases indecipherable. I also enclose 2 pieces which I’d like you to hand to Bob for XXXX possible use.XX He SAYS prose is hard to find. I just wrote August now after lunch. I hear this Connie is on your coast, by the way, at the moment./ So i guess i was

22

The Correspondence

getting to dig Stein this morning after all. Also Ferrini BMR5 is grt, that 4th photo and all. Edelstein, Duncan, Layton. Tru ck story. Gdman. Not read much of it yet. BREAD AND WINE just last night. Freud’s biog. Propertius. Crusade. And I never cd actually get fired onto Aa Copland, or Appalaichain spring. Smooth and Golden. Gillis. Virgil Thompson’s stabat mater, though, pretty nice when i heard it, a record, a few yrs ago. Regards to the parlor

Larry Eigner

(7) Two-­page letter typed on six-­hole, lined, 3.75″ × 6.75″ note­paper with vertical additions running top to bottom in the left margin of page 2 Saturday Sep 3rd 55 Dear J: The money for AJAX. T      Larry I lent the other two of Dawson’s to a friend. Dont quite fathom them in most part--as yet, anyway. Of couse”unusual” and symbolic-­ looking, etc. Well, after 2 years went back to Hart Crane’s Bridge, and has hit me solid. I also got to Ol-­ ’s Late War, which comes thru mostly, i theenk, and all in a great manner. I theenk: he prefers easygoing life, (even lethargy, vs. violence? lesser of two evils) And soo on Regards

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23

PS         --De­cem­ber 14th Sent this to Asheville: whence it has come back. I can’t think how it is I got that mixed up, except that it’s where your printer is. XXX And I been looking at maps--a few. Anyway I remember very carefully that an e comes after Ash. I sent a copy of SPARROW 4 to Asheville too-same day or day or two after i mailed two to Black Mountain. Box 344. I wonder if it’s still there.  ! ATILM, which I also lent to feller up in Maine, is great, (or something on that order), and lays it on the line. Driving car, etc. Come to think of it what you got there is a fine poem to end on. Little) Jhnie 1 not Etc. The cover is great. And Dan Rice,very much like a whale. But i dont quite get R’s comment on D. I’ve fig­ ured it to budget on another literary thing which so far as i guess is drawing to a close, and I here subscribe to the Layton. Yesterday heard on the radio Wm Faulkner’s Caaeeadmon recrding Nobel Prize Spch e sec.s de I Dying e altrui cosa. Something. Ma accent,e fast talk.Missed out sm [The following appears in the left margin, running from top to bottom: And wk ago 4th part SOUND AND FURY on TV. Franchot Tone,etc. Ethel Wters. It lookedfine. Punch.]

(8) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Janu­ary 30 [1956] Dear Jonathin, The copy i sent to Asheville had some, most of the errata correcteted, though the ones

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concerning spacings not very legibly in some instances*. Want me to explicate? ANOTHER ONE is the one where i take most chances, though ALAS is also kind of untenable. *You are very welcome to get C Olson to let you see the mss I sent him abt in No­ vem­ ber,among then this seq as I had it origi­ nally. While I may drop another line to him soon to make sure he’ll return them in 56. Blackburn (or Levertov,more so likely) rather fullblown in cfson to Creeley.? Question of how microcosmic or cosmic you ought to be. But what bypasses that to a great extent is Bob’s keen manner itself, keen neutrality, etc. Rea Reading Falkner’s COLLECTED STORIES right now, right now the tales abt ces nego-­ owning Choctaw commune. The fluidity of the life so basicly quiet somehow. Quiet in variety ? Improvised, sponetanous, extempore, the life. The writing itself pretty blinding in its variety, like the sun. So overabundant in a way. All kinds of lushness. Pretty gd set in TV SOUND E FURY i tht. Interior of rambling summer hse, for 1 thng.

(9) One-­page letter typed on the reverse of a rejection slip (a handwritten note on 5.5″ × 8.5″ letterhead) from Accent magazine. Internal evidence indicates that Eigner misdated the letter; Origin 18, to which Eigner refers, appeared in spring 1956. March 19th 55 [1956?] Dear Jonathan , Ok. Here’s the price for the Zukofsky. Though I don’t know how much longer I can go, etc.

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How few real mags there are. Recently tried FLAME and got my stuff back (“this selection seems contrived”!), with a sample copy. What fireworks that girl is putting up. Et c. I just got together some stuff to the number of 45 and am abt to submit it to BERN PORTER. Centering abt death etc. and space-­ time etc. and varying between. After B P i think I’ll go down the list, of paying publishers, etc. A good number of sour grapes around here when it comes to printing at any expense to me. It means, the saying runs, that nobody thinks the stuff any good but me. The hordes of my reject slips. . . I have about 220 entirely unused pieces. Dont know if this is par or not. Quite a few questionable. And they have to watch that I dont acquire too many spendthrift habits. Does CITY LIGHTS BKS charge authors? Is it teetering like JARGON? Havent had anything from Olson YET. No word. Mimeographing is perfectly alright somes. SHEAF #3 (tho not, #2 or#1). Or my copy is good. After seeing yours in ORIGIN #18, i guess it’s quite likely I’m repeating myself a lot. Turnbull, his first poem there, gets places too. yours

Larry... Skin for one thing keeps me busy--from all angles. Dermatology fails. Or liason does... .. .

(10) One-­page letter from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper and signed by Williams; Eigner typed a

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response on the reverse of this letter (see letter 11). This document is housed in the Poetry Collection at the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. While Williams’s ­letters, like Eigner’s, are composed on the typewriter, Williams’s text is smaller, more closely kerned, and darker (the latter most likely due to his stronger keystroke). For this reason, Williams’s letters are typographically distinct from Eigner’s in this volume. May 9/56 Highlands Dear Larry

Thanks for your recent check, but you’re already subscribed to the Olson Maximus Volume II. I expect to receive shipment this month, and will get it to you immediately. Layton’s book is next, tho the printer seems to have been asleep for two months. I was supposed to have the finished project by end of April. Still waiting for proofs. Viola.

Zukofsky will be along in July; the Messrs Kenneth by Sep­ tem­ ber. I’m no less tired of waiting than you are.

The Duncan LETTERS (Zohar type) will be a big item; all the rest noted on the checklist are smaller, but interesting print jobs I hope. We’ll see how it goes. I’m anxious to get out from under the load that Jargon amounts to. Requires endless apology, to almost everyone-because it’s not on time, because it don’t make money, because, because. All I hope for is to get the printers paid, and maybe pick up a Fellowship to somewhere, where I can just write some poems and write letters just to people I’d like to. Which may be indulgence, but, the way I’d prefer it. I need no more convincing that Jargon cannot ‘succeed’--that is, pay its own way. What other

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success it represents I can hardly judge at this point. For instance, still only fourteen advance subscriptions to Maximus II @ $3.00. Despite Maximus I, two years of publicity, and 1000 of those mailing pieces. Well, statistics. It ain’t interesting. Best to you/

[signed] Jonathan

(11) One-­page letter typed on the reverse of a letter from Jonathan Williams dated May 9, 1956 (see letter 10). Eigner’s letter is in landscape orientation on an 8.5″ × 11″ page divided by a vertical fold. The left portion of this leaf is Eigner’s typewritten letter. The right portion is filled with a handwritten draft of Eigner’s poem “I am a machine for walking” in perpendicular orientation to the letter text. The rule midletter indicates the fold in the page. [May/June 1956] Dear Jonathan, not only am I hamstrung nowadays but strung up ... Ah well But its really sad to hear about JARGON. I never saw how you do it. So you tht there’d be a pay-­ off eh? I tht i may have paid for M2 but then was sure I hadnt. Maybe it was the SYMPOSIUM I haven’t taken care of yet. By god you shd’ve kept the dough. At any rate I know theres some things, at least at the bottom of the checklist here, that I haven’t reachd for. I suspect it dont make a RICHARD and you being on also, Preferable in some others), but yr business

difference, despite POOR a shoestring (which respects while not methods have these

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little oddities. All right. You do send along these notices of things I’ve already put in for, and everyone is a work of art. And you also (this may be only one example, I don’t remember) send me with one and the same letter two (2) copies of a checklist and without checking what I’ve already subscribed to. Now my father at least dont know where we’re at. No hurry abt MAX actually, or anything. Everything does flood me. Best     Larry On CAESAR’S GATE, and yrs, etc: Having got, as Olson says, this idea of precision from the typewriter, we shd take up the pen script again, the latter being freer and not so specialized .. Only it’s Cid’s tape-­ machine, I wd guess, that’s the ultimate, in so far as anything can be. Collages are great. BMR (Cr,Zuk, et al) [sti? way?] over my head at least as much as ever, but, have I ever said it bvor, a real corker. And wd like to contrib,** *70% desirable* (as EP sd:”to appear prompt,regular, and in 1 plce

XXXXXXX PROFILE ...ance

I AM A MACHINE FOR WALKING WHO CAN WALK THE FLY IS XXXXX COMPLICATED I She SIT S AND LISTEN HEARS THE WIND TO THE WIND COMING

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FROM SUCH A POSITION LOOKING OUT THE GIRL IS NO MARBLE

(12) One-­page letter typed on Dartmouth Alumni Fund 5.5″ × 8.5″ stationery Monday July 20th 56 Dear Jonathan, Sure. Dont know why not. Do you mean by ‘broadside’ ad/cards or like Olson’s broadside of a poem there. In any case I’m already wondering to who i shd distribute my allotment. Big critics Old school teachers Friends who are kind of broke Neighbors  The postman  ??  Oh well . . . piece opus to Couple of wks ago mailed my 70-­ GREENWICH BOOK PUBLISHERS in NYC. In two days got a letter from THE AMERICAN PRESS to whom I’d sent it back in May or sometime but had em return it when they told me I’d have to pay $800 as my share of pub.costs for (i think) 48 pp. Letter acknowledged rec’pt and sd it was now in the hands of the editorial associates and mentioned my share of costs again, $800 for a 32 pp minimum. Mss wd of course have to be cut down. I mailed a card back that night (Friday, 10 days ago) reiterating that i dont have that kind of money for such purposes, being a permanent invalid without an income. Send it back.. But no word yet. I have got one copy of the table of contents.

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The 2 presses have the same address of course, as I learned. No mention of GREENWICH im letter Wonder what they could be up to . . .Indo-­ European Dict. and now herbal. Whats that ? How to use? What next? You got enough of my stuff there? Let me know which ones. I havent bn kping any records Showed ATILM to wealthy scorned aunt , 8 hier.No. Like elvis presley tryin to do poetry, she sd. Yow!   Larry

(13) One-­page letter typed on Dartmouth Alumni Fund 5.5″ × 8.5″ stationery with the title crossed out Friday August 10th 56 Dear Jonathin, here’s the cash for yr own 3 vol I’ve tried a few times to round up subscriptions to 2nd ed of A T L I M, as of­ ten as the occasion arose, but of course, no luck. Will let you know perhaps if I8m responsible for anything. God! That book is abt like an exploding cigar, among other things , but people around here are eternally and omnipresently stupid.. And indifferent. The book just comes under a wrong institution, unpopu­ lar. Much good it would do them, anyway. Those killjoys. .. So much stuff grows out of offices, why don’t it grow off trees by now  ??  This is the first law? The 2nd ? The news is, I’ve abt run out of publishers to submit my 69 piece mss. to ... health and wealth ,

Larry

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(14) Four-­page letter typed on Dartmouth College Alumni Fund 5.5″ × 8.5″ stationery with vertical additions running top to bottom in the left margin of page 1 and page 3 Friday End of Sep­ tem­ ber 56 Dear Jonathan, Hic est $4.25 fer the McClure and Metcalf. I’m still within the budget” I’ve assumed, for what may be no more than namby-­ pamby reasons. Of course I dont know whats comin up next .. I never seen McClure yet. And maybe, probably, really, etc, I “shd” get myself Ameri-­ Grain. Ho-­ hum. I scream. Paradise a hell, like Man and Superman says. I scarcely know why I’m not bothering with the Oppenheimer. I was looking over his first one in ORIGIN XIV (top of page). Something in there all right, though still dont quite get it. Are you anxious about it. Some perversity in me. XX I really was surprised at yr mention of the 70-­ piece thing I spoke of, just that I begin to feel inclinations towards brking it up. Well, I had it all neat in a binder a month or so ago, and it looked nice there at that. But again I’m not much at editing, except i have this grouping sense, feels like. Here it is though, as it may well serve as a tentative start. And in case you dont want the brdside crossing up with the bk. Some of these are already floatin around Caroline, one place or other. Another thing, for which I’m sorry, as it might foul us up some, is, last week I sent some of this same (BORODIN for one, to Harlequin, having recd a letter from

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Barbara Fry inviting me to submit again. They are on again.Few months back she returned a big batch and sd they were suspendin for lack of gd material. But, i fig­ ured, in my sweet way, what have i got to lose. I sent her the 3 latest,* apud altrui, which i stick in here too. [The following appears in the left margin, running from top to bottom: ie, Days, Mothers, The --] I, also, sent McClure the ones i sent you last time, before i sent em to you. You know. Also, if theres a copy of a thing called “Combat” down there somewhere in yr State,--that’s in Novem­ber Harlequin, at any rate according to Fry. I got no copy. All i remember is, Blackburn has one. | over| Well, see what you think. That “The--” piece I could well turn over to Bob, eh? MAXIMUS isx great, though still elusive in most part,--statistically with reference to details, for 1 thng. And jigsaw of course. I cd really have that lovely volumes in pieces in jig time in refers. i started in earnest on them cross-­ Article someday in the Times: “x Literary Manifestations of Mumford’s Regionalisme” ! What else? Certainly not politics. Went up to Gloucester Labor Day, missed Ferrini but netted this beautiful(?) for all i know) travelogue map of Gloucester, with descriptions etc, i mean citations, and an account on reverse side. Free at the Ch of Commerce Information Booth. Might’ve been a nice insert with the bk.

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Anyway, I know what the “bald jaw of stone” is, etc. What a burgh  ! I wonder if Olson quite comes up to the stature of Thomas Wolfe (6 ft 9 it says i LIFE). Is Asheville a pretty interessin place ?x Oldfashioned dialect? Or did W just get it frae bks. Of course H Crane fr Ohio fed on der Bible.Hoosier Interessin t see how W records dialog. Wd be. But women’s Clubs. The grt roaring decade. Fr the big mag article i gather a quite lumpish personality. But of course Melville. Olson’s CALL ME ISH was before my time. W went off his rock, with a vengeance or it shdve bn his bean; Crane off the deep. Joyce, nothin cd be finer, than the his­ tori­ cal sense. Olson, hm. This is piling up like Wolfe for a minute. Infinite the palm of my hand i suppose. But not W’s: prodigious to start with. Now I just did a story, 20 pp, and a neat one, but it looks moderately immense. The catenations and even implications. Here a few lines which you might,or somebody might, ? , be able to incorporate. I cant, not yet anyway. And it says WJ Bryan was in Asheville when Tomas grew up     . ;; : I n  t h e  f i e l d  w i t h  P o e yes, Wolfe this harvest, harbor of stars the up-­ turned mirror in the window earth  on my bureau

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the blank face pale and tremendous

dawn, blinding eyes over the sun

sodden and unfamiliar the hours change to the south ax man’s proper stature

to project

I’ve been a bad boy no personal god,because you couldn’t settle down too big to ride rails freight all of us, it’s true,* those tapestries are light [The following appears in the left margin, running from top to bottom: *atin at the heavy back,*] your face forming too great a height into a grave a hole in the lawn or the brick steps ((cont.)) robins eat worms may eat worms or fallen leaves, the s the seasons work in magnum opo

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to have a good time Well, it was a few lines 15 minutes ago. Anyway I wonder if you’d like to add something, or fiddle with it Well I see where Black Mountain is abtt 15 miles from Asheville. Is this a good estimate? And Highlands 75 miles away abt on the Georgia a nd Ala­ bama bords. Or I’ll have to look again (rd-­ map we got here--brother used to collect roadmaps for god sakes), to see where is S Carolina!! O of course, I remember might be on the seaboard. Well do you have any wild hill Ameri­ cans up there? Any guys comin around with tape recorders. Victor Herbert down New Orleans or the Hunters of Kentucky or Tiger Rag tailgate funeral as per Cinerama abt this time last year .. Etc etc Greetings

Larry

(15) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [Oc­to­ber 25, 1956] Dear Jonathan, I got at least one more pretty hot piece. Think I should send em along, continue to? I havent made out that Wolfe thing yet and dont know how it is--it’s all scribbled. I expanded it. Saw Moby Dick movie and rereading it too and added to Wolfe. Not like my “Dying” though, and so ...

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Hope things are ok. I CD just as well go on submitting to mags in the meantime, n’est ce pas  ? XXX Bn over a month I havent written. Wrote Ol last wk in regard to MAXIMUS. Great of course, and a real net, the variety of it. Etc. ARK II here. And he says it again. Yrs i ennjoyed, and, Bob’s. Iwonder how long McClure takes to accept or reject. Was just abt to sub,it when the ad-­ notice came. WILL WEST looks pretty hot, the round. (Bks like GRT RIVER,put you to sleep on nil sp and th vast past So McClure even looks like glyph. Keep up on over Larry

(16) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [No­vem­ber 27, 1956] Monday Dr Jonathn Wonder whats happened. All i remember is you wrote you’d be in “Boston-­ Cambridge No­ vem­ ber 23rd” or abt then it was, on a trip North to deliver to Layton, and that i wrote back as if you were coming through Swampscott.-­ I got the idea you were.? Shd i kp sendin stuff till you call a halt ? In time i inevitably come to doubt -- any selectivity I’ve done anyway. A few poems i came on again couple of nights ago, struck me as pretty good. For instance. I sent them away, right now find i

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have no other copies. (Obscure-­ type, or maybe somewhat J Wms type things) Hope they come back. A few times stuff has got lost or whatever. H ope ok 

  nicely ... Larry

(17) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Thursday Feb 7th 57 Dear J’, Just recd Souster’s new COMUSTION venture, and in view of NEW WORK MOVES CROSS COUNTRY announcement at top of p.5 was thinkinking of phoning aunt who cf’d Creeley to Elvis (what else?), (she fancy, a grt one fer musical soires e benefits, sponsor thereof, running herself ragged), but notice you’ll be south and west of highlands at least at first; dont suppose you can at all tell when you come noth, if you are. Hell. I’m real tight. I’ve been putting aside copies of mss for you as i make them out, but am becoming more and more hesitant abt sending them without hearing from either of you Carolinians as time goes by. And look, I could, at that, try Ferlenghetti again, having written considerable since I’tried him last June or so. ?? But to do that I’d need the copes u hve. I’ll be in ARK, forthcoming. Wd you like t send a wire, collect, or what. I dunno, but how abt answerin?

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Though at the moment I’m bewildered by the lifetime’s array of hot vols i already got. Layton intriguing etc.

Kp up, sure yrs, yrs S H E L L

(18) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card uncharacteristically dated on the front 13th March 57 Dear Jonathan, When you can, cd you let me have Robert Duncan’s a-­ dress ? I have writ a play, of sorts, and Corman suggests I “contact” Duncan, and says you have the address. Bon voyage

Larry

(19) Two-­page letter typed on six-­hole, lined, 3.75″ × 6.75″ ­notepaper Sundae March 23 57 Dear Jonathan, My ma said to send you a copy,which i guess is the thing to do. She has just copied--without any carbons at all as she didnt understand you wanted not only to see it but print it. And she is reluctant abt having unnecessary copies around the house. Let us know if you want more.. She’s wondering, too, if you shd get permission from the Dr. to use this.

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I hadn’t made the insert of the 2nd no. 25 (IT’S GETTING THERE) in the different copies, so in what Charles took it is missing. If i get up to his place before you send for the copies, I’ll bring a copy up to im. If not, shd i enclose it with my notice to him to mail you ? A lot of things I wanted to ask, such a backlog. I was looking over the photostat i have of O’s VIEW OF HISTORY lectures just before you came, but cdnt find the tough spots nor concentrate much, so at the moment at least they proved uninteresting. But theres so much of his verse, for one thing, I’ve gone through. And some of yours.Also i dont get to jazz much, and paint ... I think the dr.’s letter might be good to use, at that, for what he says abt my “oblivion to the world may be quite a contrast to whats in the book. (We can be dada too) This is an exact copy. Obviously he omitted ond line of xxx words inadvertently. In the sec­ paragraph two i guess he meant to say “relaxation before his world and a perfect ear. ” Other thing, 3rd sentence paragraph 2 : “ But it is ... ” See you again, i still hope. Larry Wish my vol. cd be as compact as that Levertov, but that wd be having the cake and eatin it too all right That Patchen! I written this disc jockeyt abt it

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(20) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card April 17 [1957] Dear Jonathan, On acct of 2 successive instances (NEW REPUBLIC and NATION,no less), I’ve now become fully aware that my mail sail sometimes goes with the wind (once sent to california, the scrawl was tht to be Colorad) (highway accidents i never hear of?) And so I want to check whether you got the x mss i sent, in a brown envelope, around March 1 -the latest batch. If not -- (dont quite know the contents) I’ve got more, by the way, since ... Also there’s duncan’s address,which I careless-­ threw away, thinking I’d get a note from him sometime anyway. Well, in a couple of months i mat want to check on that. Ho hum. So, next time you write me. Alteration in DAYS (r5)--is gd? :  22x spaces shoved over to the right/so that outsid comes under moment, above. outside the walls Also change moved over to begin under t in with Larry

(21) Typed and holograph notes and emendations entered into fourteen 8.5″ × 11″ pages of poetry manuscripts by Larry Eigner sent to Jonathan Williams and enclosed in a letter from Williams to Charles Olson, dated August 15, 1957. This document is housed in Box 221, Charles Olson Research Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. Because Eigner’s manuscript stands as a document in the

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correspondence between Williams and Eigner, and because the particular material constraints of archives such as these are made manifest in the uneven and triangular letter exchange recorded below, this piece has been included in the correspondence. Poems have not been ­reproduced; however, since the manuscript pages provide a rhythm for the correspondence notes, Eigner’s alphanumerical labeling scheme has been reproduced and pages have been indicated by a horizontal rule. Readers may therefore cross-­check The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner for the corresponding poem texts. [ June 18, 1957?] ((Tuesday June 18th --Been waiting for a poem to come back from Enslin. No copy here. Will ask Cid or Wieners to send .. The Zukofsky came last Monday and I looked at it Tuesday morning, and yesterday. Well, it’ll take some rding, anyway Right now scrappy. Dry Blake gulch But u8 is my reaction of last Tuesday )) ((u9)) (( This cd be an inscription at the start of the book? In re Gk tragedy )) ((Enclose $1.50 for the $1.25 HYPOCRITE DAYS by Douglas Woolf, (DIVERS),     and 25 Olson’s O’Ryan Poems (MIGRANT) ) (Levertov a journal? JARGON 19 ) ((u3)) ((u3)) [continued] ((u8)) ((r5))

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((r5)) [continued] ((u7)) ((t8)) ((This an experiment all right, with regard to the uneven stanza divisions, and, xxxx in this sec­ ond copying, the interlinear spacings. As far as I know this might be impossible except with a typewriter, and in any event reproduction involves guesswork. So .... )) ((t8)) ((This is, of course, an experiment. Anyway in the uneven stanza divisions, which as far as I know might be impossible except on the typewriter, and anyway would be a matter of a good deal of guesswork for anyone reproducing it. So it’s just as well. )) ((t9)) ((u6)) ((u5)) ((x5)) ((All spacing and punctuation pretty definitely as is, I would say, except that for the space between “A grip” and the end of the preceding pargraph. The spelling as is; i.e.: “beas” “stuttering” “massk” ))

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Dear Jonat, Here is some more(possible [unclear] Just for kicks)Cd you relay to Mr. Ol, — Some of [unclear]? My regards to M + [unclear] to you! Kp it up Larry ((u4))

(22) Two-­page letter typed on 5″ × 8″ unmarked stationery Friday July 19th 57 Dear Jonathan, I trust, and hope, by experience, that you are still there (and with us) And that you still have Rbt Duncan’s de Herbina, SF, address, which I went and lost. Would you send it again ? My play just came back, in today’s mail, just that, nothing else, not even a return address, and I think I better check with D and make certain there hasn’t been some mistake. I had an idea of writin Olson xxx abt his lectures, but, time goes by Eenie meenie mo wish I lived near a big library --WC Wms i cd probably move on from PATERSON now etc -- but I think I’d like a gander at what i take to be that travelogue of Levertov’s, so Here’s $3.00. Keep the change all right. Whatever it is. I havent got the BORDERGUARD bklist any longer as I lent it, or maybe as he thinks gave it, to this relative of Corman’s, in-­ law, who i met on Boyleston Street opposite the Arts Fest in Boston Public Garden.

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Sending you the enclosed group, is rath-­foolish of me, but it’s another grp, once I put it together I cant wholly divide it in my head, and I think you’d like to see the xx first 2 or 3, and the last one. I have an idea yr place is swarming and that you’d like to send this back, hence the return envelope. Larry Went to Brandeis where I saw Dr. Williams   ((over)) I told Cid I didnt have a copy of a thing i had been planning to send you, but he doesnt mention it in his letter that came this week, forgot or whatever. You got it? The Zukofsky is an irritant (see ELEMENTS in this group ) while I cant get him up off the floor. Same for the group, an attempt at a swith,switch, and combination The group begins with P u r e . then w1-­ 9

(23) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with vertical additions running top to bottom in the left margin Saturday [ July] 26th [1957] Dear Jonathan, Ok, sorry, Duncan wrote two days ago ( xx theater gave out), telling me of an editor of EVERGREEN REVIEW who wants to see the play etc Got yr letter of the 22nd (same date as Duncan’s, at that ) yesterday, the one from Pacific Palisades. Sounds adventurous. And thanks. I may well get the  Siegel. It sure looks like xx ye Dr. is going out very enthusiastically;

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whereas you, and me .. Cid writ es that his stuff continues to make everybody else look cheesy. I ought to look soon. Well, I’m grateful to Olson and hope the job is not getting troublesome. I think every three days or so I might be gettin fit to do some editing, But, handling for instance, at that, * [The following appears in the left margin, running from top to bottom: *I dont know. Well, keep going all right] L Larry

(24) One-­page letter typed on 5.5″ × 8.5″ unmarked stationery Sundae Oc­ to­ ber 7th 57 Dear Jonathan I take it this plan is still on though the printing says Sep­ tem­ ber, since you mailed it Oct 1, ..  Here is the am’t. I really want more, feel perfectly capable of cutting on food, and clothes (my own) (and as to others, this neighborhood has become real suruburbia) Etc. Another thing for instance is all them records I might’ve bought if i cd handle the needle. Etc. Next time, if there is one, dont send no printed proposals. The folks are out for Eigner, to some extent. On top of it all I do have quantities of books. Though MAXIMUS III and the Duncun. I already got POEMS OF HUMOR AND PROTEST A lot of bks “Ins and out outs and freshets”, yes That may finish me off.

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My editor capabilities are abt what they were, I suspect, but it wd be something to lend a hand. But sounds like Olson is in some tangle. I think you might give me his address anyhow, in case I come across something i want to say to him. I dont see how I shd go up there though, unless possibly to deliver something ?? I was last up to Gloucester in ’56 but Ferrini. I saw him year before that. I if you know if F and O are at daggers’ now. The former’s new bk is pretty gd, in spots, for all I can see.

missed wonder points by definitely

Here’s luck    Larry

(25) Two-­page letter typed on six-­hole, 3.75″ × 6.75″ notepaper Tuesday Nov. 19th 57 Dear Jonathan, I really do have enough. But the Patchen a rise in still another direction, sure, now and again. Maybe I’m learning to browse around. Learning. A little. But not finally. I still come back to the shakes. When BMR #6 came 2½ yrs ago, I resubscribed, sending $2.00 to B M C or maybe to creeley ibid. So i dont quite know ... I sent the cash for THE DRESS to the press when i got an ad there-­from early this summer. Here’s the $4.00 for THE WHIP and IF YOU. I wrote Olson last wk asking if i cd help in any way, etc. An hr ago his response came: he returns the all the mss,figuring he says, that I’m my own best editor his intention “was (is) as it heclared itself a year ago but during the

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same period (and continuing now) not possible to unmake myself enuf to do what I would have liked to ... the more so right now by the way again that I read last night your poem on the empties ((CARN)) in Naked Ear ” A poem I tht of, classified as, not much. I had written him i hardly had a mind of my own, that for instance,Souster has it i do best, impact wise, in brief poems, and in retrospect I can in a number of instances agree, but the short ones do seem pretty picayune, the soonest. They all do in time. And them pretty gd again, at moments. I guess one thing is, I’m not gonna tie myself in knots over this. Futile, 4th and 5th thts. I’ll probably make just a few substitutions, trying to kp the same scheme. For the rest, I take it nothing wrong in trying Ferlenghetti concurrently. But I want yr advice. And information of course : How many pages (Charles thinks 75) ? How many lines can go on each page ? What are the width exigencies? (A few of the poems run over to 2-­ 3 pp on 11x8½ paper) Is there anythin else you cd tell me, fer god’s sake.? If so, plase do, fer god’s sake, yrs though  Larry

(26) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Thursday 21st [No­vem­ber 1957] Dear Jonathan, forgot to ask how you feel abt stuff that’s already in mags or will be --Wieners has taken quite a few, at that. Maybe such shd have least

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priority--while i can’t think of an awful lot of reasons why. Yes, now i see and then i dont: eg poem i have in my origi­ nal list i didnt care for, exactly, when i saw it in COMBUSTION, but last night i rd it in mss again and liked it .. Mine eyes screw me up. I found a letter from Ferrini to you in the centre, saying you shd phone him when you got to Larry’s place  !  And a story i had sent Creeley a yr or so ago. ? Lost yr card yesterday but wrote Bob at 1826 Griegos N W Albuquerque  Mixups. This editing job may well take more hands than I’ve got. Before trying [m]any thing I’ll wait for yr answers anyway.

(27) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [De­cem­ber 6, 1957] Dear Jn n, I can do it, I find--wking in bed with folders btwn my legs. And i have had ideas after all. As you sd, though, my ins and outs : I have right now a bang-­ up sequence of 103 (or cn make it 106) of my pp (incl a thing calld It’s Getting there, which i can find no copy of here--if none there cd you say so to Mrs Leonard Corman, 214 Main St., Ashland, Mass.?) Longest is BRINK if not GETTING THERE -­ by the cnt i just made, 111 lines, in­ clud­ ing blanks. Shortest is 3 lines--on the same p.i’v put 1 of 15 11; single inst of 2 on th same sheet. It seems format wd be like BINOCULARS rather than PROPOSITION. And those strings on the latter are pretty delicate .

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I can type too. I think some of my penciled words are ok, but I’ll see. Letter fr Cr complains of time lack; after 2 yrs! And theres a chance I dig the stff as much as anyone cd--when it comes to.puttin it to-­ gether. Cdnt you gi me an outside limit? I ha repetitn all right--but not too little solid, central gravity. Also one nil thing ,mellow, a lapse, variety that fits. Cd you cut the Laubies ? Ferleghetti did ok by Levertov, etc, i think. And Stef’s worst was #4, i imagine, after all. Lars

(28) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [De­cem­ber 10 or 19(?), 1957] Dear Jonat, Well, i dont Plan on writin you a diiary But, somehow, i miscounted. Last night i rechecked, again and again, and my nice job wd come to 88 88 of these pages. I’ve also thought of a beginning so that i cd make it only 79 pp ... Of course either way I cd restore a few of the deletions I’ve made and even add others. As i qtd you, the ins and outs. I hadnt realized how much repetition i’ve piled up, and continue to. Two themes generally: space, landscape, the neighborhood; and the sad state of society. The longest poems are concentrated abt in the middle. If you like I’l find the average length --counting blank spaces?--of the pieces under, ures can be less than say, 20 lines. I dbt the fig­ 10 or 12 lines (of words). 4 or 5 of the sequence are going into MEASURE 4,

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that single issue alone (along with others ibid)..Also the 2 in MEASURE #1... Larry

(29) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Saturday Dec 21st 57 Dr J, Been atthe copying for a week, as i havent 4 copies of anything--and halfway through. Quite an experience--though i cant hope to remember it--repetitions kp revealing themselves, bathetics, etc., and just how much i want if at all is the quest. It’s working through, sort of. Articulation, etc. G e t t i n g  t h e r e  is just abt lost. Mrs Corman looked everywhere ’cept in a trunk she cdnt open. But I’m havin a time anyway, as I say. Q just occured to me is, shd I mail you all 4 copies at once or just one at first, for you to look over. And if you wd still like Duncan, I’m willing to let somebody else dig again. In that case I wonder what I shd mail to Duncan, from here. Regards Larry

(30) Two-­page letter typed on Dartmouth Alumni Fund 8.5″ × 11″ stationery Friday Janu­ ary 3rd 58 Dear Jonathan, All by the way. Myself I don’t feel the need of any (more) books, though I’m growing unconscious

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of things at that. Which is me, perhaps. I was never too literate, nor a student, and am usually busy even when I sit still. Needs are funny, though. I just picked up HURRAH FOR ANYTHING again New Years Eve. Less of just a flow. Not that I’ll make an awful lot of use out of it, but .. i got a kick JRNAL D’ALBION MOONLIGHT a vast rathole so far. So the misanthropy is Dahlberg’s! I was wondering. And here are my folks here, walking around the house discussing crossword puzzle for the past six months, daily. Your denigration of Greenwich village is a laugh. What makes yr appeals effective with me is not the stuff they offer, but the vacuum around me. And that I’m a dead-­ letter office as far as yr ads and such go. Though I think this time I’ll send yr MESHOOGA off to a poor guy in NYC who asks abt my writing on an Xmas card. If you bring this off--I dont much care if you dont-­ , it was some experience putting it together anyhow -­for which I’m grateful -­-it’ll be miraculous (KK ok. Naturally this is the first I’ve heard of him.) This selection not perfect, the idea I started with, natch -but I’d say now it’s as much of life as Icd put together. A certain gamut, in the series. A number of my reservations I put down in brackets as I was copying, along with other things and xx i generally digthings most while copying them (?); but these can be ignored, i think, after all (for instance the stricture i suddenly had in re PAREIL, no. 26). But let me know. There’s no. 25, for instance. And I’ve noted possible deletions. WET SNOW is no longer an alternative beginning, but migh replace COUPLE OF YEARS or something? I have 89 pieces on 93 pp ((nos 81-­ 2 on one page)). Nos. 38 and 39 were 2 pp each, but i

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managedx to get them on one page (the latter I had deleted some lines from. I’ve had the pages of the same poem stapled together. Made some mistakes but noted them in the triple parentheses or in proof. But in #9, 4th line from end (“Spring ...”) shd begin one space mor to the right, rather than with the left margin. Last night i went through it again and jotted down 19 possible titles, one from Shakespeare’s Henry V (And we must yearn therefore : ie, where Pistol says “Bardolph be blithe ... For Falstaff he is deadAnd we must yearn therefore”  Bardolph,be blithe is another one ) But heck, that’s whacky, of course. The best for a title seems to be  The dead become eternal from no. 29 (end) in view of the last poem and all. The next best wd seem to be THE LESS I / TAKE FOR GRANTED, 1st lines of no. 33. In no. 74 theres a ftnote which I’d say shd be printed in brackets, double parentheses or maybe vertical lines of the same heig*ht.*I like the idea of finding ways of working in explanations (clarities). Nothing too extraneous, of course . I wrote Wieners how I was finally using so many from MEASURE, IV especially. But that shd be ok; I take it this wdnt come out till late this year anyway, at the earliest. Happy new years, Larry I’m surprised with your getting in touch with Thomas McGrath. That drip (I mean in his writing and editing). I told him so, when i stopped getting the California Quarterly. I suppose i shd keep my mouth shut, buttho i cant imagne i ever will.

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I hope to stick 50¢ in here as i recall i only sent in 2 bucks for B M R that time * Or nothing; but just printed somewhere low on the left, as in the ms ... My father made out the table of contents, with only one carbon. Would you want copies for the othe 3 copies of the ms ?

(31) One-­page letter typed on six-­hole, 3.75″ × 6.75″ notepaper Friday Jan 10th 58 Dear Jonathan, Cid dug up a copy of that missing ms (it got here Wednesday), and heres 1 of the 4 i just done. To compensate for its loss, which i had a feeling of certainty abt, was what started me on the re-­ arranging and -­ selecting really, and it was a gd thing, finally. But contemplate this as a replacement for no. 25. Then 26 cd be cut out, and 27,(?) and 43. The latter anyhow. This looks like abt the right amt of supplement and diversity. Though further cut might be 37. 38-­ 9 wd still be ok I suppose. Right now i can fig­ ure: Damn the repetitions . I told Dudek abt the job i was havin (a gratis copy of his new mag, DELTA, arrived during Dec ember ) and asks he does if he may order 3 copies . ? : 1143 Sixth Avenue Montreal  Quebec ok cheers  Larry

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(32) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Thursday Jan 16th 58 Jonathan: --ps again: alterations (que j’ai fait dan les trios exemplaires ici): in no. 7, cross out, last 3 lines, as deleterious: in no. 13, 5th line fr bottom, “... think it was” (as i had it origi­ nally). not just “... think it”  // I’m already beginning to wonder how many copies i cd buy, as free copies wd be due to Corman, Ferrini,  etc.  (CC at any rate) Have just lked at those jazz photos (in BMR7) and yr commentary. I’m out of things, all right; always have bn. Like 2nd issue of Dudek’s DELTA which came tday--telling of Wilhelm Reich: another bombshell A brth of air. Pff. Are you a sado-­masochist, too.? (Injunction vs distribution of WR’s bks.”Obscenity?) (All i’d known was, he’d had some hand in “gestalt” therapy.) I wonder what O cd advise me, in order to tk in a lot, and not drift, as with poor capacity I never make sufficient comparisons. D lks a mn after O’s h DELTA has quite a punch all rnd--poetry , bulls-­ eye criticism, of same and polititics I’m letting D see nos. 1-­ 8. He MAY get a kickout of “mutnik ..” He wdnt want to print more’n 3 anyhow. (They came back fr THE NATION. Larry

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(33) Two-­page letter typed on six-­hole, lined, 3.75″ × 6.75″ notepaper Monday May 5th  58 Dear Jonathan, Got to talking last week and asked for a sort of authorization to ask you the chances on getting our money back on an advance. Slim, I suppose. But I thought of I’d tell you. (It’s just a shame. Only uncle who takes after grandfader has so much he dont no what to do--as if he ever did--justconcerned with making more--now going into th finance business. He ought to look into the boston committee for a sane nuclear policy, which i just hrd mentioned on the news saturdy night. He’s an M D , supposedly, etc. ) Anyhow I bn thinking of getting other stuff around here multigraphed or something, because not enough carbons to go round. Like that series beginning with FEAR ITSELF. Just got to figuring the formula whereby you can pass out copies gratis and get yr dough back on the rest of an edition. Thats a novel vista, for me. I cd stick a moiety in my uncle’s insurance window. But people might feel cheated, Feasible just once, perhaps. Hell, the kid next dr bought a car 3 yrs ago of his newspaper route. He still peddling the damn things ) Still hope to get up to see Charles. My dr. uncle used to go around with Vinc too. The Levertov hasnt got here yet but I’m loaded as usual. ...

Larry

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(34) One-­page letter typed on Dartmouth Alumni Fund 5.5″ × 8.5″ stationery May 31, 1958 Dear Jonathan; Ten by Ten I don’t know why. On number 39 My brother suggests: “Peabody Sq.” in caps. above “dragged” as heading to make the whole thing clearer. This is pretty conceivable-­ what do you think? Up to see Olson two weeks ago. Larry

(35) Typewritten (front) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Wednesday  Sept. 9 [1958] Dear Jonathan, I’m just abt disoriented by now, anyway, at least in re the poet and mag business, what with one thing and another, and so feel restless.. But anyway, how about dispensing with illu the illustrations, etc.? Maybe it wd help to clear me to get a few things over with and out of the way here, tho undoubtedly not much.(And a lot of mimeo-­ ing still looks all rigit to me.) Denise Levertov was down here the other afternoon and we had quite a little talk abt my prose, for instance, and she described her husband’s novel, etc. yrs Larry

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(36) Three-­page letter typed on six-­hole, 3.75″ × 6.75″ notepaper Thursday night  Jan 23  ’59 Dear Jonathan, I wonder if things are still on --am not sure. And just how things are. If you’re still there, and let me know, etc, I’ ask my uncle th doctor, who is worth an 8th of a million, in sum or annually, if he can spare a few hundred bucks (whenever one of the family goes to him for medi-­he talks abt stocks etc-- ah well is mostly a financier Ferrini’s acquaintance though hectic a foolish, perhaps all round): If he says yes, I’ll give you his address. Other relative of mine, a doctor, in Brooklyn , too. A cousin in Silver Springs Md, economist with the army, making $11,000 a yr, but with 3 kids, having trouble making ends meet, the work always is. Etc. Am i still next on the slate? Though I dont expect much of anything to get me out of the plain sheer restlessness Ive had the pat 2 wks or so. (Wonder if i cd walk it off or anything  ) You did considerable damage by yr statement that you spent the ten bucks we sent in the summer on spirits. .. I take it it must’ve bn the copy i sent you--of the ms--that Don Allen said he has or has seen. But I’m in the dark. And I sure hope Olson still there with his copy. Anyway let me know -­such as if its illustrations, the thing now, or when will a large sum --be the time in it. My uncle is a real Eigner, but no harm or crime asking, that i can see. yrs

Larry

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Still havent yr address where to send this collection I’ve had mimeoed ... Uncle off to Fla.for a month xxxxxxx wk from sunday and I wont be able to writ him there. If I’m next,that wyll make my request the stronger, as not being for others. The ms something to get out of the way Dont refer specifically to explicitly to my uncle or the proposed request, when you answer but say “yr idea a gd one.” I’ll do it on the quiet, if i do it. Tell me abt things anyway.

(37) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with vertical ­additions running top to bottom in the left margin on the front Wednesday 25th Feb [1959] Dear Jonathan, When I wrote a month ago I may not have made it plain that I really want to ask my uncle et al of family in Mass. I’ve had enough of the listening end of the cash nexus, for 15 yrs, say. Etc. I suppose I will grow more and more restless as time goes on, but this may give me some little relief. Xx I mentioned asking to my folks Monday night and they agreed there’s no harm in asking, so dont have any qualms.abt it. Things are just too static around here, news jockeys, disc jockeys, pitchmen with every meal ... loads of other things. I didnt express preferences to them of

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course. I remarked that printing costs were rising each year. And tell me how much, so i can ask I bought another book off Souster--the Peter Miller. Very fine print job I notice, anyway .. Maybe he cd/wd handle mine. In another month or so i am likely to ask him abt it,and say to try to contact yrself, if so... Larry Uncle’s a friend of Ferrini’s ..

(38) One-­page letter typed on 5″ × 8″ unmarked stationery Wednesday March 25th  1959 Dear Jonathan, Oh well   But if I cd retire to NC, away from the Nancies, etc., that might well be enough, even with the spur of yr estimate of me, etc. After all, they now say the sr is coming down “faster” than they sd before .. But I dont know. All this and my sporadically cold feet. But now, how can I ask my uncle, anyway,? You say My folks saw your letter, where you say, in type “Cant do anything till $4,000 are paid up, ” and then, in print, “ at least “$1,000 ” for a single item, plus with $200 designers fee. I’m considered an inexperienced fool around here already, and to make myself more foolish , look like it, isnt exactly why I wanted to ask, and I did want to ask, as I still do, at times. Though I guess the more I learn to lie low the better. I dont relish fighting after all. Anyhow, I’m mailing a copy of the ms to Souster, whose printing / is fine enough for me. If he

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doesnt want it , I dont know, maybe Ferrini cd get it done. In anticipation of rejection by Souster cd you clear up ambiguities so I cd ask my uncle. DCant see right now how to show im yr letter but I’d just write my own note, like i was going to anyway... Please be really definite. giving maximum/minimum fig­ ures. Cd cut 1st 8 pp, I tjink. Larry I hope youre fully recovered Have you got my ms or has Allen?

(39) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card May 8 [1959] Dear Jonathan, Excuse me (I regret it, youre ok in the end, etc, youre not armchair citizen), for xxx having got impatient and being mixed up--though tha ‘a a good deal your fault. Anyway, Souster turned it down, for Canadiam reasons, et al, and I’ve just mailed it to Leroi Jones, since Denise, by way of reply to my inquiry abt New Directions, sd that Blackburn was going to spk to LJ abt my ms, and since you cited YU-­ GEN in yr moratorium letter. (And you go on adding to the confusion: am i to take it now that you are back in the black,  this quickly  Is “minimal support for 6 bks $6,000, or less??  So if Jones is willing, let him do it, will you?  let go  And the idea of selling myself short is fantasy: I never really had anything to sell. If you knew what I go through here you might understand what the NY Times etc etc means. by now. And those handsome bks are beginning to

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remind me of them plush cars. (The contnts i dig, though I’m a very slow chewer.) exc RED NOTEBK) Asked, but only a prelim.suggestion, told im i may write him later--dont know that he hrd this. In and out the dr. And i tht you sd you were satisfied with my selection, sequence, and typing; so yo here you are saying you nearly sent it to Gloucester a 2nd time! I sent it to Jones anyhow, and still, occasionally, want to get it out of the way. But dont fool yrself; dont be another Van Gogh. Take it easy. yrs Larry [The following appears in the right margin, perpendicular to the previous paragraph and running down the length of the card: I’ll write Denise to hold up any work.]

(40) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card mond 18 may 59 Dear Jonathan, Libraries? O well. Bibliophiles? .. Theres a hi-­ school kid next door who’s bn driving his 2nd car a yr now,off the proceeds of his paper rte. Leaves motor running, etc. But ok, till Oc­ to­ ber. Maybe i am losing the power of discrimination. All my family et al have GM cars now. 3 of em in the immediate--plethora. Everything running to gether. But Cormans signboard of a bk, I was holding it close to my eyes the other night, it looked pretty gd then. YUGEN the mag looks gray, true; the CASTRO ok,

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i cant say its wrong. I’ll put it to Jones to hold off till Oc­ to­ ber. And I’ll ask in a wk or so,. But how can you get Dr Wms, or count on him, who might go any day now. After all! What kind of fantasy is this you have abt Libraries, etc. Theres bn a Fire in the library. // Father is inert? A nice guy, as a corollary, but inert to everything; mother, not everything. And i feel less a less like applying the voltage. It $25.this 2nd time will be less justifiable. But I’ll see, in a few months Atrophy creepin up on me .. No word from Allen yet, on that antho-­ ogy. O well. How did he get to see my mss. (Anyway, I dont want to do no more retyping...) ... yrs Larry

(41) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Friday 10 July [1959] Dr J , Wrote my uncle (w/ return envelope to me/u) (yr moratorium letter and my explanations ) and after a month of silence phoned im: he cant affort the full amt, he says, but is willing to contribute, whn asked how much adopts a wait-­ and-­ see attitude. Which means no. I might possibly be 10 kinds of a fool and send im a copy of yr “More Fried ” which i opened Wednesday (it arrived Monday but i tht it another bk)

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I already told im abt Dr Wms. He wdnt recognize any of the names nor wd anyone around here. Not one who wdnt hesitate to claim being a non-­ reader; some in fact have. REPORTER mag out of circulation; only Readers Digest, SatEvePost gets handed round. There is one man who knows of Black Mtn; him I’ve sent to, a copy. Itsobvious that yr letters are Gk to anyone here. I get queries how much you’ve raised to date. I’m curious whom you’ve sent this to. Corman? Turnbull? ..Eckman hasnt sd he got any letter of yrs-sympathises. Yesterdy asks me what I think of a Poets Co-­ op--hes abt to look int Mexican printing. Dr T is at 1199 Chuch St., Ventura Cal. And or.mad that i ask--vari­ ous ideas. Denise sent me a copy. Fine .. I’m forced to acknowledge yr sins of uncoordinat’n. Told that man i dint think you’d cash till ready t go... yrs Larry

(42) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Wednesday 26th [August 1959] (yrs of th 23rd in ) Dr Jn , Hope u got my note 2 wks ago explaining how i’ve tried all the angles. No go, and wont. And I feel like doing less and less.

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(Penny-­wisdom here, etc; ch-­de-­commerce--my folks--checkers) Anyway, we were up in Friendship,Maine, last wk-­ end, and saw McFarlands and Goodmans. I have the ms back from Levertov , who sez i shd draw balloons of colored pencil around the comments to the printer, and switch the blue sheets out of the sd white copy. And I’ll discard “Quiet Limbs” “H” and “Hollow roar ” So I 10 days ago wrote Leroi Jones and Olson for the other 2 copies. O may be away thru Labor Day .. Just what are the 4 copies for?? ? Shd I keep one here, am I to? Shd I draw the balloons through all the copies?? My brother doesnt like my fragmentation,etc. O well. He got me the Modern Sequel Odyssey, which he liked--but the verse, for one thing,kind of chokes it after a while .. Read Joyce Cary’s MR JOHNSON on Cid’s recommendation; looks pretty great, etc kudos Larry

(43) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Friday [August 29, 1959] Dear Jonathn, Folks and I would like to know how many copies   , what wd be the price of each and where any profits (income from sales) wd go . ...... Larry ( Eh, je peux attendre -- a moins pour les autres exemplaires et je le veuxx ? ) Quelle a faire donc ??

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(44) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with a vertical emendation in the left margin on the front Wednesday [Sep­tem­ber 9, 1959] “ $3.50 a copy won’t go ..” “Takes 3 yrs to save up $300. ” “Obscurity makes it difficult for you to get published..” “Wait till he gives up, then we’ll see ..” “Wait till Oc­ to­ ber 1.” “When he writes he has $900 in his hands ..” “We’ve do our best to provide you with outlets ” ... So, really, thats that, it looks like. (Maybe $100,at that Sorry, among other things, to have misled you in any way. I pretty well knew it t be a stone wall, but I have to bash my head, some way.  / Only thing I can say now is, feel perfectly free to give up any time--as I do, mostly; and if not, never mind deadlines.Take as long as you like.. [The following appears in the upper-­left margin, running upward along the edge of the card beside the preceding text: “We’ve never let you down ”] That you’ve bn willing to design and edit is putting it mildly,of crse. And thanks for the informatn on distribution. Very interesting .. Olson has, at least temporarily, lost his copy, and no word from Leroi Jones. I imagine i cd use the bt-­ up old compilation from which i made up the quadruplicate,--its now in Maine-but am waiting to see if Denise drops in here tomorrow or Friday. I think she’s using it to make her selection for Turnbull’s MIGRANT.I’ll mail the 2 corrected copies I have here

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to NAVO monday or tuesday if she dont get here, etc. I suppose, still, you might as well have em ... -- a pity Larry

(45) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with vertical emendations in the left margin [Oc­to­ber 7, 1959] D r J Incidentement, je pense qu’il serait necessaire pour vous a indiquer ou a einvoyer lce derniier dixieme part, quand vous ecrivzez quand vous avez le reste. Et a qui. ! Etc. I’ve asked Ferrini if he wd try selling abt 50 copies in Gloucester ..and he says yes. I dont want to query CITY LIGHTS or anyone else as things are still uncertain. (Do you HAVE TO have illustrations ? Are they ready ? Wd I have much of a chance at N Directions, think you?? ) “Business” is getting too much for me. I USED to write responses to all editors, and submit, etc. I grow lazy. Plenty of pies in the skies. Awful lot of poetry around here. Duerden’s FOOT got here, great pleasure .. I’m getting heavy in the eyes. (When i sent im my LOOK AT THE PARK a yr ago Ferlenghetti offered to sell it for me if it was in a more ornery format ) Characteristic of Kr, of course, to visit Hollywood and Iowa, and Hyde Park, but not Rutherford or.. Etc. If his language is given out, maybe he realizes it? Ah, what thick arms!

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Let him go peddle Krypton, to the moon in a helicopter may he see all there is and the ghost of McCarthy ... yrs Larry

(46) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with vertical emendations in the left margin Wednesday 18th [No­vem­ber 1959] Dear Jonathan, I get more and more willynilly in attempts to respond. You know where Ch says “O souls/ go into everything” O well. Not much harm done, except that i kick myself at night ... I almost had a visit from Le Jones,he writes, while sending me Loewinsohn’s WATERMELONS and MM’s FOR ARTAUD .. I cant seem to take in much, and kick meself for trying, to comment. Mes frere m’apportais EVERGRN %8 aussi..(O’s thing there nice.) And I’m hung up on ULYSSES--why all the rigamar -- a few reasons i perceive ; after some Joyce Cary. Unevennesses, one is PENNY POEMS, broadside galore. Don Allen is using PASSAGES. And I came up w/ a title for the (bk) when he asked what it was : O n  M y  E y e s -­though flagrant, etc . He sent me the ms back, as, unexpectedly, did Jones. I looked it over and am now disappointed at “cruel and dark, the city”, ROUND MOVIE .. Let it go.Now I see and now dont./Jim Lowell asked for LOOK AT

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[The following appears in the left margin, alongside the preceding text and running from bottom to top: THE PARK et hier snt me $1 and a nice note ..] Idea Monday: how abt taking subscriptions in advance)(at $3½ a copy, say) Not that i cd hit on 3 subscribers. Ive always bn taboo. Et pere est un mummy veritable. Etc. ((See Ibsen: DOLL’S HOUSE ; i saw,Sunday ) all square -­yrs Larry

(47) One-­page letter typed on typing paper torn to a size of 5.5″ × 8.5″. The letter is perpendicular to manuscript copy of “Love is a movie,” and the poem and letter appear to have been typed at different times based on discrepancies in the typewriter ribbon. The date is estimated according to the date of the poem. [De­cem­ber 1959] Dear Jo’th Congratulations on FORM OF WOMEN and 1450-­ 1950 (Do you realize C. has as a rule been a puzzle to me, eh? But that photo, eg!) (Brown died on my 32nd birthday .) ...

Larry If you’ xx can collected collect, still, as much as $700 my father will try to make up the difference. (Cd you let me know of a pub.date so i can write bkstores?). (Have printing prices gone up? How much can you collect now?) xxxxxxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxx

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Fr 104¢! P too anyway

(48) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Mercredi [ Janu­ary 29, 1960] Dear Jonathn, I just cant be sedentary all day every day while, also, the more i try the harder things get. So at the end of De­ cem­ ber, as slight evidence of “openmindedness”,for 1 thing,i inquired of Fortune Press,in Lon­ don,& of Ferrini,what they chargd F sd maybe nothin & i submitted,explaining abt u, etc,and sayin maybe theyd do an edition and you too after a time. And yr letter last wk antagonized agn as u sd u like to live by yr wits. If FORTUNE replies theyll do it for free thatll be it, & I want to get done w/ it. If you still want t pub.me, try (F sd Fortune is slow), and if you do I’d prefer you tk all the profits,(and possibly kp me up on Jargon (I’m tired of sponging for one thing). Idea of my writing bkstores is derided here. Cdnt Paper Ed. handle me? Thanks for yr Empire Finals; looks like a lot. As you qte Creeley: how to live. And th Layton,they came today. Too bad you didnt make it here Sundy O well .. They say I shd just get in mags & wait 30 yrs. And be satisfied. Maybe so, after all J’envoi ceci par la femme clning qui arrive chaque deux semaine qnd mes p va dehors Elle ne regard sans specs ...

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I wonder what was Mina Loy’s situation . LLemme know fast if you get it. yrs anyway  L

(49) Four-­page typed letter with marginal emendations. One leaf is typing paper torn to a size of 8.75″ × ~11″, and the other leaf is Dartmouth College 200th Anniversary Development Program 5.5″ × 8.5″ stationery. Wed. Feb.3 60 Dear Jonathan Well, I have provoked a good many tantrums since I was ten, abt, and should be used to them, but I do find myself restive, and all, for periods, recently since De­cem­ber. xxxxxxx (Which apparently, in my subtle way, I have not gone into detail enough to make clear to you.) And tired. Of the armchr stuff and of work, etc. Atrophy coming up. The fact is that whenever I try to get something done of significant proportions, or talk, I only succeed in demonstrating my unreasonableness, childishness, idealism, impracticality, intolerance of others’ ideas,and interests, intellectualism, idealism,--one or another of these. And so, of course, I have become an unreasonable nag in trying to get through this wall to the brass tacks; also my ability to put myself in other peoples’ shoes is on the wane. So I xxxx am atrophying the hard way. Although I have reasoned that I only have so many lives to live, and shd turn my back on any number of things, I cant seem to voluntarily isolate myself for good. I do give up on mags more and more--for one thing I’m growing more and more lazy in deciding how to spend my dollar a wk, if at

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all--saving has its virtues, though they may be magnified, too--while I havent entirely forgotten that everyone must attend to pennies. That what I say and want shd be suspected of unreasonableness, and so forth, was natural enough in the xxxxxxx past and is still, and more in vw of my unpopu­ lar ideas, etc, but, and leaving aside the question of “fairness,” which is hard to define, it is hard on me. Then theres you. It appears to me that you, as I still am, are among those in suspense, and evidently you keep coming back... (You may have an armchair, but if so i doubt if youre sinking in as much as i, who seem bound to.) And I consider that you fig­ ure that theres not much reason in being ayt all reticent, abt difficulties* as abt discovered joys. As I figure. But other people (and I dont refer to just my family -­ Turnbull for instance mentioned he’s tired of yr complaints abt funds) don’t see things this way. They are struck by the chip on yr shoulder, and ask wherefore, etc. And of course there have been crackpots in the world, and there are signs that J Wms and L.Eigner are among em. [The following appears alongside the preceding text in the lower-­left margin and corresponds to the asterix in the middle of the page: *and i, while not m family, of crs, have inquired. t put it mildly, being interested, tho not every day, as they imagine.] I am tired of my fathers balkiness, for one thing, and of squeezing him, and I’ve mentioned his poor memory to you as I have mine (and if he reads this he shd really not resent my opinion, as i shdnt his, and dont, basically, as i think). While at the same time I want to, when i see

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signs of his interes, though its all hes really capable of (such as that “poetry is a harrrd field to brk into” When that comes out of im, I cant help feeling that he shd give me a little really significant help in my attempt, drop of water though it really is, esp.as its the only thing i can do.) But last time I was saying that you cdnt bank on a contribution from him, although he sez again that he will, in time, now I’ve asked im again; at least, I think, it wd depend on the reply from FORTUNE. And I’m sort of tired too, of feeling obligated, and hav-­ ing favors done me, the ones I like even. (I doubt if I’ll reach the nadir of insanity, though, or stay there long anyway.) I dont relish the idea of yr taking a further risk on my acc’t, nor of yr lugging my mss abt NYC. I wd rather see it in finer print, though yr stuff sure is attractive, etc. (I hope you may at least see this part of the dilemna too.) But I am restless, and wd like to DO something--get this done. When I asked Ferrini (he did not volunteer ) for the information I did not know of the risk you were considering, nor when i sent FORTUNE the ms. And I dont see how two editions is the worst to be avoided, if the bk is a good one and can stand up. (But maybe that takes some engineering: for all i know this happened w/ RED CARPET ) I dont think it likely FORTUNE will accept -­I of course told them of yr announcements and the intro. in MIGRANT #3, etc. Well, you have put effort into this and shd have as much exclusiveness, uniqueness or whatever as anyone, ok, youre a craftsman, ok, but on the other hand I shd have dom of movement too. I have an interest some free­ in DOing things; and hav bn browbten because of

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it. Though by now I cant see it does any gd to spk of for me to read or be read. I do wish in a way that i cd trudge like you can; but I’d be tired of this in ½ an hr. And, for heavens sake, you have 23 titles otherwise to struggle with. Well, quantity, at that. Its just for a moment that i think one or two defeats is nice. Anyway, it sure did seem you, even as i, had really reached rock bottom by last fall and I believe in versatility and give rather than restlessness It’s gotten so everybody is crowing whe something of mine appears in a mag. Last wk $3 came in fr a guy in Berke­ ley, ordering LOOK AT THE PARK and inquring if i had another collection, besides SUSTAINING AIR: that won plaudits. I sent him yr OPEN LETTER and explained the present situation. As to Denise, its true i told her some of the situation, and that I’d like t get th bk out, and asked her abt Guggenheim, at the suggestion of people here, et al res I may have asked her ant preesses. I do forget. I didnt pull her off when she sd she’d talk to you. If I had it might ve bn unreasonable just as much wd have. I dont know ure its what to do in re her maternality -­but fig­ legitimate enough, anyway in my case, and have to let it go at that. I dunno though. I’m really getting remote. It does seem she has her own positivisms, as we do, which may constitute the momism(?) at that. I’m at a loss, you can see, and getting very remote. [The following appears in the left margin, typed vertically alongside the preceding text: A man I sent the appeal to last yr replied he wdnt know what to do with 40 copies ...]

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It does seem right now that I’m sinking into my chair, and i dont see how i can seel anything. I’ve sure tried, in my time, to show things, etc. The mag betwn Worlds has writ me today. Thanks fer telling Newman abt me. I really fig­ ure you know what y’re doing (in Catullus, Chameleon ) but dont quite get the flow in my head yet. Miles .. standards seems like really putting the old twos together collage world all right. Well, the whole bk. Right now familiarity increase respect. A wholeness of impression; gimmicks, method clearing away. Pika-­ don There, factorial numbers indicate manifolding ? ... Well, everyone has habits. I just get confused by em. Ah well! I dont much see what a bk really might be, or poem, beyond itself, nowadays anyway. Falls in barren soil eventually. Of course land is surrounded by water. Have you seen Dudek’s Layton on the Carpet, in Delta #9 ? L has grown pompous, he says. That is apparent, i guess. I like the last one, ones, though. Etc. Dudek, of course, he has hardly ever seemed to get off the ground. But appears to know what is a good dish .. He also has a review, ibid, of LETTERS, and BAEDECKER. It The fine print job of RED CARPET was noticed here, and inquiries abt that printer were suggested .. So it goes. Also the price, and the length of the bk. Is possible Layton is making up for a deficit ? The enclosed verses are looking into Zukofsky’s SOME TIME again .. Larry

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I wd like to see the Woolf  Days,  etc., and hope to pay yoy for ..C a r p e t  and Verona too. Will see, etc. Corman’s 10-­ y-­ poem, PRIMAVERA, looks fine to me, one of those that go way up out of my sight   ... Reading on Civil War   etc Wednesday the 10th Last Wednesday after supper, when i went to finish this letter I told my father he cd read the 1st sheet, which i had done, but enjoined im not to say anything to mamma, agn; and pointed out you were responsibe for Neiman’s letter, fr. Puerto Rico. He tk two looks and went in th livingroom. When asked if i didnt want to watch TEMPEST the nth time i replied angrily that the fact i didnt just then was no indication that I was vs tv, or was morose; i didnt like Meurice Evans and I had hrd TEMPEST a lot on the radio. Next thing Mama i hrd exploding abt $1000 to Daddy, that he shd give or not but not say anything to her, etc., and when i went in for it she let fly, went down cellar, etc., threatened to leave in th morning, etc, to tear up all yr mail as it comes (which she’s done before). -­ If you let on I’ve told you this, it may be the last time I’ll get yr messages. Monday night xxxxx i had disturbed father w/ THE reqst agn, and she rd yr letter tuesday morn, at which another ­ blow-up. Only interesting point was yr questioning of the antagonism here: very undiplomatic of me, to have told you that. A lot of things i still have to learn, you see. And Mamma teaches me. Everything she does or sez is for my benefit, and I ought to take it gratefully to heart. But shes too lenient w/

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me, and I’m still a brat, intellectual and everything else. So, either sweetness and light, or hellfire. Before she went to bed she sd she didnt like to w/ a quarrel still unsettled,and asked me to wait some days before writin you. I had this letter hidden. I sd yes .. (She had charged Tuesdy that i havent enough “respect” for her and fathr’s way of “handling” you.) And she is mad that father is a mouse, thats another thing. As to my brother, he is far from being like this, but he remember for instance a time Creeley sd damn to him when i told C he was studying for to be a lawyer. And my brother thinks i shd revise more, iron out obscurities, and especially title pieces so to diminish rather than abet obscurity. So, you cant depend on anything, $$, fr here, though I may well ask agn, after some more sweet-­ light, getting fed up w/ that and th listening end of the cash nexus..

(50) Two-­page letter typed on six-­hole, 3.75″ × 6.75″ notepaper Feb.13 60 Dear Jonathan Ok, I take it you can very easily be a purchasing agent, xxxx 8th st.bkshop has both Woolf novels, and Denise’s new N Direction bk, as well and here is the cash for, as well, for Rexroth: 100 .. Gk & Latin, $1.75 Olsons: New Maximus 1.95 Roman Sonnets ..Belli ”

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Loewenfels Some Deaths 2.50 1.00 the Finstein and for Empire Finals and Red Carpet 5.00 Levertov 3.50 the 2 Woolf novels 3.00 postage .35 makes $20.00 Looking over Finals some more i get twist some more, the volume, as Quest-­ Ion ization ... yrs Larry I wonder if 8th St. also has Blackburn’s new Harpers book .. Well, quickly adds up, and this quite a pile, actually

(51) One-­page letter typed on 5″ × 8″ unmarked stationery Friday March 25th 60 Dear Jonathan, I would of course like to stick with you after all this time, but after all this time I need something definite to keep me up. I mean definite. And the only way my father or brother could help you get ON MY EYES out is to reimburse you after the book appears , up to an amount such as it would cost elsewhere. FORTUNE PRESS is willing to do it, if I take 200 copies at $2.00 apiece. (List price wd be $3.00.) If you can’t arrange an edition under the above terms of reimbursement,

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--shake hands, ol man? I wonder if you might advise me on distribution, whether I shd really send review copies to NYTimes and Poetry, for instance. I’m thinking of writing P de Bo er in Hoboken, and PAPERBACK EDITIONS, xxxxx * But presumably they wouldn’t handle a hardcover volume? Dennie’s book kind of lush and blinding in ways, loaded. I I keep goin back. Well, there s all sorts of queer things and i get ambiguous as to what s hot. Hypocritic Days was great--them facets. Ive been saving FADE OUT for savor, etc. Let me know Shake hands And good luck

Larry

* as well as bookstores

(52) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Friday April 8th [1960] Dear Jonathan, I trust you got my letter of two weeks ago, and I’m very anxious to hear directly from you whether you can do the book under the terms of reimbursement we (br.and i) agreed on that evening, althoughI doubt very much if you can (I remember what’s bn sd ) (one thing that bodes ill, which I don’t quite have the imagination for, is why you werent able to get the funds from 6 sponsors) , so unless you drop me a line by the 25th, 2 wks from monday, that you can and 3 are going ahead, I’ll write FORTUNE to go ahead. Not to be nasty  .. no.  ...

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Although I feel very remote already, etc. Big deal. (Well, you don’t want to do anything too quietly, but things can get pretentious in any circumstances.) Thanks for the Ignatow tip. He’s using something. THE FIFTIES, #3, is better’n #2, but tends to get hermetic, comparef to FOOT, say--best thing is TODESFUGE, and Tilling, etc.. FADE OUT has weak points which I imagine are obvious .. Well, heres to you. Its too bad, etc. Larry Eigner

(53) One-­page letter typed on 5″ × 8″ unmarked stationery Saturday 16th April 60 Dear Jonathan, Fine ! Wonderful! Yes--$2 apiece for 200 copies xxxxxxxxx on delivery here, to 23 Bates Road, Swampscott, Mass. Your letter came yesterday just before we lit out for Cambridge, for Denise’s reading in Boyleston Hall, which was great. T (I wanted to check if you were in hospital or anything. Then at the reception Olson introduce me to ole Mr Kearny, of Grolier’s, “the greatest bookman ...” Kearne ure we cd deliver said he wd take copies. I fig­ them to him from here, and before that send him a copy which wd help him decide how many he wants ? Then there’s Ferlenghetti. He said two yrs ago he’d stock L o o k  a t  t h e  P a r k  if it were in ordinary page size, even mimeoed. Which may not mean anything, at that, or by itself. I’m

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wondering anyway if you’ll write him, or shoul I, or would PAPERBOOKS take care of that  ? Anyway, the idea of 200 copies here has taken fire, If you run out of copies you cd relay orders to us, or we can send em back, probably, and despite whatever happens with C i t y L i g h t s Gr r o l i e r ’ s  , etc.  We can certainly work that out later. I’ll leave review copies to you, etc. yrs with spring and all but not april fool Larry Eigner

(54) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Thursdy [May 20, 1960] Dear J n t Forgot to say--and dont know just why i do now-that, having got an order for ..PARK from Jim Lowell, last winte r, later, some time after receiving from Turnbull a spare copy (tear sheet) of Denise’s intro and sel., i tht of sending it to Chicago, but let it go; wd be pretty indecent, hardly looked good, at this late date. I wrote him a note when we filled his order, say[ing]-­he was one of the two subbort-­ you mentioned, and thanking im, and allowed i still, then, tht it a good bk (a little callow maybe? ) .. O well Bn asked this wk agn. Maybe proofs will get here tomorrow.  ?  Well, i’d appreciate a line at that,  when  and if D Allen’s anth/y arr. last wk. Generous spaces, at the least. Beatiful bk, etc. What th-­You feel expansive  Fun going over the Olson.  Then glad

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of Duncans PINDAR being there. Le Jones I’m settling to, since YUE #6, th 16th of April. (H James?--i rd WASH SQ early cet an) You-twist tails.? Garrulity in there beside Olson, Rimbaud, et al  /  I enjoy the biog.s a gd deal, more interest in em than i tht. Letters are scattered it seems; looks like we’s businessmen after all  ? regards Larry -­ Hope yr fathr and all are ok.

(55) One-­page letter from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. This document is housed at the Dodd ­Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. June 15, 1960 Dear Larry,

Excuse the lapse. I’ve been waiting for assurance in Chicago that I could count on backing for 100 copies. It took about three letters and answers from three people to set it up. The Holland-­ Goldowsky Gallery now agrees to put in $200. Callahan’s students at the Institute of Design, plus all the people interested in poetry and painting, visit the Gallery, so it’s the best possible arrangement. Anyway, $750.00 is now firm and I have letters out to five places that pretty definitely will provide another $250.00 within a week. Once that is here I’ll drive to Charlotte. The book will cost more than $1000.00 but I’ll feel that the printer is protected with what there is promised. So, the schedule is beginning to shape definitely. You should have proofs in

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about a month. I’d like to have finished books by Sep­ tem­ ber 1st-- useless to send them to critics before then. Either they are in Europe or East Hampton or Provincetown, reading seasonal kitsch.

So, please be patient and rest assured, etc. I’m not hibernating. One thought occurs, do you want me to have a couple hundred cards printed for you with which you can circularize individuals regarding your supply of stock? The xxxx usual information and then maybe a tag line to heighten interest in ordering direct from the writer, like “autographed copies available from the poet: 23 Bates Road, etc.” Let me know. I think you need something as a mailer, but maybe you don’t want to bother with signing. Tell me how you’d like it. Here I’m busy with gardens and with afternoons helping my mother with her shop (antiques and decorating, etc.). It leaves not much time for reading and writing, but a little gets done at night. I can’t complain. Since I so much prefer wild flowers to New York bohemians. All my best,

[signed] Jonathan

(56) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Thursday 22 June [1960] Dear Jonathan, O well. Take yr time. Such is life, etc. I’ve done what I could here. No more. In fact, suddenly or otherwise, let alone my autograph, I dont feel like peddling my percepts. People around here, or generally, are

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quick to crow (some one of my aunts, I’m sure it was, gave the newspaper a story, appearing under head of “Poet wins Laurels”, which among other things says I am “already” getting royalties--on the Grove Press Anthology) Never open the eyes. All sewed up. Pride equals disinterest. Everybody busy--in­ clud­ ing me, now. Well, I writ 3 more fair ones, the past wk. I guess i cd sign em well enough--in Loy format for one. But also, I had in mind keeping my supply for bkstore orders, other than what I give away. From what you’ve sd I dont quite know if I’m in for 250 copies,hope rather than just 200, as I hop You say “circularize individuals regarding yr supply of stock” Specify number of copies or what? Well, I’m tired... Yr “Distances to th friend” just hit me the other day, and th one above that, “Will and Kate ..” ... Ah, gardens, Larry   regards

(57) One-­page letter from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. This document is housed at the Dodd ­Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. June 26, 1960 Dear Larry,

Some more backing in. I’m at the $850.00 mark with only $150.00 to go. I should have that remainder this week. Then, to arms, etc.

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I don’t understand: my thought was, your family would buy 200 copies at $2.00 per, and pay for them on delivery. If you want 250 does the same agreement hold? I don’t believe we’ve mentioned a fig­ ure more than 200 before. Let me know.

My thought about making up a little mailing card for you to use is: it’s a lot easier to sell to individuals than bookstores and you should concentrate on that. For one thing, you get full retail price; for another, you don’t have to fret with calculating discounts, postage, mailing invoices separately, billing, etc., etc. So, in other words, your card would say: Signed copies of ON MY EYES available from the poet at 23 Bates Road, etc. That should lead all the people to your door, away from mine. My copies I want to use for review and for libraries. I can send you a list of 100 people who should be interested in the book. Just finished my chores on Maximus. I’ll check back thru correspondence and see if there aren’t some books ready for you. I remember you sent a check back in the winter for some stuff to Eighth Street and I shipped what was on hand. I’ve been writing a little too. Very rusty, damn it. That’s what comes of too much running around and too much attention to the literary world, whatever that is. However, things are picking up. I’m getting in focus again. All the best from the herbalist’s eyrie, [signed] Jonathan

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(58) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [ June 30, 1960] Dear Jonathan, Thats right,: agreement is for 200 copies for at $2.00 apiece. (And enough for me-- glad its not more. Was just wondering..) Ok, thanks, fine news.! All right on those cards.. (I’ve just fig­ ured on getting most of the money back at best, eventually, but ok i suppose, full price. Cid says Cairney will probably be glad to stock the bk, but wontpay me a cent. I imagine this means no recompense,wholesale or anythin, at all. ... Same with me, here as with you -- running around too much, or too little. But pick-­ up once in a while. Some long (i.e. full-­ page) pieces. Not the writing but the focus (shifted) that happens agn by it. And as Whalen sd: “I’m going home and start typing./I’m tired of nothing happening.” What else? Bn going thrugh Atlantics here for material. One so far ... Etc. .. yrs any way  Larry

(59) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with the valediction uncharacteristically placed on the front perpendicular to the card text Sunday Aug. 27  60 Dear Jonathan , Great !. Looking back, again it is a prett y good book, good enough or something, and I feel very

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glad, for now, etc, though the iron get cold (entropy). My father just back from removal of prostate, convalescence will take 3 months. And so on . I slip. The idea of a pond of any size gives me a sinking sensation, and I have the manyana spirit. I’ve bn taking in, digesting, Tom Sawyer; Huckleberry Fin is a lot more meat. Its good in some ways to touch ground. Writing continues. Then type, with carbons -­ Sit down and rescue this poem. A game.//Good to come back. Pace. Fresco. Also Dante again, etc . [The next three lines appear in the left margin, perpendicular to the text on the front of the card and running from the bottom to top.] Be seeing you, heres hope It’ll be exciting. L a r r y BETWEEN WORLDS is pretty spotty i guess. Laudable purpose and all -­and forum, but it cant be roman. #1 BIG TABLE ?? What about it?? L. Eigner.

(60) One-­page letter from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. The letter features proofing questions from Williams to Eigner alongside Eigner’s typed responses, which he entered directly into Williams’s text, utilizing the left and right margins, as well as the spaces immediately surrounding Williams’s questions; Williams’s calligraphy practice of the word “Jargon” fills the reverse. This document is housed in the Poetry Collection at the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. I have omitted a note by Eigner found in the left margin in

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which he reports that he tracked corrections by poem number in the left margin. The note can be seen in the photograph of this letter in appendix A. August 30, 1960 Dear Larry, There’s no necessity of your reading proof, now that I have the galleys in front of me and see what a good, careful job Loftin did with the setting. I’ve read them all twice, Loftin is reading them, and my friend Ronald Johnson is double-­ checking. So, fear not. It will save us required time by handling it all here. But, there are a few spellings in the manuscript I question. Please answer by return air-­ mail: In Step-­wise: loam,to (do you want no usual space after the comma?) No. 48 close, yes In Anyhow: hve (sp?) 51  i do want as is hve In Memorial Day: its (sp?) 62  no error; n’importe In one of the late poems, which I can’t seem to pin down: busses (sp?) No.50 |?| Webster sez 3 s’s, or 2: so either way In With the world a chameleon: where(sp?) 17 where  error in ms In The Weather: crocusses (sp?) 30  Webster has only 2 s’s; it better be,i think I am going to assume these are typing errors and

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have them corrected. If I’m wrong, please say so and I’ll have them changed back the way you had them. Nos. 48, 51,   . Also: check me on magazine credits. Is this complete:

Sheaf Measure Black Mountain Review Migrant |?| of crse it printed Origin Denise’s intro. et 3 poems Sparrow Combustion Harlequin T i m e  f i n i t e s s i m a l The New Ameri­ can Poetry,1945-­1960 (Grove Press) No. 61 Fiddlehead is in NEW ATHENAEUM Delta -- Larry New Orleans Poetry Journal Hearse The Naked Ear Foot ???  any others??? Ok. Things are moving rapidly. I hope to drop by Swampscott with books in hand Oc­ to­ ber 11th. Onward, [signed] Jonathan Break up the dogfight the lawnmower battle the crickets |now dont keep me up planes take the air ... Now my mother has thought of xxx how abt you helping us dispose of some of our copies .. so

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now I’ve told her abt the cards, et al which i xx had neglected to do I know fewer ’n 200 people at that but there are the bkstores, etc. Larry Have you seen Dorn’s MIGRANT essay on MAXIMUS ?

(61) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Friday Sept.2    60 Dear Jonathan, In “ ..world a chameleon ” I put “ chiascura” so as not to twist anybody’s tongue, for rhythm’s--metre’s sake, etc.. I always had a preference for ease. at that. Yes--and the “a” comes nicer to the lips than “o.” What do you think?? ? You say the proofs are already y back in Charlotte ; so I imagine this ’ll mean a long-­ distance phone call for you--or something. Or those couple of thing I returned word on ieri. I guess “hve” there is a littl better for same reason--the tongue. (Better than “have”) I still feel sluggish. “ the good of the intellect” I realize its too bad, and that that at least, is up to me. We’ll see. Seeking levels, etc. (My feet twist. And there are still the days. yrs from the Light Brigade

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After supper last night i played them ll. abt lawnmower & cricket into one of those longshots. Writing may be longer ’n reading after all. Passim .. L a r s

(62) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Oct. 20 60 Dear people , I wonder if anything unusual has happened in the family, or to Jonathan, and if someone would please tell me ie if they can. I hope nothing serious. Jonathan was to be here last week and wrote so just bef to a fellow townsman of mine, passing the first passing the weekend in Connecticutt. He was to deliver a couple hundred copies of my book, for which I’ve had orders some orders and requests for autographs since August. I am hardly in a hurry nowadays, though. But I’m getting very curious to know if there’s been some accident or untoward event. I’d be grateful for information, And, Jonathan, if y’re there, or this reaches, you, what about the printers’ bills ? Mailing thr copies here would be quite all right. Shipping em. yours   Larry Eigner

(63) Five-­page letter typed on six-­hole, 3.75″ × 6.75″ notepaper 31 Oc­to­ber  Monday

1960

Dear Jonathan, Yippee.! or thanks, to printer, et al, for O n  M y  E y e s , which came this morn.. Fine

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job, I get to it. Callahan’s photographs make me think the book might have been titled, perhaps to more effect (?) Bushes at night, Grass in daylighttime However, coming through as is! (And it’s over, besides. A missed lacuna, I notice, in “natural environment” “or cats  each step of a  ” if my memory isnt playing tricks on me  ;  but I’m not going to bother with it. I mention it for kicks ) Enclosed is Turbull’s check to you for  $1x0 10.00 bucks (we’re taking care of his order), and my father’s to you for $390.00 , the balance of the $ 400.00 . .. Larry Congrats last wk from Zukofsky. And what a blurb. r  Un iqu typing!? Look at Olson .. Tuesdy I had that operation Sept. 19 20th; out of hospital oct. 6th; pretty well through with it by now, though not quite, one cut, at the base of spine, still not closed But if its not one thing its another--the rash on my arms is bothersom agn. The folks unpacked the lot this put the 19 of the packages down one. No announcement cards, (?) former plans, if i recall them; Grolier’s, Ferrini, etc. Saturday 

morning and cellar.all but so will try my get in touch with

No­vem­ber

Just found yr letter of the 3rd on coming back from Golier’s, Harvard Bookstore, and

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H C o o p, where my father went in and they took, respectively, on consignment, 10 copies, 5 and 5.(had a bit of a hard time at the C o o p, which he hadnt phoned beforehand and i figure that at College Bookstores .. well, they are least likely to gather dust .. Harvard Bookstore,sort of a second-­ hand place, said it wd display it in the window.) Grt eagerness here to sell/ dispose of the 200 copies, which theres rather a despair of doing, though besides today’s 20 copies 10 went before. This includes 4 from Turnbull’s order, and some to the family (a guy in my fathers office who’s inerested in photography wants 3), and my uncle sold one to a fellow insurance man. xxx 3 And my father had an operation in August--prostate suddenly blew up on im, compleat blockage-- besides that operation of mine in Sep­ tem­ ber. Anyway, $400 is enclosed. But congratulations yrself! by god. Xxxx As to “best jargon,” I’ll take MAXIMUS, but it is true, as Cid remarked somex yrs back, that its unwieldy. I’m coming around to get On My Eyes in focus again, or in print (at first the print seemed kind of small, and the margins pretty wide, and the poems rattling or whatever, thelong ones especially, eve such a favorite as D a y s , but now it comes back, a good deal, as i say). It is surprising that, having got back to “hve”, in “Anyhow”, “chiascura” in “..chamaleon” not so; which may be ok, at that, “chiaroscura” being rather bumpy and onomopoeic there, besides being the correct form. And 24a and b might be just as well, tho i just labeled the long one 24b because it was an insert. Perhaps the numbering makes

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the bk less clearly a sequence. I tht numbering in mss wd be more convenient for the printer than pagination; but, in vw of Laytons RED CARPET, et al , i shdve said so, explicitly, as also that maybe table of contents might help emphasize the sequence business.(but that wd’ve increased the cost, so I’m glad-­g r r ) I also had an idea that one page with 2 poems might be a nice switch; but perhaps it wdve mnt too much confusion because of lack of norm in my titles.--Lars Sunday My father, who sold 2 more at Temple (Synagogue) this morning, now thinks to give you profit if we make it ... ... Them photos, this morning. ... Myself taking it easy in reading, et al. Very nice to have that ball-­ bearing out of my butt, but, for one thing, my skin is giving me the willies again ... H a i l s   etc. Larry

(64) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Fri. Nov. 11 [1960] Dear Jonathan , Just to say that Monday, after the stuff was mailed you, the physical shape/size block of the

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book struck me .. What a materialization!, in fact. Struggling with a poem in re that cover, the trees rathering substance in upper right cornice or whatever, and going off, the flextile chunk slab block or whatall lying there flat on th coffee-­ table after a space the sofa another th ceiling tree from the stdewalk  backyard hidden (to get this all in break up the sense too much  as yet ) Today went and deposited 5 copies w/ Ferrini, who liked em fine,.. And I bought the JARGON/CORINTH MAX off him, which seems a cln-­ edged job too . He says Olson mentiond Eyes to im so i guess O has a copy. Denise wrote too. / Got word from Ch. Hanna of Muehlenberg College .. And that cover ties in with poem #1 .. Cid also wrote with pleasure Much regards Larry

(65) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Sat 26 Nov 60 Dear Jonathan, Very glad to hear abt the Commission.--though dont exactly know if I’lget arnd to buying it, quit on the after all unreasonable goofiness thats coming now (nature abhors vacuum), in other words bestir myself agn to the lofty and dull calm heights.  / By now a few too many people have bt th bk xxx on whom i think it

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will be a ton of bricks if anything.. But also 2 or 4 or 5 for the sake of anyway them photos, eg.one photographer in Gloucester was struck, though no-­ one there has bt yet,F writes. And I may be drawn into the newspap mill, by dint of one uncle. Well, I’ll see what i can do abt the windmills,mine and othrs I’m staggered again. I wrote Loftin--mayve made an ass of myself, as sometimes haps--and Callahan. Havent sent Le Jones a copy,as i told im i wd, for gratis hes sent me.. And now it definitely occurs to me to ask, if you* [The following appears in the left margin, perpendicular to the card text and running from top to bottom: *mn to send im one, also Souster, and Duncan .. Lemme hr ? ? Cards not yet. Ok] Glster ph.also hit when F finally rd 1 of th poems aloud. Turnbull alsorespnd Almost finishd Dan’s Purgatorio (beat?) And Mark Twn. And picking up Thoreau (Mod.L vol.) Maybe Ol dislikes T? Chelsea Revw #8 i enjoy, largely--th pol.poems-tho hvnt got to th Dorn yet, eg. .. Wishes Larry

(66) One-­page letter from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. This document is housed at the Dodd ­Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. Dec 5/60

Dear Larry,

Here follows the review list to date. Some of these are placed with people in strategic

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positions, like they say; viz., Bob Cate at Columbia. He’ll probably alert 25 people a day-one of whom might dig the poems or the photos. To answer your question: I sent a copy to Duncan, but none to Souster or Jones. You do that if you wish. Also, I’m confused about Olson. I asked him to tell me whether or not he had a copy. He hasn’t. Maybe you won’t mind supplying one from Ferrini’s stock if he is still lacking?

I re-­ reminded Loftin about the mailing cards. He moved his shop last week (to 510 West Fourth St, Charlotte 2, NC) which undoubtedly explains the confusion. I’m sure you’ll have them soon, if you don’t already. Once I fill a few more library orders, my stock of OME will be gone, save a few for my collection. So, it shouldn’t take too long to exhaust yours either. I enclose a copyright form for your use in case you haven’t gotten to that dull task. You must send the completed forms, two copies, and $4.00 to the Copyright Office.

Ok. The review list now. I am leaving for California on Dec 16th. Get in touch before then if anything’s pressing. I’ll be out there some three months and will send address once located below Carmel. Cheers, [signed] Jonathan Reviews & Comps/ LE JW Harry Callahan (20) Jones Aaron Siskind Souster Paul Carroll, Big Table Olson Museum of Modern Art (3) Moses Asch, Folkways Alexander Liberman, Vogue Cleve Gray, Art in America Emanuel Navaretta, It Is

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Charles Egan, Gallery Franz Kline Robert Cate, Columbia Records Donald Hall, BBC Robert Duncan Louis Zukofsky Cid Corman Louis Dudek, Delta Robert Creeley Don Allen Barney Rosset James Laughlin Denise Levertov (2) Wm Carlos Wms James Merrill M.L. Rosenthal, The Nation Kenneth Rexroth, KPFA Kenneth Patchen Edward Dahlberg John Ciardi, Saturday Review Hugh Kenner, Natl Review August Derleth Editor, Poetry New York Times Book Review Village Voice Miner White, aperture James Dickey, Sewanee Review Peter Yates, Arts & Architecture

(67) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Fri Dec 9 60 Dear Jonathan, Fine!  The 20 copies on the way to you (yet possibly will be slowed, due to the Xmas rushx ) Thanks also for sending out, and the list. Will take care ..

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And copyright too, thanks. Book says c by Eigner and Callahan; but i imagine its ok, to go. S A Jon Greene, now a freshman at Bard C ollege, is coming here for six weeks, Janu­ ary February, to have discussions, or whatever. Good luck in California Oah! Larry

(68) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card from Jonathan ­Williams to Larry Eigner. This document is housed at the Dodd ­Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. Dec 13/60 (Patchen’s 49th birthday) Dear Larry, Appreciate your sending the books so promptly. TThey made it yesterday. Special handling comes about as quickly as first-­ class. I’ll remit $41.49 very shortly. This week I have to conserve all funds to make my escape westward. A couple comments in today. Donald Hall doesn’t get you at all, but from equally far to the right comes word from James Dickey that you interest him very much and he’ll note the fact in one of their house organs, like Sewanee. Don Allen delighted too. And Duncan. And James Broughton. That’s pretty wild; i.e., Mr Jon Greene. Must make you feel terribly venerable? Let me know what is happening. Address in California: c/o Ephraim Doner, Route 1, Carmel, California. It’s a long drive. However, onward, again. All the best, [signed] Jonathan

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(69) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card with handwritten emendations Fri. Dec 30 60 Dear Jnthn Thanks, by gosh! And I have hopes yre not weari yrself out still by arrow escapes etc. (I guess maybe debt prison had to go before credit cd come in.) From time to time people wish me a 2nd edition--printing -­and maybe it cd be done with shallow holes.? We see. (Didnt expect you to contact Don.Hall -­he very conservative -­was on tv in Boston some wks some yrs ago -­and was in N.Orl. Potry Jrnal yrs ago, etc. -­I didnt dope out why Bly paid him any mind. -­Bn pulling in horns and ditching mags a few yrs by now vicious habit,while the causes continue.Engh to fly arnd here I do feel venerable, suddenly or otherwise. But anyhow, the bt might still rock, occasions send me, as this past wk, picking the lock of MAXIMUS w/ this Swampscott kidd, Arn. Goldman, who wnts to lecture on it at U.of Manchester, wher he is bnd for a tching job--dope considerably in drawing up qstions to ask O. JGreene,coming th 1st or 3rd,wd also like to go to Glster; he has summerd in Magnolia,knows th place.But the Letters beyond 19 require more larning than i’ll ever rch, involving those Bl.Mt.history lectures, eg. Greene snt a 6 pp. pome ystrday. Will rd it thr. now. Folks have,& say i might go dwn in histry as th instructor of a genius.” See wt hppns Am puttng some mind on buying JARGON 13 .. but still giving myself rope

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Happy N Y !! despite and because of all, andmany more, x to Patchen. (Got th Lou Harrison this wk     ) Larry

(70) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Tuesday Feb. 21 61 Dear Jnthn, Have asked a cple times in re JARGON 13, but pap says “Wait till reimbursement” So hit goes--a great life. I suggested we tell you nevr mnd that but, nope. Wk ago Jon.Gr brt me Sorrentino’s Darkness ... (last poem! etc ) and, in vw of the list on th back covr leaf I pointed out, agn, how much youre doing for me--what. Ah well. Lot of bks rnd here. Otherwise I’m receiving my due now--reasonale facsimile of a Ph.D.,et al.(Eg, correspondence me/th rahv, is attracting notice; no one knows whats in it) Poetry running dry, actually. Forward*,*into slough.! [The following appears in the left margin, alongside the first paragraph of this card and running vertically from top to bottom: *name of a old yid. paper grnpa rd.] I hardly look to brking evn now. We have abt 60 left. Jon. tk 20, 10 to delivr to Phoenix Bkshop, 8 days ago.That afternn th cards came!.. 23 Jan. i had a 2nd operatn--wch Dr’s sure of;1st was dbtful. So JG was home whn his pa died a few dys later.Delayed by the snw in NY streets, he came and picked up his stuff Monday. All has to end, of course. But les see .. Both old notions

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After all this time I discovered while in th hopital a missing line/st.in #39! Then in ms! : another thing coming it’s the street or | nothing Ow! (3 other mistakes--yrs--i’ve come on ) And they wish a 2nd printing on me, us, besides! Vox pop. But i enjoy the whole bk now.! warm r s Larry

(71) Two-­page letter typed on 6″ × 8.75″ unmarked stationery May 11 61 Thursday Dear Jonathan , “Small world,” poetry, yes, but big for me too. Nothing is terribly easy but I get lazy Father’s disinterest in poetry as well as golf, birth control, politics, philosophy, math, n-­ test blockage, ad infinitum, it doesn’t seem i can put much causation on, really, after all. I’m in these quandries, and getting chopped up. I see where Dr Wms writes he is a sick man except when he writes and thats me all right. My cup runneth over, and I sure get jaded. But seems no use kicking myself. I’ve done half a dozen stron pieces, by the way, since Janu­ ary. And I look to a couple more years. Sort of riding high and wriggling on air. Heres the $6.00 for Jargon #13. Went to Cambridge around April 19 and saw “Empire Finals ” in window of Grolier’s but he didnt have the 13. I cdnt get in but Father went in and asked.

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Some copies sold in Cambridge, abt 5, or 5 from one of the 3 places, i think Kearney’s sold some. Other two are Havard Bookstore and Harvard Coop. I might have known before that Kearney wd nt soon be sold out: i.e., when i learned he was easygoing, which quality i admire. In San Francisco my brother asked for 5 copies and placed them with Dave Meltzer at Discovery Bookshop, and M. paid ten days or so ago and told brother he may well be ready to reorder in a couple of wks. And (Ferlenghetti didnt bite?  (I’ve bn fickle and feckless there, with F, for one ) )  And father has bn quite a salesman, among acquaintances, directly. In Delta 14 theres a letter part of which raps me, from a guy in Cambridge who has seen my book-but fine format and photography he thinks--and Dudek’s reply that “six of the poems are really very fine”: and wherefore then did LD buy 3 copies off me  ??  Theres an ad on the back cover too, listing the price as $3.50, and giving your address. Maybe you’ll want to have any minimized orders pursuant thereto relayed here, though it’s easy to see the discrepancy, if noted enough, might get us into a big tangle--how to come out of it i havent the faintest idea, except maybe return all short purc monies with apologies and expianations ?? A few months ago Jonathan Greene took 20 and put 10 at Phoenix, for which which Wallrich soon remitted us--through Greene--the $22.50. Greene wrote today that hes bn wondering whether to submit an ms to you, or are you too busy.?? You’re always too bus y, it looks like. He asks after you in general, too, perhaps. I feel

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incompetent to judge (I’m a terrible reader). A lot of his things seem empty nutshells, and sometimes he too pushing, day after day, but .. everyone shd try, i guess .., and he has stuff he himself considers bad.   |?|   I’ve written him yr plans tonight. And thanks for the clippings”, but, what the heck? I just roll along. I feel i shdve replied in some way to the comments and congratulations drom some insurance men et al, who bought but little use typing on endless strings. Babe in the woods that i am. The center flies apart, and I dont wanna be a synagogue. Rabbi got theology out of it, etc. I may get that Arts and Architecture some time. Very indecisive indeed, i am. Sometimes I still feel like submitting, despite the long and occasionally eternal reaction-­ times of quite a few nice editors, but then i feel more or less like subscribing. Etc. And i get real blear-­ eyed in wisdom too. How abt Between Worlds? Is it a mishmash of flimsy samplings in which brevity is the soul of flight or is it w o r t h y ? Jones’ and di Prima’s Floating Bear is quite a resounding flood. I’ll pass on the ad for Railroad Men to Greene too. Its something! I wish i cd go w8th you and play pokah .. Best yiu know ... Larry

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(72) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [Sep­tem­ber 21, 1961] Dear Jonathn. Various summer. Pleasures and pains excitemnts etc. Visitors ..No reason for shuttin drs Shavzin,of Penny Poems was here, then sent me some easy and intriguing stuff , on Cuba,truth and/or fiction; et al. Blackburn before that. A yng poet in Leiden, whom frere Dr Joe th notable biochemist showed OME, wants to do an essay on me in a mag. De Gid, (The Guide). Last wk i was asked to submit and i sent some,and sd they cd quote,etc. Some Dutch here, and translations, pretty gd. This Wilfred Smit objects to typography, enjoys me otherwise./ Monday a note fr.Lew We-­ ch praising “field, the only place” specifically. Which i had tht a weak spot. Hm. I’m not kn on making anotr selectn. Si vous recois de papie de Angleterre et/or les pays a bas, ne soupirez pas un mot.Il faut, peut-­etre. Bien. Theres also this “workshop” fr P Wm Tillson at Purdue: P o e t  &  C r i t i c ARTS & ARCHITETURE seems quite a qqr concoction-of Better Homes and somet else--for whch it might be considered a carrier? Such life is. Thanks for it anyway. The perplexd revwer.No eye for spch, you cn see. I wonder how you encountered him .. .. r e g a r d s

Larry

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(73) Two-­page letter typed on 6″ × 8.75″ unmarked stationery Monday 29th Janu­ ary 62 Dear Jonathan , Percolation enough, thanks and naught ... (as sd Bolingbroke)--sheer entropy, is it, i fear. Day to day. Generally fail to discriminate what i shd/ want to do next. Et voila, physically, in past years it used to be hard to sit still--quiet arms and legs to sit and read, etc whereas now c’est tres dur a manger at the table, et al. Talk abt yr homeostasis. By now it has crossed me up both ways. Experience. La vie! So now je suis beaucoup comme pere, qui est L’homme Assise. Mere est la Femme Active, au Cerveau Ferme.. Vou Savez? Mai je fais un pas, et je suis sur la mer. Merci je n’ai sais jamais a faire, et maintenant   Like the Floating Bear, i dont know what to hang onto ... So 17 years from hence looks awfully remote, eg, and for that matter Le Musee des Arts Modern ... yet something to kp in mind, hm  Ma tante y fera une visite. And good luck to Callahan. (Very nice books of photographs brother th biochemist sent home from holland, 2, especially one called Nederland Poem partly based on it, though i’ll forgo digging it up ) Saturday pp. series of poems from Jackson Mac came a 7-­ Low (“Miscellaney he calls it) on seeing O M E twice, etc. Poem like Anselm Hollo, say, but practically ,onumental, really building up, with repetitions like music. Faith, Greek to me. A lot of the photographs in there, or the cover, otherwise i dont see much, except 1st poem which goes w.cover, perhaps, and a line “high sky book” Written hik back already, in re stuff he wants to put in a mag , but didnt think to suggest he try

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and show th “Miscellaney” to Callahan.Told im of C’s show.. Was going to say that a fresh copy wnt to Poetry Mag. 16(?) days ago. Ten copies you asked for mailed Saturday (Father doing his best, ie much ado, mother lowering the boom therefore) Yes, 34 i am now, twice 17.--maybe an inspiration on yr part (?) ) I first saw yr Janu­ ary newsletter th 14th,circa, Sunday anyway. So then to get one of those Chicago Cards was very interesting. Sent newsletter and card to one Robert F. Grady, of Philadelphia, who sent me 3 poems and asked for opinions and company Fine poems. I got to it more’n i did Larrsen, for one, whom i looked up in Between Worlds-­of course, and a lot of others .. c’est moi. But sharp, clear stuff.Grady has., also mild, etc., all at once. Is married, and says hes just quit job as bartender--cdnt take it. Another nonmillionaire it apprs. Just got around to purchasing ...Dogtown and Dark Brown In attempt to turn to again i submitted a bk ms to Wesleyan U Press. Just that .. Work is work (and glut) At least one more volume i cd pull out o th mess Was gonna say: 10 copies O M E still down cellar, a few in front room, 3 i think in Cambridge, 2 or 3 at Ferrini’s, 4 at Jonathn Greene’s--or did he say, yesterday, when he was here (!), all 4 were at th Blue Yak bkstore, and he had yet to check on em, B Y having folded, as Mac Low’s letter sd th day before --one of the occaions he saw O M E was in window of Blue Yak. And Saturday J Greene and Chuck Stein spent 5 hrs straight with Olson, in Gloucester.”Bert Wms what”

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I kind of presume Cid sends you Origin ? though it seems we are getting whacky by now, aint we? ? Anyway that Noh play in #3 knocked me out and it reminded me of Olson history, a la Olson, and Gloucester. I did a poem abt Bernstein playin Debussy’s La Mer in Carnegie Hall at a tv’d Children’s concert, in which one line, abt th fisherman, I derived from the Noh play .. and lanscape/seaswell anyhow, as in Glouscester and Yashima. It’ll go in Origin, #5 i take it. Cid sd he wanted it, and that it reminded im of Yashima (the play), and the i told him of th specific derivation which I’d forgt to do before. I stick a copy i do fig­ ure and imagine i can spare, herein, and 2 others too. Showed em, sent to CC yesterday. Ideas rd abt the 14th, hibernation of spacemen, less oxygen needed, wake up as abt to land after 1000 yr trip as yng as hell; also the cold treatmnt in surgery dispenses w.shock and need for anesthetic; and cooling th cortex inch on inch by blasts of freon gas reduces shake in palsy temporarily this allowing surgeon to locate points to be burnt out permanently. And flowers travel in boxcars, dont they ? Methuselah problem, unsolved... But i send by way of some response. Thanks Merci Regards   Say hello to your mother    even though you didnt get to Japan. Larry Oubliez pstge any way hm

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(74) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card [February 3, 1962] dear Jonathan Forgot to ask, have you got Don Allen’s SF address. I hes still there, please may you tell me it ? I lost it ? Or where i can reach him now. Best Larry

(75) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Sunday 25 March 62 Dear Jonathin, I still hve a few feelings lik a heel, but hell, what th (hallucinatn of obligatn) I rock fr.day to day,w.no more time for plding for anything willynilly. (While a few dis bck fr SF br snt Finnegans Wake and Key,and now i cd live to 152 by hell) Guy in Philly wha got in tch w me wanted my cards t distribute,wherepon i remarkd to folks on 2nd edition (printing),but it pass. (Only 10 left ere) I passed yr newsletter to this RF Grady tho he just qt barkp job. Tht of passng brochurs Nantaliala e J Wms to Lynn Library but now of relayg to cousin Ed Ei who now instructs at Northwest­ ern--lattr better praps x tho i’d xpct it t git lost. Interestin all right tho I’m a tented wether, full up, also th day of Orbit I hrd on FM tape of a speech befor Hrvd Law S.Frum by Leo Szilard inviting stdents to try get up

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a movmnt fer feasible unilateral steps twards peace which wd hve a lobby in Congress. Anglicn Chuch of N.Carolina i nevr conceived of. Wrote Allen e suggested he mi snd future royls you or Jonesways Hushh. Here i dunno what happens to th money.Cdnt get agreemnt to giv to S Nucl.Com or anythin God help us! And I bn hoping you wd gt $100 more fr what we snt back.Best way. Dont remit yet. May spk to ynger br abt it--folks left ce matin t mt his bt (he in transit fr.Leyden to Uo of Michigan)--and will let you know. Maybe 8 wks ago snt to Auerhahn fer Dogtwn Max nothing yet.. Op? regards Larry

(76) A 3.25″ × 5.5″ picture postcard with a handwritten message by Israel Eigner from Larry’s dictation. See appendix A for a photograph of this postcard. 9/28/62-­ Thanx for Garlands [unclear: toughness/tautness/tauntness?] grows to something [unclear] the [unclear: bowing?] 3 beside 1,4,7 tho we’re all precious [unclear: heals/heels?] bon voyage I can only wish you brain operation lowers muscle tonicity 3 to 4 months a good sign Regards Larry from hospital bed at Mass General

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(77) Two-­page letter typed on a 7.25″ × 12″ airmail envelope. The text of the sec­ond page is split by the midpage airmail apparatus into two large blocks at the top and bottom of the page. Jan 28 63 Dear Jonathan Few days ago got yr letter, and have just read, thinking perhaps i cd refrain a few days more but i really am impulsive,totally now, though i glanced 3 days ago and tht I’d say, to start,-Vox clamantis and remote But its still rather damnable not being able to do things (more so as sloth and disorganization increases under the wght of my shelves et al) or ie i commiserate Everything els giv me pain too, and i seem unable to keep kindnesses in mind as I used--eg, “the spinners and the knitters in the sun” so much has bn and is demanded of me, in gratitude. compliance that is and this surgery has for some while at least put me on a cloud where i dont have to be cheery in order to relax and by now especially I’m embarrassed and unsettled by “thankyous and I’mproudofyouse etc. Quite a complex.. In paticula I’ve felt embarrassed abt writing yous, Though allasame i know, no obligationxxx as there s that extra 100 which I’m not asking abt any more. As noted above, my shelves are saggin, and in any event I’d like to chip in, while buying (reading) bks is harder. Earxxly Sept.$30 & came in from Poetry, and when i tht of giving you, say, 20, the usual reaction of crse, ma set up a howl abt all i owe pa. We compromised and sent $/ to Corman, the nice guy (I dont actually know what to think of people nor how, eg, to respond to Poetry now) Br was home from SF, will

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be agn xtomorrow or day after. But mapa thinks well of CC (nor shd anyone wonder at this,or get envy, or mad, or what ) whereas you do ask for it passionately (...bitterly since abt ’54(?) even 60&); ANd you caused me to ask as i xx xxxx 57-­ for it, impractical, idealistic me. Of course theyll never stop lovi me, according to their lights |surely no blame in thatxx | --ma offered me piano lessons a couple mnths ago, as yrs ago when other spastics were taking em, reportedly (or was it music appre-­ ciation at the time of my corr.courses)--but what tn ? “Let come beautiful people / ... of good colour ” Anyway, a part of the compromise or otherwise was that i shd get a few more J a r g o n bks, and i wrote to my cousin at Northwest­ ern to please return the last bklist of yrs, but no reply. I sent him that,the notice abt the Nahantala Nantahala Foundation and that autobi stuff you sent me in hopes it might be instrumental inn landing you an invitation from that Universe. My cousin came here 2ce this summer during his 2-­ wk vacation, and i tht of mentioning th mateial i had sent (along with a 2-­ page poem) but ... i didnt. The german anthology had arrived a few days earlier,1st visit or so .. a letter also from verlag to be interpreted--his wife being sudetenese and he knowing german ..and on the eve of my going to have my butt cut the 3rd time we listene d to that Ginsburg/Corso/? record together. For a wk or so now he is Dr.. Edwin Eigner and will teach at Kansas U. He attended my other brthr’s wedding in Idiana Saturday (folks flew there Thurs,bck here last night)--I havnt heard that he sd anythin. The folks are

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fullof talk abt th wealth of the in-­ laws etc.V P of a co. with a plane etc ; 300 gsts at wedding (ergo)300 gifts  I sent 1 too to Ann Arbor where shes an undergrad, hes working on enzymes (got his phd working on dna, the chromosome/gene molecule whose structure was inferref by Watson/ Crick,who got Nobel Medicine prize ’62, appropo L E and his ma,who had -­ rectomy Dec.5,--i surmise they got it so late on acc’t of Watson’s tender age--while 2 other biochemists got the Chemistry prize  Ie Thom Jeffersn was smarter thn Alfred Nobel) Arnd xmas along with rturn of H.Crane i lent her when here in August she sent 1st issue of a mag.from campus Burning Deck, qu’a Creeley,Duncan,Z .. and will hv Donald Hall, Levertov... I sent then Journey tove, wich Jon Greene brought me july 3 (thats how retired ive bn!). Father faild to get arnd to ye othr copy i had askd him to, told him th bkstore,that he cd order by phone. Just as well. (In Decembr i was scheduled to go to a Ba Nitzbah.1 evening from kitchen i hrd ma to pa: “Larry is giving .. a dictionary, so tell the rest of the family not to” Which was th 3rd time to my knowledge this was haping, so i protested, getting argmnts abt hi-­ lobrow, needs, etc, so,ma being abed still,i phoned my aunt and changed things ... but verily wd i be earnest,easygolucky,thicksinned, mindful of my love,death and creation again as in the days of my youth,for, as i knew (yet have not bn able to make hay), “the hater |is| harmed” So i ask me(‘n pa), circa Jan.1, am I sposed to give Joe/a a present Do you |with fluttering lashes| want to? ... Yes. (But i suspect she has no idea i sent anything, has forgot, though Tuesday or so i asked something wd still rch joe if sent to his old address at Ann Arbor: sith when ma

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had er guts out it became evident i wd not be at the wedding fest Some such mechanic reason Joe has givn me a gd many bks etc nor have i bn able to spk, hardly, to B..Eigner, th BMitzvah,fot often hav i to be reminded that he s not on my intellectual level, is not old enuf, etc. Hosp got rather unpleasant, or simply that i get discouraged with my long nose and short ears, etc., besides being babe-­ in-­ wds there,as anywhere. Evry step down corridors is new sey of machines puzzles. Dispersd effort. I’m more and more indecisive. Bog down. [The following text is separated from the preceding text by a space of approximately four inches, where postal apparatus is supplied on the airmail envelope.] Know naught what to do with th time.. Then doghouse here . Funny thing, really, how much appetite you guys have for art. “Blear-­ eyed wisdom” it is getting, awful lot for me to handle.I now hve too mch stuff,myself,to select and arrange satisfactorily. On impulse i sent Laughlin an ms Wesleyan had turnd doen early 62,combined w,one nrothr had stimulated me to sebd City Lights (F is booked for a long time) Bk is inpleasant in a way. On My Eyes getting rare,so pa is megaphoning that .. so i say (am bnd to),I only wish ther were more copies, to wich th response is always, write Jonathn and ask him .. Thry gave a copy to the dentis, who “barely has time for the New Yorker”, since he is “so kind to Larry ” Ditto ditto, clud­ ing m.d.or wife: “We’re proud many Eigners,in­ of you all right”  (If i get the Pulitzer Prize I’ll die, wont know what to do .  ) How abt you? I wish i cd do some conservation work,water

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pollution,rtc, if it werent futile etc. Or goto Israel, or maybe Cuba,i dunno. Art? I dunno. Everybody acks like theyre gonna live forever,it seems,in­ clud­ ing me.   Larry.

(78) Five-­page letter typed on 5″ × 8″ unmarked stationery and 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. The first two pages are typed on the front and back of the stationery sheet. The typing paper has been folded horizontally and rotated 90 degrees to create four pages out of the single sheet; page 3 begins on the verso of the page spread created by this fold, while the recto is blank. The letter continues on the reverse, with page 4 beginning on the recto and page 5 concluding on the verso. Based on internal evidence and included poems, Eigner misdated the letter; it was likely composed in the days and weeks after the Kennedy assassination (No­vem­ber 22, 1963) and sent the following month. [Late De­cem­ber 1963] Xmas & 5 60 Dear Jonathan Merry      Happy Anyway Now I’ve had something to show you about xx Florida’s Cypress Gardens the patst few weeks-and have meant to same perion |Articule ridiculing it i S Eve Post . | Wherever you are Which I suppose is California or perhaps not -­ just that you wrote of making those inreviews for KPFA . Well, I hope you’ve been making out with some things. Myself as usual or I feel in a wild reeling mess. It keeps on of course, coming through the walls etc--(singing commercials in my day nothing like

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today    and as of old though annoyance at “Price is Right” say is an evidence of disrespect for oth people’s tastes, help against--and now if i shd by some miracle get promoted to the 3rd grade, i wd drown, it feels like, cdnt do all the reviewing --or how much was i ever girdef up for ? a question to remain. But, starting to be brief, I was gonna say, it always comin out my ears, but now out of sight is out of mind, i have to look round agn after lunch. Books, mags, mimeos, mmsss sss -- I become like Lot’s Wife. But when the writing comes its stil like holdin up a sieve and feels good --the only way to stem the tides you must drink (or no, I spend more time with Newsweek etc. The way for me to pass ) Very gimmicy too. Heasuring ings to 16th in. july-­ august etc. -­ unable to do it before increased steadiness (might be diminishing in recent weeks) Preety confider of the midpoint of a d diameter, e.g. curtain pulls Ir-­ crash programs on a backing to typewriter carriage standing mimeos books mss mags et al on their heads. Reading stan by rail where I walk which mother frwns on -­even that, though I’m supposed to be on my feet as much as i can. (Father is willing, what he can comprehend, draws and cut lines where i said (catrd brd without clearance in drawer and supported by a end stands items up in the drawer ... book-­ Anyway i am now fascinated with photostats for another thing and since I have only 2 spare copies left (and a request unfulfiled) I’ve had notion of offering an f-­ stat to a potential owner instead of closing down. I don t feel

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well with any promotion on my back anyway. I keep on forgetting the great cost (that Jargon 36 came to 2¢ a page is even more incredible). The plumber who used to live upstairs has a dry process machine that seems great, my typeface nice and sss Wow! Do composers have to pay a lot for part writing nowadays? Theres that portable,dry process, ANKENCOUTUA, but foolish fot me to have (yes, 300.00) as my uncle has a wet machine at his insurance office. Well,I meant to try the how of stencil etc. I doubt anytng will materialize, my eyes just get buggier, as mother turns a cold ear to everything and father needs to be programmed repreatedly and neatly completely, but maybe a time will come when I’ll want to ask Callahan if its ok--either to copy his or not--as I’m asking you now. 23 months ago I sent my typescript to Sanesi at Cid’s sug.. i send him th bk as well as mss. I wrote Denise asking if she still has a typescript,in Oc­ to­ ber. If not,between ere and Mainxxe another xomplete TS cd probably be made up. Here is doodlin agn as a cousin of mine (whose 11-­ 12 yr-­ old boy i was obliged, sort of, to give a copy ) works at Raytheon, and photost run off from the bk wd i take it be like ts,to run thru agn, if any more effort initially anyhow I suppose Callahan isstill in Detroit but don recall the address anyway -­it might be somewher around here Expansion, ugh! Too much. i need Jacqueline’s staff. No acceleration left. Doze in reading the difficult or whate’er But take up soe by Kulchur

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12,    “Rights”  got down some notes on it, xx now on the essay in re A by Kelly after pause to take in ll, etc., etc . Andhave some thread to The Age of Anallysis, yet, the Mentor 20th-­ cent philosophy museum lecture.. Whitehead (an excerpt passage frm Modes of Thought) seems to have molecules rather than Lucretius night fog, hegel’s linear, Vico etc’s circular, Dante’s corkscrews ... But it looks like peyote may not stand up to John Dewey. It’s a problem. But, despite time and the drops in the bucket, I’d like to help the water supply, planned parenthood, clean air, etc. W.H.O. rather thn I F I F Goodies on tv though, for me, like Saki H H Munro stories don from bbc tapes last few weeks the fantastic and what else, and so on .. O, as to copying On E yes, I wdnt sue anyone. I’d bn thinking ofCharles Ives, in fact, I remember; while then yr forms came .. In a way a waste of 2 copies. (In Oc­ to­ ber a cousin with Intelligence-though his term of enlistmnt ment nearly over-notified me that if i wante wanted any books out of Library of Congress they can be requisitoned ! But to hell with that. Only I did suggest he requisition On My Eyes, it wdnt be a definite evil... also i told him of f-­ stat, copying. I asked Rago not to pay me and he complied. Too many trapdoors to the nursery room here, too much ice ... But then i learned or was reminded, when my brother came from fricso for a few days, he sd there’d bn an account in my name in sf for some ber while .. So when Allen’s check came in Novem­

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we sent it to sf and my brother has put it in a trust accnt, with notation of its source (--why?) I guess the trust accnt might mean it cant be used to finance, say, movies. .. I havent asked yet. I dont know what to do with money-- Buridan’s ass now all right. (I think i told allen last year he might send my royalty to you or pocket it himself.).. A jaunt to ferrini s proposed by mother brought me in handshake with a psychiatrist, photographer, poet, who has the bk, etc, and offered me a mag etc, and anyway for the umpth time i was going to tell of the line I left out et al, so on the way home I was seized with this idea to use this squared, nearly sq., paper the cleaning woman brought here maybe 4 yrs ago. A use for it. Errata lists. 4 col.s of 5 sq.s but i muffed 1st coloumn,in quadrupliclate, but i made out the others pretty good, 15 errata lists, like the enclosed. I forget some wher I’ve already sent them. No more thn ½, i guess, dispensed with. Well,500lists wd be 33 f-­ stats -­ $1.70. 4¢ cost a sht,20¢ in store F-­ stat make linotype of typewriter. I’d really go crazy if i had one. Oswald was psycho-­ after all but goodbye James liti­ cal Dean. And Ruby, “a man of no special po­ opinion |sic|, admired Ike and Kennedy both ..”* The crowd cheered Oswald’s dth.on hearing the news as th rotunda opened [The following appears in the left margin, alongside the last four lines of the preceding paragraph: *tv intrvw w a frnd of Ru] Saturday to the pub­ lic |over their lil ol transistors| --the tv sd | I tht maybe someone wd go through Nevada Arizona and kill that Swede down there

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playing Christ. If Minister X got shot I wonder wd he say, Ah Allah. Well, he crazy too, I largely think, since we all have cause. Regards anyway and i hope you have luck and all. Sun’s coming though window right --some way to keep yr lashes down all right. (Desk near the window now, bed head vs.bathroom wall ) I was looking over the mss of that sequence I had in Sparrow #4 -­ largely   this ms ofsequence all as i proposed, sans “Cripples” at end, for one thing.(Forget if you saw S#4 copy i sent got lost at P  O or something, i sent it to the wrong town ? ) Can be a good memento still, after all. Love Larry I’m appreciating Bob Brown’s panels 

!*

tem­ ber Social worker, occ.therapist ... In Sep­ surgeon started tninking of employability for me, mentioned demand for braille typist, ma says not a word; have yet to have the training period back on the ward. Looks impossible to me anyhow. L’hopital est pour moi la liberte, dans un sens, but i cdnt travel to a congenial place to work in, as I’ve intermi ttently had hallucinations, of, somehow. .. ... ... [The remainder appears in the left margin, perpendicular to the first two paragraphs of this page and corresponding to the asterix there.] *Hey!--ijut down “Up and Ahead” abt 5 wks before looking at 1450-­ 195 agn on seeing Lowenfels on Brown un Kulchut 11. If memory is right my style i thogt on a string w.yrs: now too much Brown, yet none trop a d’eec????

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(79) Two-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper with significant typed marginalia on the sec­ond page and internal typed emendations through­out Apr 26 64 Dear Col., suh .. Well, too bad, in indeterminate degree, but for more or less cause I fade away, off, or out, I aint got much stir, dont know what to think, dont know how much I’ve reread what you sent ,... a and emotions have become oddities in fact. My father is still a few steps ahead of me and it was all you cd do to get in t play checkers, let alone J a r g o n  But encl|osed find $10.00. And wd you like any rare books back? Never responded to dealers’ ads, like Roman Books, just seems like giving thm a chance to turn some fancy profit ; the dgh I’d get frm them wd be nothing to me, but wd.to you, or the stock wd. And mother especialy perhaps (she is 1 step ahead of me) is glad when I see my way to lightening a shelf. I avoid like anything putting any paper down cellar or throwing it out, but have always bn rather happy to loan it or give it away, myself. And father feels all right abt playing post-­ office. We’re all quare fellows here. (I’m curious abt Zukofsky’s Test of Poetry anyway, and maybe cd get a gander at that sometime. You list no price for it as yet anyhow, so ... ) [The text set off with vertical bars appears as a six-­line block within the above paragraph, inserted below the line containing the words “enclosed find $10.00” and to the right of the lines corresponding to the sentence beginning with the words “Never responded.”] |P o e t ry pd.after all, maybe bcz of the million $ bequeathed to Ameri­ can P.Society. And in ORIGIN 13 Corman--who writes #14 will be the

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last, by the way--states he wants to create more quiet spots than hes already done ... whereas only continual supply I really see any need of is food. I always was thick| You xx I dig most of what you sent. “Distances to the Friend,” hit home, 6 yrs, after i first sn it, or is it more. Et al ! A few wks ago. The elegies, among the stuff I hadnt seen before. But all that s t i c k s nowadays is the singing commercials, or did till a few months ago when that toothache abated.(they continue of course, and shd i get on my hrse I tun smack into it) Theres me, anyway on lifting a finger, so many wheels I feel like x xx an eel on a horrible keel your guts going around inside |you like a balooba tuba find the note that tickles your mouth any shape and size Literacy doesn’t seem worth it eeenie meenie meinie shmo     man pinch a neighbor by the ... catch a neighbor by the pan ... room is very thick my nursery-­ In trying to pace myself i become illiterater and attempt anything like newsweek. Once I turned page and there on page 60 on April 13 was Elrey Jones in a photo looking like hin and his work?room got hung over all night. Also quite some complimentary write-­ up -­ cum interview in which he speaks kindlier of James Baldwin than he

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does in Kulchur 12. (where he seemed to advance the theory of either saint or crybaby, which latter is Baldwin, and some Af­ ri­ can writer, Solomon, is too). The enclosed “United we sit ... ” is an attempt to dig Kulchur 12, which Lita Hornick considered ptinting, but decided not to open the subject again. Dont bother with it if youre eye-­ glasses go bad. Copy of a couple more pages ad ressed personally to L H in which In wonderd abt Jones on Baldwin and tried responding to other things in the mag, is even fainter than this and I shd put it down cellar, only its still in my room where also i have the origi­ nal which she returned. Che faro? The 3 photostat things are abt the only hot things I’ve done since 62. Apr 27  Monday Eenie meenie mien mother called up library for me and they sd theyd try to get Buckminster Fuller for me, but cant. Gloria a machina he seems to chant, recitatif, orotundio,--Ken Irby’s throwing Charles Olson at Fuller,xxx in Kulcher 13 seems bull’s-­ eye--and yet it’s a mystery to me, what there might be to it, in vw of your publication of it. Likewise it makes me curious, cant be much up, less so, abt the Charles Eliot Norton set-­ et al. It looks like another session with the emperor’s new clothes, sure! And in variation I wonder how close you can get to Henry Luce ; I remember this patriotic pedestrian cut-­ up prose type poem by Davenport in big print in an issue of Life maybe 25 yrs ago, might have bn just when Davenport was working for Willkie in 1940. My brother, settled in with a law firm in S Frisco, writes hes bn picketng an auto agency there, for some reason(s) which he neglects to state. He

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belongs to the Sierra Club out and a few days ago senthere the monthly ­ 0 .. 0 ... 66666666 -­ December 63 issue--in which theres an essay against further population (and industrial, economic) growth by a Lecturer in Geography, U.Cal., Berke­ ley, “.. recently a research chemist for Shell Development Corporation” --he for one seems to say more memorable things than Fuller does. Though maybe, for that matter, than Peyton Houston, who appears another Einstein, say, for my wits, “out of my star.” Having read #100 last night I definitely venture to suspect him of wordiness, but every page is a good deal more’n I can chew, if I sometimes get so I can bite such thick sandwwiches. Shall I compare ... ?  The many wonders dissolve to the horizon XA chance I really dug #33, “The Hunt of Holiness ” --which maybe Dylan wd have the spirit to emulate in a few more yrs   Another glimpse I’m capable is another similarity, where he makes faces like Wallace Stevens, most striking likeness peraps is #23. Staggering otherwise ... and I’m ready for the one millionth desert island.  |I wonder how Arthur McFarland, of Friendship, Maine, wd go in this, and one thing I cd send it to him sometime, with the suggestion, if you like, that he mail it to Highlands, at leas t in a few yrs.) The more trees the more fooggy, misty I get, unfortunately, as heretofore noticed. 6 wks after I got back from the head extraction and therapy ward, in De­ cem­ ber 62 I hauled of and sent an ms of sorts -- though “better,” sort of, I imagined, than Gregory Corso (while I havent seen Happy Birthday of Death) -- to Laughlin, acknowledging that I wasnt too satisfied but was sending it tentatively anyway and before more

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confusion set in. xx xx I dont know how to act of course or what. He returned the ms , surmising such weaknesses as it hadImust be aware of (I had worried aloud about the sagging repetiousness i kept discovering however I shuffled), and say maybe i cd be worked into the Annual some time, though unfortunately it was full up this yr .. Well, I havent the spirit to follow things up, if I did know how. All the Eigners around here are boors, for 1 thing ...   In writing to Laughlin in quest of Denise’s address, in Sep­ tem­ ber 63, I did enclose a piece reminding meself of WCW,-kind of a flaw fo -- for the heck of it. He gave me the address and liked the poem. In February, besides returning th bk ms, he sent me Jacob’s Ladder, which Denise had already sent me a copy of abt 9 mnths before .... Anyway, I got to wondering abt Ronald Caplan’s laundry, and in reply he says he’s undertaking too much, etc., wil have to return to thr auctors many mss hes take, but wd still like to do not more’n 100 poems for me, short pieces. ... He has enough to pick from there, and except 1 or 2 I’ve managed to show im none of what I showed Laughlin ... Odd actions. For L I put what Ferlenghetti had decided to forego in Oct. on top of what Wesleyan U turned dwn in June ... DUENDE dropped on me and by way of response showes a “play” to Good-­ Love Larry 1st 4-­ star chaplain, you’d hve bn, with a mo-­ icum iety of luck! [The remainder is written in the left and top margins of the letter, arranged perpendicular to the body text in three separate groups of lines moving in

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sequence from bottom to top and ending with several short lines extending into the top margin.] ell, which he likes and will put out. I cant feel special now at all and dont want any priority. Still ok if people want material i guess...Caplan thinks he can manage 100 or 125 copies.  Ok. Up to him. I sd not to labor, better he kp alive. It can still die... I’ve had no requests this yr. And I feel too much like a curator ..

(80) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Nov.3 64 Dear Jonathin No, nothing sent you frm Swampscott that i can recall, and am conscious of not writing you since you sent that copyrt paper on from Doubleday. I’m still on wheels too, karma, etc, but every 3rd tht is 1 of retiremnt after all, and as Olson sd to me up in Glstr end of Aout, with Kelly, Ferrini et al present, we’re the luxurious ones, idle; while thngs still cry out for response, and I’m still here. W.my folks I’m still in nursey-­ 10th grade tho,and hve to run whenevr, and am in truth babe-­ in-­ wds,thicker & thicker. St. Louis,whre frere le biochemist now is,last wk was nice, and, s-­ in-­ law free-­ wheeling w.phone, DonFinkel came over, and a John Knoepfle,whos in with bly.(I’m prexy,& a little boyx to ) And, bad luck, my butt is a messagn aftr 3rd,last-­ chnce operation and 2 yrs’ gd hlth. Anywy wellfed in re reading & writing, sure, on wch i ought to slow dwn, and publication, Caplan did some prose,by ee wy,so bk was too mch, hope it didnt tak 10 yrs outa

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him .. Duende (my “play” et al) came yesterday. F Dwsons Thread sent me by Andrew Crozier its publisher, now at Buffalo. Collage writing, as frm a plane? (My 1st planeride,to S Louis) Sending it bck--as a librarian,I go crazy ... ... all rhgt Larry Maybe someday will get fstats of OME?...made availabl at University reprints in Ann Arbor ...

(81) Two-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper folded landscape to make four 5.5″ × 8.5″ columns. The letter begins in the right column and moves to the left. The reverse contains in the right column some apparently autonomous letter text, and in the left column (perpendicular to all other letter text) what appears to a be a fragment continuing the poem begun in the letter text. Rules midletter indicate, respectively, fold, page turn, and fold. Occasional handwritten emendations appear through­out. See appendix A for a photograph of this letter. Sundy 20 Dec 64 Dear Jonathan Thanks definite considerably for keeping up with me (sans more and more). Bn offeringing back issues to people lately (so, a borrowing -- I just feel too much like a curator on the loose), but think of sending the Anderson to my brother in St.Louis, who has a copy of Winesberg (such bases for action has my indiscriminate hd, wch spins!   Huff-­ puff! I have in mind to write brother in S Frisco to send you the loot, whilebut too much of anything is terrible, and i dont know what you may slay me with next Wow! Since this

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idea hit me I bn trying to wait till after his wedding, to a girl frm Seattle, the day following xmas... You see I’m a nervous xaracter. Winesberg, when i read it, in my usual plodding way, with nose stuck in the surface, seemed so gauche in sryle, after the natural ease of such as WCW, DHL, Joyce. The Chants hit the spot--i liked them. E Sure something altogethr different from Sandburg, at least judging by whats in Untermeyer, wch is all I’ve rd of S (and pages from The People, Yes in another bk that was here). Or perhaps not altogether out of S’s world. I get caterpilar feet all th time. “Cheerfulness, is a misleasing emotion,” Ed Dorn says, at one point in “The Land Below” EcEman’s poem seems maundering, to me. Following lines eke from 1 on those photos (incidently its curious how 12x20 can come out 7½x20 in reproduction): White church walls out of the sky steeple soft tree to winter furrows spread off earth bows many near colors Books being read here day-­ to-­ day on the radio (Loweell Institute)--just finished friday a new bk abt pilgrims’ 1st yr in USA, One Small Candle, by Thomas Fleming (WW Norton) (The real establishment but in the kitchen et al, the nightmare jukebox --I’m dragging my feet now)

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Sd bk, and The SeaAround Us, sent me to Thoreau agn, Cape Cod, and now A Wk on Conc. & Merr : foxes stepping about the tent g-­bird to make music oaround [The following appears in the right margin, alongside the previous two lines: | mountain fiddling tape on radio a while back |] sound beyond his leaves other than the rain darkness we might imagine coming down firefighter’s grim object a bulkhead  past the horizon as of tinkling music the dogs  the cocks the fishes cries in the water sealed off   from us let eyes be no torrent slight the tilt of this river reflecting also what is rooted  to its banks and opens quickly o enough to the sun but with no increasing weight [The following appears in the left margin, perpendicular to the previous stanza: | vide intra |] [The following appears alongside the line “with no increasing weight”: | Dec 20 64 |]

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a dreaming sparrow makes song a way no fire bright from the moon [Alongside the previous two lines of verse, the next paragraph, plus the valediction, begins in the left margin and then wraps beneath the conclusion of the poem to extend across the fold and the full width of the page.] Ronald Johnson I saw in Coyote Journal -­something clean there? Everything seems enough, and mor, and it seems i used to know how to take things easy ... Ah!   Best wishes Larry

beat against the night



quiet nevertheless as the sea-­ wall “these simple sounds relate us to the stars”



no other fit medium the remoteness a reflecting



music is half a drum



the poem is a pool

[The following appears alongside the line “the remoteness a reflecting”: |Dec 10 64 forced on|] M Jessie McGuffie’s (Mrs Richard Sheeler’s) NYC address (... E.5th Str.?) missing here, maybe thrown out, and I’ve forgotten it, after giving it to a cousin of mine, and before, to Rbt Kelly, when we met in Gloucester, out of my head. Wd you have it? I cd write Kelly of course. No hurry.

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Caplan got through his Zukofsky project but collapsed under the weight of the others. I sugge ted he shdnt kill himself and am glad hes still alive. Me too. But on a trip to St Louis wk before Halloween, talking with my brother he brought up the idea of University Reprints, at Ann Arbor, and he’s inquir ed for me there. May not be worth it? No requests since McGuffie’s and Goodell’s. I’ve still got all them announcement cards! Too many mss now for me to make out. No more message to the world. Cdnt compile an honestly, validly, coherent bk. Fragmented myself. In ’62, i did put something together, which i submitred to Laughlin, but it was noticeably saggy, to me .. Writing like today’s, is still ok  till stowed -- L E My 1st plane-­ rides in Oc­ to­ ber. But how long till the earth gives out? C’est un question? Velliety, to do something

(82) Typewritten (front only) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner. This document is housed at the Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. Jan 2, 1965

Dear Larry,

Another new year and on one plods. I’m in Godhepusmississippi, en route to the West Coast very slowly and indirectly... Very glad the Chants meant something to you. Easy enough to put them down as simply sub-­ Walt, but I find them moving...Re/ Sinsabaugh the maximum height possible is 12 inches; however, he seldom ever uses it. One of the ones we printed used less

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than 2 inches of height. Full width is always used... Maybe I mentioned I was in St. Louis too, in No­ vem­ ber. Spent an evening chez Finkel... Visited Caplan in Pittsburgh. He, for some reason, wants to be my amanuensis, and is coming out to Carmel for a few months this spring. Plenty for him to do, but no money to pay him to do it... Afraid I can’t help you with Jessie McG’s address. I haven’t heard from her since Edinburgh, 1963... Re/ Caplan again, maybe I can get him suffifiently organized and programmed, like they say, to effect some L. Eigner book. Such isn’t impossible, if one concentrates. Keep in touch, c/o Doner, Box 98, Route 1, Carmel, Calif. Onword? Onword! [signed] Jonathan

(83) Two-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper 2 22 65 Monday Dear Jonathn, Havent written till now, for all of 7 wks, gad, partially attempt at pacing, as usual a molehill frm mountain, to tak thngs easy (every 3rd tht), and specifically an effort to coordinate some, to let thngs ride till i shd hear from friend Arthur McFarland, of Friendship, Maine (his full address) abt whether he cn actually get f’stats of my mss he has, abt all of my verse through 63, some of them marked “only copy”, he noted in Sep­ tem­ ber, and thus had this idea, he being scared of this exclusiveness, and a mech.drawing duplicator being accessible there-whereat i wrote too many mss here now but if fstats feasible there maybe he cd sell them or the origi­ nals to Jim Lowell, who wanted t’buy mss

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frm GRANTA, that cambridge u.mag.last yr (you in it?--i ferget), and anyway mother whn i told her of the Friendship fstat idea sd we cd pay for the fstats (convenient if she hasnt forgot--i wdnt care t ask er--or is still willing   , wch is rather likely) In De­ cem­ ber i mentioned the fstat scheme to Jon.Greene--after doing likewise to brothers, both i n St.L ouis and SF, their places possible depositories,but then,they have much stuff of thr own after all, or in St Louis it lookd like that --and Greene offered further ideas, that i might get in tch w Brown U.as well as Lowell as a depository (tho L wd likely wdnnt wanna spare shelf space for thngs not fer sale), or himself among others might take mss and try to edit (he suggested 2 other friends of ours, he of Japan then saying he has too many of his own mss--2000 was it?--and ob-­ srving i shdnt mention his nome in trying Denise, if i shd, it will be detrimental no reply whn i asked her somethng 18 mnths ago anyway) So last mnth i sent Greene 18 or so mss, fot the heck, since i cant hibernate completely, need discharge in some way, and to cool heels some more (I’v bn rather deliberately dragging my ft, last couple yrs, among other reasons on accntof the eigners of Massachusetts -­i asked Rago not to pay me, and to disqualify me for prizes,eg) And many cooks, for my capacity, spoiling for broth--magazines if nothing else . All these good people out on limbs are eating my nerves, ability to respond comes to attrition.   Because of my cal mind. lack of a criti­ It seems like either procrastination or the half-­ cocked anyway. (And my father, who has always bn like a poor ol rusty brokn dwn computer, for

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every flip of a paper eg. i cant program him fast enough--I’m slow too. While from mother i have to play hookey, as she hasme per-­ manently everywhre frm kindergarten to bar mitzvah; and since Viet Nam storm she’s fiscovered e ven more talk shows on radio)   Enough for 3 big bks here abt, too, and if i start thinking of 3 different piles to 3 different places i go foul in 2 minutes. A multiplicity of delayed and complex reactions. And what with the mags, and me being a plodding, non-­ retentative reaser, and succumbing more and more to tv and radio (which have panoramic advantages at that), such a coherent thingas a bk is getting to be the antipodes, and pretty much contrary to my natur. (one radio program, since ’58, which i ve followed regularly the past 2-­ 3 yrs, over Lowell Institute station, has a bk rd frm day to day). I still get occasional yen to pass a paper around, as with th enclosed “Frederick Douglass” and i likewise enjoy typing some whiles, as rght now. Of course any publication seem to bring a tangle with it, like all multiple choices that lead to multiple choices -­i have the mags especially in mind -­and money is getti very frozed by now, in my head. A dim possibility i might someday keep enough of some kind of budget in mind to be able .

to act a little with a reveokable trust brother in s.f.has for me there, but, he’s not a corporation, an impersonal bank, and i expect my pockets will never be at ease. Spending is a habit, and 2nd thts are killing. Possibility, of course, of somehow getting together, were it not for one-­ way communication, also, and distractions. At any rate, too many shoestrings for the present. And i really get veillity, when

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i consider what is art without a substantial bearing on life and keeping its stream clear. End of 62 i put some 30 Ferlenghetti forewent a few months before at the end of 80 Wesleyan U turned down that Spring and mailed it to Laughlin, xxxxxxx thogh i had misgivings which i acknowled. The arrangemnt, and selection, no doubt, seemed to sag, because of repetitions, anyway, unplanned ones ... the avoidance of which had bn abt the only resource of my mind -i had built on my eyes from bates road, and didression from, and reinforcemnts of it. Well, I’ve kept that ms intact, but the first part, the 80 or so shown Wesleyan, has many tie-­ ins, with material Duncan copied off page-­ to-­ page, surprisingly, when i sent him mss during ’60. I held back on many others of these, in­ clud­ ing civil war poems (in early 60, i guess it was, i read 2 cw bks). He may still have them, but since his copies he made out some poems running page to page, beginning on one and ending on the next, they are really unfeasible for shifting a round and any editor work. Entirely? I guess. One reason i have to let things slide -­everythng is a reason.if you know how. Wd you have occasion to contact Greene? How wild can I get? His address is Barrytown, N.Y., 12507. [The following appears in the left margin: amng wht i sent Greene: “foxes step” and “grt multiple” that appeared in MOTHER (had 4 copies i guess] But, I’m afraid i’m just rattling again today. Because a nyway, i also enclose 1 of 3 copies out thing, possible series here of this fold-­ that i put together in xxxx nov.63. If you’d like to try yr presses on it, this is free. !!

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Have sent copies of Frederick Douglass to Kelly, for one,--though, so far, by th way, he hasnt let go of ... returned, as mch as 1 ms deliv ered him on bhalf of Trobar or (1964) Doubleday. Great maw, i guess   .. Wwll, god bless all and heres to all, and you Larry I posed McFa5rland problem of improving the 1962 ms maybe 20 19 months ago, gave im table of contents and all. He’s had a grt deal of sickness last over th yrs though, latterly caught btwn alcoholism and ulcers, he says. I just hope hes still there. Violinist, violin-­ maker, philosophy-­ reader ... boatwright (non-­ union shop, pretty low wages) Denise got to Frindship partly through me, was it? Thingsv on tv like M Sargent conducting Sibelius & just before his remarks on Si squaring amazngly with wcw’s “Tapiola” [The following appears in the left margin, alongside the preceding paragraph: Poetry progrm i supplied stf fer, and a reading at “Cmbridge workshop” ...]

(84) One-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper 1/31/67 Dear Jonathan , Hope this reaches you. Home fires still burning heah, balefully and otherwise (maison des vieux ..) Even as I used to eat the air--on this ground, I get bookwormy. But thngs still happen. Like, Fulcrum coming out this spring with 138-­ piece

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book of mine--Montgomery told me, back in autumn, 65, you and he had some conversation. And I write you right now in re an idea to reprint On My Eyes at COYOTE books BOOKS Letter that came yesterday, acknowledging receipt of next-­ to-­ last copy here sent 2 wks ago, asks: “ ... how to go about it? With Jonathan’s blessings after we suggest how we shld. Are his blessings needed. I mean he owns the print? & producing the book exact? XX Wld need either origi­ nal photos or their plates which must be somewhere. My feeling is perfect repro (add one little Coyote paw 7 “2nd ed by Coyote plus date” How long you figger it’s been out of print. Will save rest of page till I talk with Jimmy. What a pisselegant book! ” This from Bill Brown, managing ed of COYOTE’s JOURNAL. Other editors James Koller (note mailed before seeing him, wasnt able to for a few days as Jim K sick in bed) and Edw. van Aelstyn. I wrote K 15 days ago (K said they’d do it by offset if possible), how you said it wd be ok with Callahan ... at the time of th proposed reprint by Ron Caplan. Cd you write direct to Bill Brown (Box 58, Bolinas, California) abt the fotos et al? Without fotos wd be ok with me, though of course I sure do like the JARGON edition myself. (Cant take it with me, or much of “it”. Looks like an instution for me in a while, with visits, say, to brother(s)   ...  Mss of most of my stuff by the way are now at University of Kansas Library, Lawrence, Kansas 66045 / Terrence Williams, Special Collections. Who also publishes: broadsides, et al.--Creeley, Kelly, Irby, Ginsberg, and soon Ei .. Busy as anyone,

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looks like, being also head of reference dep’t of this library with, il dit, 1,500,000 volumes   ) Bill Brown published a whopping novel which he sent me, The Way to The Uncle Sam Hotel. Seen it? Kind of thng I’d like to pass on to everybody. Can’t. A lot of mosaic and collage poetry abt now, as is all poesy more or less. Or prose, yeh, histoire. Pastiche world. But Burroughs, H Norse, Koller, Duncan, Ginsberg ... Whitman. (Now I’m trying a little this biography of Willard Gibbs, by, you know, Muriel Rukeyser.) And yesterday I looked again at EMPIRE FINALS AT VERONA and saw it more, yeh. (A Carl Weissner who edits a mag KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN -­Ch.Pardker bird word he tells me, rather’n Dutch -­out of Heidelberg , a friendly acquaintance now of Burroughs, besides Norse ...) Ok. As many regards as I can manage yous Larry I’ll write Brown myself, abt yr being a friendly guy

(85a) One-­page letter from Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. This document is housed at the Dodd ­Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. See letter 10 for additional information on Williams’s letters. Roswell, New Mexico March 16, 1967 Dear Larry,

Enclosed is my letter of yesterday to Bill Brown, which I hope is a decent clarification of my

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present feeling about On My Eyes. Good, indeed, that Fulcrum is coming through with a large collection. Stuart seems to persevere, which is important.

I, and Ronald Johnson, read of late in Lawrence. Denise also there, and Dave Ignatow. I’d met Terry Wms before, but hadn’t known of your holdings there until now. Met your cousin there as well... More recently in Austin, Texas, where a curious assemblage is now on the scene: Nathalie Sauraute, Roger Shattuck, Christopher Middleton, Basil Bunting (this week only). Strange, in all that sand and cedar and lbj.

I’m mailing you a little selected poems, out of Milano, so you can read something besides Empire Finals. Please do. Keep in touch. I travel so endlessly I’ve lapsed badly in my letterwriting. But. I’m still here, etc. Wherever that is. Onword! All my best, [signed] Jonathan

(85b) Enclosed letter from Jonathan Williams to Bill Brown (see letter 85a) typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper Roswell, New Mexico March 15, 1967 Dear Bill Brown,

I’ve been carrying a letter from Larry Eigner around with me through vari­ ous blizzards, across midwest­ ern rivers, and in the midst of too many gnat-­ filled english departments-- 6300 miles of same for the past 10 weeks. So, I should have written sooner but couldn’t. Thank god there is a brief interval here in Roswell. I don’t have to

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say anything to anybody until next Monday night in Tuscon.

Larry quotes a note from you expressing a desire in re-­doing On My Eyes. I don’t really own anything to do with it. The type-­ metal is long melted, the plates no longer exist either. Now that Larry tells me Fulcrum is coming out with a big collection of his in England, it does seem correct to re-­ publish the poems of On My Eyes. You are welcome to offset the texts, of course. But, I do not want the book imitated or whatever the word is. For one thing, Callahan is almost too prominent nowadays. Anyone who looks at photography at all is likely to have seen all those images in a variety of places by now. Hallmark has even done a 1967 calendar using some of them. So, that part gets a little flat. LeRoi Jones once reprinted Jargon’s Joel Oppenheimer book, The Dutiful, without permission or asking anything. It came out looking very tired and very stupid. I would suggest you change the format somewhat and in all ways indicate that this a new book based on a previous collection. No Callahan. There are other photographers whose work complements Larry’s. I’d be glad to suggest one or two, if you like: Ron Nameth and Ralph Eugene Meatyard come to mind quickly. But, you or Jim or Ed probably have ideas of your own along these lines. I’d like to see something fresh, not just a copy of something I thought of long minded, ago. I hope that doesn’t sound bloody-­ or contentious or whatever. It doesn’t mean to sound that way. Larry mentions a novel of yours. I’d like to see it, as well as other things from Coyote. The last thing I got was a yellow opus of Phil Whalen’s, when I was in England. My vagueness

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is in direct proportion to the number of miles walked and driven lately. Enclose a bill for the books and please mail a package to me c/o the Aspen Institute, P.O. Box 219, Aspen, Colorado 81611. I am there for about 18 months, starting in April. Best address for me immediately is c/o Frederick Sommer, Box 262, Prescott, Arizona. There March 22-­ 31. Keep in touch. Best regards, and to Jim and [    ]. Yours, [signed] Jonathan

(86) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Mnday mr 20 67 Dear Jonathan, Dont know how to develop preferences--all has bn windfall it seems, for 1 thng--and I gave COYOTE my bk abt Feb.15th; Koller sd he’d write you if I agreed. Naught from them since. (Plenty other stuff--huff/puff.) Yr idea of not just reproducing th JARGON production seems th thing alright.   And in 1 sense what COYOTE wants to do wont match it; but in others, yes, or i cdnt tell. The price less. They want cover photo, but no photos otherwise. 5½x8 format, so theyd need to change amnt of indent on abt 6 poems ... ... I imagine use of c cover photo up to you ... 1500 copies sounds good to me, et al of course. Always a whrl here. Dont see how you travel and do other thngs too. I had some fghtin ability once but of course its largely bn spent in th nursery rm,you know. All bks look more or less tired and wormy to me, e.g., no dbt at least partly bcz it’s a tv menage--tv provides a little

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grnd for play here. Montgomery in NYC now and will come to help w.th prf Wow! ... Phoned him ystrday! Olson in Lon­ don. And I see Duncan will be in Buffalo .. T Wms gives evidence of doing all too. It’s a big hot world. Keep goin. Unburnt. ... Regards Larry Hope you enjoy Colorado--and th 18 mnths in 1 place...

(87) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card Sat.Apr 8 67 Dear Jon .., What i cdnt re-­ read, evry day! But also, ye old bird try to get th bkwrms outa his hair, in mdvlle, “north­ ern & ½ -­ savage cntree”, and stepping out bck dr afrsh (shutting wnders on visitrs, ugh) to lrn abt earth ends up in a blue smog (eg,rght now frm library an 800 pp.ec. txtbk--how/fast can/.th hd spin/bfr it/blcks out). Wht you/cant take/ with you th/thng i see and gits away. Anyway, th bloody valentine et al ibid. is abt th best fer these days. (And, wow, until now, n.e. puritan that i am, i tht “A little t ..” was worrying abt overdoing s!) Make/ bright// air in/the/ lines” did i write you? Doesnt really sm to rise frm my sh..ts as of old. But TOAD wanted to do smethng. So! Cover,

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wch Koller wrote last wk he didnt like, awash with a sleazy enogh sunlght, butte scene i gss. But my upbringing has tk effct bfr this. K sd he got yr letter and thngs are ok Looks lik OME be out fall 67. Aha! (Sans Callahan.) Big surprise! Montgokery in nyc mr 19,chez Rothenbrg, for 1 moon stateside. Phoned him th 20th. His lttre of 13th sd he want to come here to hlp prfrd c.Apr 1. No M! No prfs! Yet! 4 pmhoy. But I was goin to do em myslf. Have got POETRY prfs in typwrter. ... Thanks and rgrds! Larry Eigner

(88) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card. The front of this card consists of Eigner’s message to Williams and a poem; these texts are perpendicular to each other. Because the message text flows around the margins of the verse, the verse appears to have been typed first and the message after. Dec.31 67 Sunday HAROLD HOLT went down under what his age was

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S. Thomas More said Tarry while I put aside my bbeard it has not ccommitted treason canonized ca 1935 up at the City Gates the dreamer’s face invisible -­  -­  -­  -­ the movie turned walls sudden blackness some future whose lives thick surface station park runway [The text between here and the rule below appears perpendicular to the above text (between here and the dateline), flowing into and wrapping around its left, bottom, and right margins.] Dear Jonathan, Well, thanks for th’Epiphytes all right, and off sure turns happy new yr and all. While fall-­ out best for me here -­cant go thro eyes of too many needles. Rube G kps on daily here. Anyhow, i’m resolve to send you a bklet John Martin in L.A. solicited,edited and is pblishing. 1 of 10 copies whn tey come (9pp - $6,y padre balks

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variously.Tried to git COYOTE offer of aid-havent hrd since Kllr sd,in Jne, enexpectdly in red as McC sold BEARD to Grove--but br whn he lrned of reduced format went cold!) Adjustmnt of eyes! Few epi.. hit me but th Ruggles did just now; and I came on Claudel’s “Magnificat” last night. But there was th Ives before, for one thng. By th way th 17th,a day or 2 bfr yrs came, there was Stokowski et al on tv doin I’s 4th S -­musical,field, encamped tones,twnship -­and 10 days hence and a wk later on radio here will be P.Zukofsky’s rcordings of th 4 Ives v.sonatas. But U.S. is burning. and rght after I’s nfw told how I lost trck of Ch.E.Hughes,Stockowski fumbled on “Rockefeller”. Then came on NETV a orrendous nonconfrontation btwn police and nrthern proles. rgrds

Larry

(89) One-­page letter typed on typing paper torn to a size of 5.5″ × 8.5″ Tue. Nov 26 68 Dear Jonathan, Finlay’s Calendar just came in! Oooh!  Merci ! Wow! I’ve thgt from time to time of sending you AIR THE TREES, especially during the last 6 wks,and other (?) Black Sparrow items before that maybe (I forget). But cdnt tur up yr exact Aspen address. Maybe 10 days ago came across a nwsletter or letter that made me think yr time in Colorado was up by then and so have been meaning

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to send you stuff at Highlands.  Are you still in Aspen, in NYC, in N.C., or where? I havent thgt of too many things at once for a while, and hope to keep cool in future. No use gettin up steam in low pressure area: when in rome ... But for one thng, not having hrd from Koller for 6 (?) months i dropped him a line in Sept. so he got to feeling bad over the delay and Oct 13 sent bck to me ON MY EYES in hope someone else cd reprint it sooner thn he, still in th red as he is, though decreasingly, and due to prior commitmnts uncertain whn he cd do it. Janu­ ary or so Montgy suddenly told me he wanted some day to put OME in 1 vol.with FRAGMENTS -­did he write of sending you a copy yeh,bien sur,je pense -­that he’d used exact same typeface on FR for this reason. I stuck by COYOTE, though. But, then, rcpt of OME abt Oct 20 was an occasion to write Montgy, whose last word was in May (!) (he was abt to do prose instanter!), telling him of crs! how OME was free. I’ve helped tie myself! But,eg., I did propose, a sf frere, assister de monnaie a Koller. Last yr. Cet an, j’ai mmanager a refuse des payes (inconnu a mes gens). Je sent mieux pour la. And hv more thn engh reading, typing, etc.. etc. Slow poke

Full hands

Rrgds

Larry

(90) Three-­page letter typed on typing paper folded to a size of 5.5″ × 8.5″. On folded leaf, the letter text begins recto, postscript on verso. On the reverse, the poems mentioned in the letter text are typed perpendicular to the letter text orientation; the strikethroughs are handwritten.

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Fri.nov 29 68 nws frm the sunny--and free at last--side of th tracks Dear Jonathan, Th morning Blue and Brown Poems came--Monday or, maybe, Tuesay--i wrote you c/o ny address: Wow, and where are you now, exactly, ny, n.c.or colorado. That evening spent some hrs going over calendar, got pretty absorbed and relaxed indeed, and put down the enclosed (1 for finlay?) and inside here (1 for you). This afternoon turned up yr letter to Bill Brown (3 15 67) and i hope this reaches you through address you gave him there. Anyway, word ce matin frm Ian Tyson of Circle Press in Lon­ don that hes doing as i suggested -­beau et bravo, j’en ai oublie -­and sending you pamphlets. For yr disposal. I’d given him th address frm yrs to BB,dbtfully, and yr Highlands address. Si vous ecrivez de ceci, perler en francais -­il est un secrete. The pamphlets must be the “brosside” of “Yeats/ Blake / D H L ” J’n’aime pas le prospect de beaucoup d’eux venant ici, ... Les gens ici, xxx de respecte pourx les haut prix, maintenant tiens mes livre ets en regard, mais les exemlpes pile up of crse, and this unexpected item wd be a single poem hanging arnd. ... Hayden Carruth suggested my seeing to it that the Harris Collection at Brown get a copy of every pblication of mine. Maybe a good idea to send th “Yeats ..” Though everything a tall order i cant tell abt, I’ve relayed 2 or 3 through Ferrini and Olson (in­ clud­ ing ANOTHER TIME) and the rest so far by another rte. (In th nr future the bklet FLAT AND ROUND frm Pierrepont Press -­300 copies of wch I’ll get 2,@ $10!) Xxx Aber genug. Biafra etc. mostly on my mind. There shd be a a weekly Fast, out of respect. To

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include Thnksgivin. And eg.it wd be a recurrent reminder how great food is/is/is. Combined with s’thng like March of Dimes to have th saving go to asdequately supplying, or even amply, for instance th estimated 10,000,000 underfed and malnrished in U.S. Best Larry   |turn way over| Forgot to say, whn writing you Monday, that in his latest letter (May 2), Stuart said he and Duncan were abt to start nrth to visit Finlay. okay. [On the reverse of the folded leaf, the following lines of poetry are typed in two parallel columns down the length of the full page, with the column break after “lifts of cloud.”] for J W I H F my god priceless no price man metre round moon clock sun skies light lifts of cloud

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a r e d -­b l a c k r i g h t  n o w  w d t y p e -­r i b b o n t y p e -­r i b b o n t y p e -­r i b b o n r i g h t  n o w  w d d r i v e m e n u t s n u t s Larry Eigner Nov.25 68

(91) One-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper Jan. 6  6X9 Dear Jonathan, This “stereo” poem due in large part to JARGON JARGON calendar ... and to an extent some reading of McLuhan. Think it may bring out a kind of border region or overlap, combination of , the simultaneus or compoundly viewed and the sequential. My 1st retype of this, not so well centered and with 4 rathe thn 5 blank lines between septets, and the 2nd set one more space to the right (i.e. more directly below the 1st), didn’t look so good. Mailing a copy to Stuart M .. , with mention Finlay migh enjoy seeing it. Don’t know where you are exactly -­maybe i shd write you c/o n y or highlands  (??) Seasonal cheers

happy new year

Larry

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(92) Two-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. Both leaves contain significant typing in unconventional arrangement: the first page briefly splits into columns, and the sec­ond page has extended marginal comments typed into the left margin of the letter text. Thursday Feb.18 71  1 0 : 3 0  p m Dear Jonathan, Slowly hopping, things keep me, and for the rest of it I’m locked behind a pair of tortoises by their apron-­ strings, grogged by lawrence welk and all the other peoples choices, Been meaning to get to a lot of the Dahlberg Fest.. and write you and Ch. Newman but ... And I see the mails are slow. And i want this to rch Lawrence before March. Yr letter of fb.7 in re Niedecker came today jus as I got the sec­ ond triplicate run of #473 started, having revised in doing the first what I’d penciled abt 1 a.m. a few minutes before! And it does seem to be the closest i cd come to an epitaph or Lorine N (I do like yrs and Tom Meyer’s) [The following appears in the left margin, typed alongside the preceding paragraph: ½ hr into this Friday] Something a good deal like this happened when John Taggart asked m e to do something if possible for MAPS #23, the issue for Coltrane. He wanted to send records , so i cd listen and then maybe write. A few days after i got his yr-­ old letter we gave ouer phonograph, a 25-­? -­ 78/45-­ spd thing nvr used since brothers left nest, to a cousin, he took it away, and the same afternoon i did a piece it appeared might fit with saxophone gaieties, which i sent him, with news of the departed r-­ player, and he used it along with one I had sent before abt the SPACE ODYSSEY movie. !

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[The following appears nested and autonomous within the right magin of the ongoing prose block of the letter text: (MAPS #4, for Charles, as edited by Butterick, hasnt come yet, while Ferrini wrote me it was due in Dec.. B fig­ ured to include the poem I sent you a copy of abt a yr ago – et al.] Eigner a Bibliography(Oyez) came 6 wks ago and when a letter from the girl who wanted to do it, Andrea Wyatt, got here in the last 3rd of the mn -­took 2-­ 3 wks enroute -­saying 100 out of 1100 copies were given away |?! -­and all 1100 are hrdbcks !?| and reminding me to say who I’d like it sent to, I sd fine of crs to send one to Highlands or to you and Newman through Newman, c/o Charles N! I sure gets mixed, doing thngs, while ma still proffers advice in the sagest and kindest of tones as to abything she gets an inkling of. (She’s 72 in 4 more mns and dad, physically as well as mentally pretty df for nobody knows how long, 78 in 5 mns,) I got surprising kicks from the biblio... while it looked like evidence of sush a scattered tangle of pieces till i faintly recalled all the other stuff in those mag..s besides mine, though I spotted 10 errors or so in a while, which i listed in replying to Andrea (the first ones turned up in re MOTHER,as i had thngs frm Ron Caplan in same mail and a phonecall frm him in Pittsburgh Jan 2 3 nghts before, e.g.guessed-­ at date of MOTHER 1959),errors wch I ws’ve caught I bet if in July i had read over her script she brght witsh her chez mon frere in frisco frm Berke­ ley (maybe cd’ve gone through it with no mess) or if I had stayed up later the sat and sunday nght sefore xmas 69 she was here wrking, as i was ready to do, and if she had announced all she was putting down.or something.

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Andrea had a tape-­ recorder with her and this gave mother the idea of sound letters so 7 or 8 wks ago a machine came, which I fiound i cd handle whn i got a tape of David Gitin’s 45-­ minute brdcast of my stuff over KPFA, though not nrly as govenable as typrewriter or piano directly and all, and its another potential for doing Time in over and over, yes (cant change tapes, nor sides, 1 is plenty for me). Mother has so far had no yen at all to record, and spends as much time as ever with radio and tv and newspaper of crs. A Bard College man who lived in Cleveland a while* in Marblehead now for 3 yrs and running THe parnassus book SHOP, a yr old, phoned me last of may 70 and June 6 there was a rding at the shop with Ferrini myself (a kid named Mailshaver reading me, i getting to kibbitz a little) and others and in No­ vem­ ber there was another such reading at the coffeehouse annex to a church. He’s brought people over here 2 or 3 times too (or theyve brght him, as he has no car). [The following appears in the left margin, typed alongside the preceding paragraphs: *where he knew Jim Lowell] Jim Lowell wrote me a crd the 4t asking if there was a copy he cd buy of the first bklet in the grade biblio.., doggerel put out by my 8th-­ class. (Only 1 copy, here, an heirloom.) I still imagine it was up to the bibliographer what to include??. This the first biblio.. vol. I ever saw. I remembered till 70 my output till 18,20,22 was all in metre and rhyme, but when the biblio.. arrived last mnth xx xx 3 or 4 of the first lines listed seemed unmetrical, and i was curious, like i even thght i cd maybe revise em; but going to answer Lowell tues wdns day i looked and found of crs everything 3rd-­ rate and difficult

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Longfellow, the lines that appeared otherwise being incomplete quotations (the latest boner thats turned up), dxue as is evident to big fancy illumined letters taking up so much page width so lines run over. I told Lowell of my prolonged larval state of sitting at the feet of rhymers as of everyone ele, after quoting a few of these lines (with words like “nigh”) Oh those big letters. Maybe only last night i noticed yr note that Loweel obtained the photo of J.. Orphan’s Home from the Cleveland His­ tori­ cal Society. A real sieve my mind is now. (And oh yes the fairly unctuous rabbi of my youth, who’s still with us, r emiritus, was trained in Cleveland. The Biblio.. spells Laurence Joel Eigner with a w, whereas the 8th-­ grade bklet spells it very orthographically with the u, so i mntioned it to Lowexll x and that this name was derived frm a yiddish one, Lazar Yudl. ) Cdnt recall Karlen’s rvw of R.. Of The Heart and cant now.! I rd a chpter on th j o asuylum in a thng you must’ve sent (frm Texas Quarterly,uh?), someway conscious memory insists th ch in ...Flesh. I’struck Ronald’s selection of D to Wms last nght (1955-­ 8) and out on th porch just now hv seen D’s cuts at Zukofsky and Olson (wow!) and read Karlen on the grt Crank. as well as Meyer’s and Davenport’sAwrds.(And Cid’s, e.g.) Indeed it’s my susceptibility to confusion and losing trach that inclined me to seek a seat upon giants. Learning and scarcely gettingther Many regards Larry [The following appears in the left margin, wrapping and beneath the ­­valediction: Ebt Vas Dias invited me to tch etc.at a “National Poetry Destival” at “a small college in Michigan” June/July. In Oc­ to­ ber.

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I was surprised, rather. Told him how thngs were,no dbt at too grt length. And that I felt too pessimistic abt the earth to take a plane to say much at all.(And th apron-­ string?) No wrd of reply. Which is ok.] [The remainder appears in the left margin, running alongside all but the top few lines of the letter text.] U of Kansas Libraries at Lawrence hv tss of mine so Andrea W went there Nov.69. 3 more frm that bk of ours anthologized - H Carruth picked em at the Harris Collection. Rght now I’ve some eyes for you (Mahler) -­relaxed anyway, Later: main thng,despite all sieves. And Niedeckr ibid. 1 enigma: magnetic lines of a A: G D’s remind me of Cummings, and Patchen ... spinning str far out turning

(93) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card dated by Eigner on the reverse. The card uncharacteristically begins with a poem at the top margin on the front with the date of the poem to the right. Mrch 22 71 the needle getting stuck   Radio    Mrch The waves                 18 miles are enormous -­   -­   -­   -­  -­  -­   -­  -­  -­  -­  -­ Dear Jonathan,

Oops just this minute realized this might imply anyone’s needle gets stuck more or less I’d been thinking this might do more for L N than the others(s) Forget if i sent one or 2.  ???? ... Oh well.

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POETRY AS SYSTEM by ANthony C Winkler is the txtbk THE SHOCK is in. Scott, Foresman. It came a mnth ago. It’s ok, if txtbooks are. Ah! Pretty dmn gd framewrk. And PATERSON Book I, Howl. Projective Verse” complete, MAX.. LETTERS 1 and 22 or 27 (eating cloth), concrete poetry, besides Wm Sh.. ... Snodgrass, Plath... 18-­ 19th a documentarist was here filming me as he wanted to (Leonard Henny, Films for Social Change, 5122 Waterman Blvd, St.Loui Mo.63108) You may imagine how my talk and recitation went and I still more, though th man sd it was good. Some gd footage friday i know, wthout sound. A group session was arranged in his bkshop by the marblehead man thrsday and we’re to get together with Ferrini later and mail a tape to st louis   rgrds Larry

(94) Two-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. The letter uncharacteristically begins beneath a poem typescript. the star-­ lover an     April 1 71 #479 end to the telescope what right or wrong world artifact -­     -­   Friday May 21 71

 -­  

 -­  

 -­ 

  -­

Dear Jonathan, Right now wondering where is your latest message et al -­I hope this reaches you anyway ... vague memory says the Penland School is NOT in Highlands. (Whew!! Just turned up JARGON

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BILLBOARD #1 at least. ) Anyway, as much as 10 days ago, maybe, or more, who knows? I thought of showing you the above, in re the Niedecker elegy volumes, although it was in Lanesville, Gloucester, at a mag. called THIS, a visit from both its editors having in some way I’ve (ecce!) forgotten touched this off, a few hrs later (1 end of a conversation in my hd, anyway, i had no hangover but was way up high)   Word from the Mass. editor yesterday he’s selected 16 to use in THIS 2. He was here the 4th time Monday night, Bob Grenier, is giving me much help with paper work, the most i ever had. (Reminds me of course of the help come to Delius -­there was a play abt that frm BBC TV a couple ot yrs ago -­and yesterday if not before as well i saw in yr note in the Festschrift where and/or how Tom Meyer is hanyman to the JARGON SOCIETY.) [The following appears in the left margin, beside the preceding paragraph: Doesnt mention the above. I toldhim my ideaof sending it to you, for LN, Monday. He sd,yeh! ... or somingthng Said he’s teaching L N “... gnarled ...”] He wrote me in De­ cem­ ber for material, also to ask abt copies of my Fragments, to use in English classes at Tufts where he’s teaching (taught ON MY EYES in Berke­ ley, at U.. Cal. in ’69). Maybe you as well as he contributed to the Antioch Review issue of poems honoring Gordon Kearney of Grolier’s, besides Olson et al -­my father spotted an item abt it in The Boston Globe of May 12th (tenant upstairs passed it down to the folks, wow!,and they pass the Lynn wise Boy!) He first came Item up reciprocal-­ here in Janu­ ary. Other edtor is from Iowa City, Barrett Watten. April 1 they brought THIS #1, with themselves, me, R Kelly, Creeley, Irby, C Coolidge, Ron Silliman ... and Olson photos

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done and annotated briefly and well by Elsa Dorfman.* With a typewriter and ability to read my pencing e.g. and knowledgeable enthusiasm he’s shaken the bkworms out of xx a considerable lot of stuff and has got me to some revision breakthroughs as well as sme new thngxxs like the above. Keeping casual enough, too, we’re abt to show Laughlin an ms of mine. 60 pp. in the mails now to a tentative solo mag... BRICOLEUR #2. ... [The following appears in the left margin, beside the preceding paragraph: * Grenier says E.D. got up the Antioch Review #.] Hang-­ ups, on the other hand, are odd. Black and white, contracts, c..right imprints, get to look formidable. Biblio.. of me out in Janu­ ary, with few or many however small or large (? !) boners. SELECTED POEMS due but proofs, mentioned as soon to be gone over by the bibliographer and me (she sd so). Hawley at OOyez sends bks still on occasion (too many gifts pile up frm all quarters,sure do), wk before last 2 in fact. 2 wks ago some-­ [A full third of the reverse is blank; the blank space corresponds in size to the poem on the front of the leaf. The concluding text of the letter begins two-­ thirds of the way down the page.] wrote of him changing his mind a lot,.xx and a time early this yr he got drunk, he admitted to this guy when they met he nvr saw him before, was drunk when he yhght he had. I change my mind enough but am far away from booze or drugs, quite strings. ... a bith farther, even, than purse-­ Forget how long bck it was Hawley wrote Stuart M was partly cause of the delay till then, in not being gotten to give a definite printing ddline for the english edition after h agreed to his doing one. Stuart sure seems to have eyes bigger than his stomach , and/or head. Spring 68 he was

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abt to do a bk of my prose. Fall 687 i mentioned to him COYOTE’s delay with 2nd ed.. of O M E , to wch he immediately responded by saying he had ... Fragments put in exact same typeface so he x cd a few yrs thence put em together in one volume, so Koller, when i wrote him of this, still in the red and feeling bad abt things, in my interests gave up his project(s) with me -­poetry, prose, in Feb.68 and reprint in Oct. -­and i sd ok to Fulcrum. Jan 70 i signed two contracts with Fulcrum, one for poem and one for pros |dates blank yet! as they still are |, and Stuart returned em April 70 with a whopping cheque. Well, I have concerns to keep easygoing, clear of knots (bogging details and hassles) and similarly (like now with this thing abt to show Laughlin) get bcklogs disposed of and cleared away. While the more you do the more there is to do. A wild world. Despite, and otherwise, elegy, xx myth, classicalx allusion, sex, sect, and so on ... [The following appears in the left margin, beside the preceding paragraph: b e  a c c o m o d a t i n g] But I’ve only begun, am on 2nd page of, Mottram’s essay on Dahlberg. (And havent finished Dahlberg to you. And TRIQUAUARTERLY is abt to lose back pages. And pages turn automatically, at least in bed.) Regards

Wildly

Larry

[The remainder appears in the left margin, wrapping around and filling the space beneath the valediction.] 1450 pp. of Dos Passos here: U.S.A. A tv production of it (2 ½ hrs) sent me bck to it (then to TRI QUARTERLY again, to try and size

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up). I’m indiscriminate, unable to put 10 and 10 together and wilder and wilder. Great ms statement (page 8?) of E D’s U.S.A. clattering canvas time/space document social commentary satire nice use of cliche whitman hemingway cummings how very much soap opera cyclic and panoramic Is this the war ? In Indo-­China? everybody dies few listen |Is this elegy?|

(95) Two-­page letter typed on a 7.55″ × 10.75″ airmail envelope. Handwritten and typed emendations appear through­out. The text of the sec­ond page concludes at the midpage envelope apparatus. Following the break is Eigner’s address to Williams inverted in relation to the previous text. Apr 3 74  wdn night Dear Jonathan, Well;! Happy birthday, After theseyears (life and otherwise so easily hang-­ up such a pellmell precipitous bog still that though I’ve beeenwillingly forgetting mo most things to take em 1 at a time in stride keeping adrift by all kinds of pillars and posts same as I used to wholly regret I hardly feel leisurely to spk of abt anything -­eg, yeh, before or after the Destschrift for E.. D.. came there got here 2 ads for TriQuarterly, xx adss to say nothing of gifts

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and letters putting the finger on you some, while it’s little enough I’ve as yet read of th TQ I have ... ) Anyway Lil Enis accessible (unlike anything by P Huston I ever see!) and a real spiel, a la Paul Bunyan and whatever. Preceding it by 4 days came all rgose 25 copies of Epitaphs For Lorine -­ well, not too bad by now, the world lost as it is, for singers to be unsung, maybe, the great thing to hv daily companions, people with at least half a ear if you need to live with em or to be alone, so you can be asy -­and before that VORT #4, which I finished reading yr ½ of yesterday morn (now cd reread, I forget that quickly), finding Mottram’s pages (his quotes abt bluets led me to “blue// berries) a considerable pair of binoculars, and,on rereading,Grier’s to an extent (pp. 100f). Before, there were pp. 76 (Marc 4 poem came in a letter to Alpert)-­ 80, 84-86 wt al. [From “March 4” to “vClouds,” this text runs as a column in the right margin alongside the preceding paragraph.]

straight by the roadsign

March 4 74

stand by your ?) words short stop look listen action -­    -­    -­

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April 1-­ 2 blue berries ux upp the sky vClouds [Alongside the following section, the word “Thursday” appears in the left margin, typed vertically down the page, indicating a new day since the letter was begun.] And the interview, with your autobio.., of course. (How much isnt too much, or how inclusive (and careless?) or selective to be seems a question way up in the air by now. [illegible] of lost already bend the old earth’s, if the whole globe’s, g field A point in time. Ok to realize -­anyway for me, from whom all decision and in fact free­ dom of tongue and xxx to a defree ear was, here, taken away long ago. Life and death in the head -­hm. If I cd mail thngs out myself, on the spur of a moment at least if not hour, I’d send you my 1974 Black Sparrow book, 16 copies of whch were brought here by a mail truck Sunday! 11 days ago. Mother for I was told I’d get “an advance copy” -­one. Mother for me mailed out two copies Friday but just before going to the p.o. gave me the real cold shoulder for a change over something else. ... Taut relations xxx Old stories. (Dad pulled through a stroke he had in late Oc­ tober 72, still taking anticoagulant, etc., etc. I still dangling on more than one, praise be, rope, Nov 11-­ Dec 14 went to brother’s in St. Louis, 33 days my longest stay there, where I may go again this July)

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A beautiful bookmaking job it does seem though and I include ed things written when M L King got killedd, etc., also one as Rbt Kennedy lay dying, et al.  Besides beautiful books



again and again it’s the complicated world and history romance by the leaping by the leaping [The preceding line is crossed out in pencil, and a penciled line connects the struck line to the following two words, which are typed in their own column to the right of the preceding three lines.] fires of [To the left of the previous poem, Eigner has appended in two columns his valediction; the column break falls between “regards” and “More.”] ... Thanks and regards More to you Larry

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(96) Typewritten (front and back) 3.25″ × 5.5″ card uncharacteristically dated on the front Friday nght  Jan 31 75 Dear Jonathan, I’m a little sorry I’m surieted under the perejnial or permanejt avanche and cloudbustedcascade here but, other than that there are morse and fffar-­ ther-­ reach-­ ng things by a long sht here and everywhr, it cant be gelped. I’M bushed under a sizeable amnt of fire by now andaxonsiderable lot more sbow and am amt pe5rufied, though if I do little enough and I regard tje sky etc life is still enjoyable. (I’m pretty well now hooked on PBS which goes on and on enough likeother, n, works, maybe, but n oy rxponentially -­and it’s audio/visual prosthesis, welcome fin_llu after trs of not driving anybody’s car, a fast blackboard I’ve reaped a good deal from. Since July 2 when a sony color set came out of the blue, the larger of our two b & w’s, with the space for bjs undr it, has bn in my roon, more dun,too, than juast havinf audio boomin thrgh th walls.) U did did send M M in Millerton 3 wks back, 2 or 3 dubiously some 10 addresses 2-­ (and oh yes nowI’m pretty sire Bowering,eg,you alrdy sebd tp); nit more I can’t ddo. All my rare and highly irregular visitors are evidenyly loaded and/or thus scattered in their wits,and there’s too mch here to show em, kpwever much I do. ... Oi, vague. Anyway, Olson -­wow! ah! I guess Butterick told you abt his aftenn here ... Gd times in the yrs to come

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“The Cat’s Ears” wth a line addedionKoher’s tape of me ..

(97) One-­page letter typed on five-­hole, 8″ × 10.5″ loose-­leaf paper. The letter is uncharacteristically signed in pencil by Eigner and features handwritten emendations. A separate address to “David” b ­ egins a smaller column of text to the right of the body of the main letter text. Thursday July 20 78 Dear Jonathan,and David , Thise xeroxes of my stuff in Jon..W../ F..Dawson # of VORT (#4?) came 2-­ 3 days ago from my new bbliographer (collector ..., he firstwrote me Jan or Feb), who was here Gune 15 and bought VORT and other mags, took em back home to Ind (U of Evansville, he now hasor is trying for a job elsewhr). Unlikelely you’d want to use the poem or comment altrdy in VORT, butIthght I might as well await the xerox ansd send it to you anyway, although 5 days afterLei Irving Leif came here (stayed the next day, oh yes) I came got these lines of the 20th, on agn glancing into the only bk(llet) of JW’s here now (rather a mystery that is). I’ve shown Jon.. W.. this piece, sent it with things for the Zukofsky memorial chpbook doneJune 9-­ 22 (I hope one is eg. short enough) to Corn Close. Cicular from Jargon Society with NYT obit (I’d alrdy hrd of Zukofsky’s dth, Ithink) arrived June 1 8 hrs before mother and I left for a wk in St.Louis at brother Joe’s -­his boy and girl, though boy a yr older, and a frnd had a triple b..mitzvah and Richie and Beverly were there with their boy and girl, e.g. The 9th, the day after we got back, or maybe the 10th, the mailman brougght the Trucck circulat frm David W..

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[The following paragraphs and fragment of verse appear in the right margin, alongside the previous paragraph and descending into the right margin of the one that follows.] Thanks David for sending Marlatt’s TRUCK book, may I get to it and other she’s bn sending here through quite a few yrs now fromherPlace(s)! I think this one came directly from you. Her bks all up there -­I’ve inklings, havehad glimoses. Reading matter in quantities way beyond my capacitykeeps pouring out ofthe blue perplexingly -­how seldom it rains!! Oh,Our Lives from D..M.. after all -­she inscribed it to me. ...sudden inter-­ cept light den-­ sity even fall from the sky ... [The following paragraph marks the return to regular letter text.] My father died March 18, 3 months shy of his 85tj brthday, and mother, now 77 or 78 (no records anyway from Slonim, Chagall’s hometown in Po../ Lithuania) and into her 4th yr since angina attack/diagnosis, is doing poorly enough, we she’s now rdily agreed to split wi.me, I expect to move in Sep­ tem­ ber, most likely to a new ley where Rch et “intemediate faciility in Berke­ famille have a house, opening its doors Spt 5, or if Prop.. 13 and/ or other matters are too preoccupying still, then to a 2-­ 3 month place in St Louis, where especially it seems I’d have very little space for written words. While that be ok -­the wds will always be big, time keep on flying, it sure seems. Wherever. Eventually i might be able to get an apt. of my own or share

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one with 1 or 2 other croipples or get up a bodied. cp,,une with 1 some of the able-­ Well, ch’e sera. I hope things ok in St Paul and you and Alice are making out in Ky. these firther yrs. I even hope my June piece will make the JW festschrift and that there will be one ... Regards

[signed] Larry

P O Strike still tomorrow imminent blue sky but did you get enough goods as a postman? Well I trust this will get through to you quite a few days before No­ vem­ ber

Additional Prose

This section contains four prose pieces found in the Eigner papers in the ­Jargon Society Collection housed at the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. The earliest of these, “Religion in the Big World,” is an essay on Charles Olson; fol­low­ing this are a farcical letter to the editor, an impassioned ecocriti­cal defense of birth control, and a nuanced response to a civil rights feature in the magazine K ­ ulchur. Like Eigner’s letters, these pieces are allusive, associative, elliptical, and lively; as such, they only nominally engage with a “topic” and demonstrate the dynamic texture of Eigner’s thinking. The latter three pieces seem to have been circulated among multiple correspondents and may be found in other manuscript collections. However, these copies are not “duplicates,” since Eigner of­ ten reentered a text while preparing copies for circulation or emended texts once he had received duplicates of origi­nals that had been sent to his repository at the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library. To establish clear texts of “The plea that clothing be put upon cows,” “On learning something more, recently, of the population raises,” and “United we sit divided we race,” versions held in the Jargon Society Collection have been compared to similar pieces at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library. The essay on Olson, origi­nally intended for a publication Williams planned to fund his production of Olson’s Maximus editions (see above letters beginning with letter 3 for Eig­ ner’s discussion of this document), may not have been distributed to anyone other than Williams; the typescript in the Jargon Society Collection appears to be the origi­nal. The source documents transcribed here represent vari­ous stages of polish and completion. On the one hand, all seem to have been intended for pub­lic consumption given that regular margins, page numbers, and running heads are present and that the text is of­ten double-­spaced. On the

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other hand, at times these documents seem to have shifted from fair copy to draft in the process of typing, as Eigner entered changes, struck through text, or emended a line here and there. Attending to such shifts is of course one of the challenges and one of the rewards of these pieces. As with the letters, every effort has been made to track down Eigner’s references to both literary and contemporaneous media sources.

(1) “Religion in the Big World” Seven-­page essay typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper. The document is double-­spaced through­out and has regular margins, page numbers, and a running header. This essay was sent to Jonathan Williams with the letter dated Oc­to­ber 29, 1954 (see letter 3). The transcript below is based on origi­nal typescripts. R e l i g i o n  i n  t h e  B i g  W o r l d room is safe the sick-­ or there is a war he woke up, and made little cowboys walk (the Magi that was the extent of his conquest except himself (which is THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION of Lloyd Douglas, or at any rate that film version of it with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman. It is a real compelling picture, in its way, simply because of the events that happen, the wonderful heroine losing her wonderful surgeon husband through the unconscious recklessness of the play this ruin of a playboy (the hero), and then her sight, very nearly her life, as an explosively quick result of his impulsive trial of occult methods to make it up to her (he passes a needy man 300 bucks, enjoining that he tell absolutely no one about it

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and not repay it)--combined with a spur-­ of-­ the-­ moment attempt to date her, the sec­ ond attempt. And you can see, really--and everyone concerned feels--how bravely she bears it. He becomes a wonderful man himself, succoring her now under an assumed name, besides doing all sorts of other things or just charities, anonymously, as he reenters on the medical studies he quit when he came into his 4 million, and linally by gruelling surgical emergency and miracle-­ like luck rescues her from death and whewhen she opens her eyes she can see again: so that she stays with him, not running from him now, as she is no longer a potential burden. And the sunshine is wonderful, literally venetian, the buildings appear to be marble, through­ out, and all the hospitals, even the one in New Mexico, look like the Biltmore. It is all a rather fast life, with transatlantic flightships and all. Wyman’s first husband had only married her some months before his death, and it’s only when he dies that she finds xxx he has distributed money on the quiet, there being nothing left at the time but the handsome hospital and mansion; and car, etc. “Forget about it,” he said to the people he gave his assets to, “it’ll be all used up anyway in a few years”; and when they tried to pay back and on his refusing asked but then what shd I do with it, he said to keep it, “for some poor devil.” (Which is, at that, an extension of the handling of “intangible” debts, e g, right there in the medical field.) The other principle in this activist “belief” ((sic)) is the more emphasized one, that the services, constructive doings, be completely cut off from any idea of reward and hence the corollary of secrecy, as in order to, as if brought out in an analogy with

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electric wiring, shield the person from getting egoistic. Of the little xxxxx xxxxx egos! And may we all have our moments, even now, or I shouldn’t be surprised at anyone’s having them. It isn’t this, though, that makes me wonder, for one thing, whether Charles Olson would consider running for or sitting in Congress, if he had the chance. There are more problems involved than preventing ego elephantitis or hero-­ worship or breakdown (partial or otherwise) under sorrow. Even if he were offered one fantastic deal, the Democratic nomination in a south­ ern state, say, and no strings attached, what would that do? He might get on the armed services committee, or a crime committee. Or the food and drug committee. Is that possible? The one result might be that the constituents would bring on a Republican landslide next time. Olson great obscurity, and one in which an unabridged dictionary and phrase-­ completing handbook would not help out, is that he doesn’t say, xxxxxx too adequately, what to.do. He doesn’t answer whwhat is by far the biggest question in the present and the future; idle of course whether it outdoes all the similar questions of the past. For one thing, though, if an answer is too definite it’s tends to be no answer, the problem, which is continuing, slips away. Pound for example losesseems to lose have mostly lost sight of the problem, perhaps because of the great size of the answers he things he has, as well as his being rather prepossessed with the loves and hates, or bitternesses, which have been snowballing in him, like a long winter. Olson recognizes

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the problem, at least when he happens against it, and recognizes it for exactly what it is, in its gap-­ like character; and he encounters it, explicitly, perhaps more of­ ten than anyone else. While one of its particular aspects, which one would say was close to anyone writing, he hardly mentions iteadily (“man must chatter of his doom”), he’shardly mentioned in print; though he’s just said xxxx he wants essentials, “otherwise I’d rather do things ” Olson comes up against the questions tirelessly, and has made it as widely and closely a part of the earth as anything, “around the bend of, . . / the next / sec­ ond”. He reiterates--such as the proposition that each man must save himself, at a great number of points--and the reiteration is a good deal inevitable, one can’t xxxx grumble, really, there. He faces this wall of this situation surrounding us, which could be however it could be any situation, he not only faces but tries as much of as he can. It’s an attempt, one that won’t succeed, very much. But this doesn’t slow him up any, so it would appear, nor does it immobilize him or shut out any part of a territory, field, to the extent that anything becomes an obsessions. He stays under the sky, among things, and bends with them. While at the same time, due to his jumps on with things, what he presents, with such buid-­ ups that you think there must be somewhat of a revelation, part of a final answer coming, something of a revelation or part of a final answer coming, sometimes seems trivial, and the reiterations seem unwarranted in view of the build-­ ups. The enthusiasms peter out in

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a ay, seem thready and tenuous, the jumping sentencencessentences, live as they be, approaching the vanishing point where they are in great part offhand slightly articulated (on fisrt seeing ON FIRST LOOKING OUT OF LA COSA’S EYESx or MAXIMUS 13). On the other hand there you have to notice their absolute brevity. And as jumping xxxx while going adter what he seems rightly to see as wrong things to do, however effective or ineffective they may be, he seems to leave up in the air some knowledge of  --which perhaps doesn’t exist--of what people could do alternatively. And him knocking heads and insisting on keeping the eyes straight. It is another part of the problem, what may the upshots be, as one has to allow him his enthusiasms and wisps, certainly as much as his reiterations.* One cancould even say, making a profundity, that he has “achieved” the right casualness and lack of awe towards the printing press, he and the printers, masters of the press as they might be called (though not exclusively perhaps), so that it approaches the spoen medium --fine page-- in its humanity. It’s an attempt, not a formal garden. He has developed these intrinsic concernedness and quietnesses, but because of these, and the urgencies, exhortations--which aren’t strident and breathless in the volubly long poems, as might appear at first, or scarcely so--he heleaves present applications which it may be he could mention without too great a commitment; or at least I can see some spots where he just hangs in admiration of other societies. Nor would the solution be to get urgency and admiration simultaneous--though this might, or would, be overs partly it--but to get make as direct carry-­ as he can. One more thing he does seem aware

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of, and trying for, as the contrasts in MAXIMUS 13: and for all I know he succeeds here, maybe, though, just in contrasting. A case where he isseems pretty well isolated and overemphasizing the past--while it is a present, etc.--is in the third of the MAYAN LETTERS, xxx xxxxxx he is very impressed, delighted, at the Indians’ thrift and Yankee Ingenuity. He It doesn’t occur to him then, but the ingenuity is only a mark of life where it’s really called for. He doesn’t testify much, explicitly,-­to such things--this would be reiterating!--for instance what of the differences between the Indians’ resourcefulness and the shibboleth applications of aphoris up in New England, where the principle of “waste not, want not” is contentedly observed only AFTER a superfluity of vitals has been cooked and brought to table. T It makes you wonder sometimes, where he does come out, since he is hammering; keeping in mind the wrong and right xxxxxx turns of the past, with constant dynamism, is something, but they still, by memory, don’t apply, or only in quite a limited sense, and it becomes repetitious. Take the localism of xxxxx APOLLONIUS. He realizes, says so in MAXIMUS 5, that isn’t the localism there could be nowadays. What could be? While there are a vast number of insights hit upon, spewing around. Life is great. And the momentary is connected by the memory, what we can summon up of it--which is increased in the writer and the reader. You never do come ome out, of course. It’s a search. What could apply. In that movie for instance there was you could say an evident Protestantism, it was laid out in one smart

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sector of society, was an example of largely indidual salvation, with no word of an underworld or war going xxx on or anything. War belongs to other pictures, though, it may be noted, not criminal negligence or, actually, in some of its parts, sex. Whereas Olson is involved, in some way, whatever way, with the “field of focus”-as he names it in A DISCRETE GLOSS, which looks like it might really gloss, leading to something further in regard to all this, if I someday get a further statement out of the last three stanzas than what goes before, and the upshots (!) say, of AN ODE ON NATIVITY. And he says “In the land of plenty ../ take the way of the lowest”, which may be interpreted accurately enough, the emotion is accurate enough (as Robert Duncan has seen in some other connection--in his IMAGINACY WAR ELEGY), for action. And in Sumex et al (recently aired in the Boston area was quite a lucid and forceful description of Hopi communality, balancing on nature and all) I understand they all found a way of hanging together. Either that or separately. Or partially. I guess some of us can find ways, “islands of men and girls ” In what individual, and vagarious, senses--and no one should lose the fact that there is, at least now, no such thing as success, it’s just succeeding, and failing. Not a matter of determining to the nth degree how much that is worth, either; in this wide field where Olson has got. Even this isn’t a static fact; but there’s a matter of seein how muh, proportionally to his output, say, yourself, anyo Olson, or anyone, can have it before him, involved, and put it into the world. A question

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of how not to let joy or other feelings pull you off things, even while they themselves are to be reckoned with, and developed, so that they can be more and more in keeping. This can’t be guessed at; it can only be seen. ... how strung, how cold can a man (canomon) stay (can men)  confronted thus?

(2) “The plea that clothing be put upon cows” Three-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper and dated “March 6–­9, 1963.” The document has regular margins, page numbers, and emendations through­out; word and line spacing are irregular. The transcript below is based on reproductions of origi­nal typescripts. Sirs, The plea that clothing be put upon cows, houses, asses and their like is howler, let alone indecency itself. If you put pants on a cow, then in recompense for the discomfiture or exotic in another land, of the sort that might be cheered by hospitality, you are giving her every natural right to a high-­ school xxxxxxxxx diploma, a seat at the lunch-­ counter--at any rate necxt to tv ot juke-­ box if the owner has one-- an unrestricted place at any film-­ showing whatever, and the toilets, where she’d like to be, and brighten a corner,  A sofa, decent entertaining, sprinkling, and and food, and so on. The list readily becomes endless, and you and I know it could never happen. Between the acres of the rye there should be no discriminatory practices, nor among creatures of men ought we to have lack of understanding, even  (too bad we can’t live up to

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it as of­ ten as would best suit us) imagination, and feeling of a particular incidental type x  or congruent perhaps violence -- certainly not any peeping tom, exhibitionist, flag-­ raising, may-­ care attitudes, nor a holier-­ than-­ devil-­ thou sindrome  And in a day of increasing incidence of little kids up to an estimated age of three years (3 )  /or more /  naked, in the streets of Calcutta (as a documentary on Tv one night showed), with some partial memories of life by the mudflats of Habana, or Rio is it(?), or the jungle; either that or Harlem or   , Ozarks   doubled up, on hands and knees, toes and scalps, and undernourished on the slopes, tents, of Tripoli in a time when the children of America, or certain non-­ disastrous, soi-­ dissant, blight areas, are so stiff and caparison’d and jammed ( as with new silk, old sack ) for the sake of bringing bacon home, which is that hard, and cigaret money, that they are wasteful on Mainstreet and otherwise self-­double’s security’s martyrs, breaking their own heads on Atlantic, Brittle, Elm, Cherrytree, Chestnut, in boredom, which incites fear too, plus the whirl, without giving much of a thought to where for humpty dumpty    centre x flown apart stance Wash­ ing­ ton, Adam, or Jefferson, or Lincoln, if one were here, might have succeeded in getting to in considering on xxxxx how to mutate the System, rather than ourselves, such as how many Sectors, like utility # business # family # the State # non-­ profit and Co-­ op, or for that matter cars in a barn, or clashing radio stations, Agencies, Authorities, and Concessions, might be optimul, now and having a respect for the future, at vari­ ous times, by way of traveling light ,

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and flexibility and adoptability, or drap in the bucket ,   friendly conversation to develop our lives, not so much our pursuits, let me say, and these children of us only finding a goal, or possibly peace (the “dear nurse of arts”), and quiet, in palpitation, excitement, specifically in the Capsule, a twist, a hurdle, by levitation, like or intra-­ euderine maneuvers, at the fiash-­ great power, the tremendous expenditure, of which you are I hope aware, though the cold and bitter fact is, that presently it’s a necessity, whose end however we may some ways act on the presumption of, wherewithal, fine days come to light, as there’s no use worrying, that’s to say   exhaustion ; and in the age when half-­ and also quarter-­ tone spreads are proving of greater and greater usefulness to distillers, in whetting the palate, and soup,soap, and dish-­ bones, and good books, besides among other things the garment industry, breabread winners thereby, keeping you off the streets with the employment problem and to fill the gap of a leisure classxx in hobo, manufacture of nice clothes (how they make the man and are father to him), the improvement of quality (one illustration being that they are pretty often refreshingly comfortable and ingenious to wear) . . there is urgent need of a xxxxxxx Gennu’lm’n’s Agreement, or Pefrunce, involving as it does a square, clear, firm, unexaggerated, outgoing appraisal and cogent organization course of action, most important, I should say, first and foremost the, appraisal, of our value, with laughs (What may be serious in mortality), as not only Havana or perhaps Cairo and Belgrade and BudaPest but also Delhi and Tel Aviv might attest, Dublin, Stockholm, etcetera, for who

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else can do it.? Neither sheep, dolphins, nor swine. What would Walt Whitman say to it, who had had poor health to fight with, or Robert Burns, or Francoise Villon, or the brilliant and amazing Yevtushenko, of such revolutionary pprowess ? Or the guy who wrote about going of to clean the Pasture Spring, and inviting us all  ?  Further, I suggest that the Attorney General look in-the Post master might be able to do something, in addition--to see what there xxxxx may be, as for example a deep-­ tined or maybe Communi(t)sy-­ inspired detratchment  babble from utilitarian matter,  (or some off-­ beat hoax for some reason from Madison   , which is an awe-­ inspiring prospect   question to be asked, mush as, Where are the sources of the gunpowder plot ) A kibbutz at the Dead Sea is a marvel, and may it, something xxxxxxxxxx in that order, be sent speedily between the rivers (citations: Tennessee, Shenandoah, Gilax, San Pedro), xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and to the Boot, and the people of Sand, whereas being involuntary, thrust on, overdone in China and also a thing from a distance, an abruptness it would be anathema in the Back Bay(excepting in a sense those who are floored and tabled at White Building, Baker, et al), and in Jacksonville it would frighten vacationers out of their sense, and be an ugly wreck, and would kill off reclamation  Brazil too  As the guy said as well --and I speak this earnestly, having it in mind that he also speculated on good fenc-­ xxxxing -even as somebody else was flabbergasted xxxxexact word I think was “delight  ”) at “the anarchy of poverty”  Earth is the right place for love

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Since after all we shall have time enough to decide A resident Swampscott, Mass. () 23 Bates Road ()    United |?| States, North America, & so. )( 

)( 

)( c r a z y  a s  i t c a n b e    )(  )(  )(

(3) “On learning something more, recently, of the population raises” Two-­page letter typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper and dated “April 25 | -­May 2nd | 1963.” The document has regular margins and page numbers; pencil emendations and overtyping appear through­out. Eigner reported a word count of “850 words.” The transcript below is based on reproductions of origi­nal typescripts. O Originally a note beginning On reading “Speaking Out” of April 20th |Saturday Evening Post| ... this by Dr John Rock xx Dear Sirs On learning something more, recently, of the population raises and of the Shrewsbury pill it struck me that the Catholic Cxxhurch is being pretty hard on humans, and the world -notwithstanding that in moe, or all, fields, control and sport is as fine a thing as any, stopping at a red light is, and considerably necessary, also that xxxxxI like tradition insofar, at least, as I believe in going slow (even as it appears I can’t really tell when it coms to traveling light / how much to reflect on?); since on one hand Catholicism frowns on contraceptives, at the same time that hetero-­ is the only type of sensuality it has deemed valid, natural or whatever. Yet mankind is quite

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various in some ways from person to person, and society to society (it’s not recognized) -­it’s kind of feasible to lay down laws of grammar and Aristotelian laws about what best befits bovines, or the ant, or ape, or to interpret modulate them, but perhaps impossible when you get to billions of men, even the cannibal.  Their lives are very different At first I thought other contraceptives might not be called less naturalx or unphysiologic than what Dr. Rock has been working with, but anyway physiologic is one level xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or degree or course or something, biochemical another which has been distinguished--exemplified right here I think--and what abortion is to infanticide, and contraception to abortion, so may the new frug be to older contraceptives, and malnourished babies, and grown-­ ups. It would scarcely be all to the good, of course, for it’s true that it’s like hiding all the light-­ switches behind the wall, or a lot of them, there is everywhere txhe question of What is happiness, what is a painless life; and yet in many parts of the world there might very well bex an extremity of pain, and a very small modicum of enjoying life --the latter, entertainment facilities and the like, on the decline, too. Although, evidently, I can’t be religious and can’ t see very final or special causes, Onan’s action wa s in Biblical times a rather grave social crime, as for one thing you wanted the children to outpopulate the wolves, if not the sheep--and the smaller a population the more likely and of high proportion is a shortage of women,or, especially, menxx (dream of the androgyne) -- and clear on up through the

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19th century this was an issue, in quite a few places. Now, hardly so, the world is xx xxxxxx really drawn up close--and flying apart. If purposes are real, they do not scorn facts, and are ready to be changed by them, clearly and openly. But when facts, and things, are very numerous purposes are, and they go very fast, and for example it’s conceivable xxxx we might regret birth control, in some years, by a shortage of nurses, or physicians, or physicists during those hours we think about keeping the bears away,(having still the old problem of security among peers at any rate, rest of our lives, how much we need, and could enjoy, and where it lies, or we think it does). It might also be brought in xxxx that the more or less immanent, impending waste-­ disposal problem, in however limited area-­ waysx at present, as well as that of food and the drain on the natural and supplemented gapacity of earth in general (reasonably pure water, tourism--in callous form, quantities-- the plunting of souls, eyes and ears, and so on, even besticide in that to grow more plants you must allow fewer animalss --B--Brinksmanship!), has a basic relationship to size of population. The admirable Greeks and. or others committed not onlyXinfsnticide and abandonment but also colonizations too ( early form of colonialism, they would beat, harness the natives if any, if they could, and it suited them). For healthful reasons, and when in medieval days a city, town came to have too many people, be unwieldy it, also, split up, in an intentional way, and afterwards there was Columbus, New England and so forth, migrations of the Irish. Where as yet there is little

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likelihood of one potato in the moon, or space, or anything within reason, or distance, or poi. WE CAN ASSESS, and calculate the risk.       Let not man be a locust,      and drive out his fellows. Nor, barring holocaust, inferno, diaster, overkill, criti­ cal mass, or till then, coming to happen in some particular detailed way perhaps, does it look as if vari­ ous smogs or fallouts willxredress the death rate (as regards the near future), in time to lower and stabilize the birth rate, that is, precisely enough to stay on a plateau. Despite all the bloodshed of the ages, man has kept growing. thick. XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX wide planning of babies, with XXXXXX(While state-­ or without government agency, seems drastic, and nation-­ wide about as drastic as anything couldbex, perhaps equal to or even more than infanticide, and hemispheric more so, murderous and global accordingly.) --Larry Eigner * The fewer billion people have to do things the better, and this includes contraception ...

(4) “On ‘Rights’ [United we sit divided we race]” Five pages typed on 8.5″ × 11″ typing paper and single spaced through­ out. This piece was sent to Jonathan Williams with a letter dated April 26, 1964 (see letter 79). The transcription below is based on a reproduction of the origi­nal featuring typed emendations. On “Rights” |Kulchur 12| et al -- like, killing the President, firing Minister X as spokesman et al

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U n i t e d  w e  s i t  d i v i d e d  w e  r a c e It didn’t take him long to say so, but at the particular point where Martin Luther king in his August 28th (62) speech/preach, spoke of not “drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred,” he was not referring to Love, although he did later talk of brotherhood, “curvaceous peaks of California ” and so forth, a pretty cozy world. Nor was the non-­ violence he reiterated as foolhardy as, say, fighting tanks with homespun, Hungarian-­ style; non-­ violence is more Spartan-­ like than Stoic, although it’s true enough, likely, that it’s bound to bog down in adjustments and compromise. And death, besides being certain, is always possible, whereas I know so many people who can’t change at all-“minds like beds always made up”-­and their beds too (Example: “You can’t expect other people to like what you like”--if you get annoyed at “The Price is Right, say. Or, example, the only people who can properly “worry” beyond their family or their immediate group--and of course the ideal and or badge is to acquire one if you haven’t got it, “take on responsibilities”--are millionaires) It’s a tremendously good question whether such people have a tenth as much of right to a hospital bed as a negro who is not yet blinded has, yet, if he had the bed--it wouldn’t have to be in a mental ward either--the question would be less rhetorical, since all men deserve it, leaving aside those who commit capital crimes, in cold blood or otherwise, perhaps even they who out of their ignorant success and good behavior blind themselves with diamonds (golf, Florida, “Rawhide,” “College Bowl,” Big Leagues, Alfred Hitchcock in the late hours, Musical Hilarity, Wonderful World of Color, Gr9uch, Cinemascope,

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Sam Benedict or “The Defenders”). And still it might be good to see some people getting their heads knocked together, their sawdust is really frozen,those beds really are held down, but that would aggravate the shortage of hospital beds among us, nurses, doctors, psychologists, social workers, visitors and all. It struck me, 15 months ago, how up in the wards the orderlies look like midshipmen or what have you, 3 shifts a dat in their whites. And you look out a window and it’s like Nemo’s, with the hotpers, jets and others swimming around (sometimes you seem to take a near-­ miss from a jet or a 4-­ motored place, but it veers off, the right way, up or to the side, or both). And it appears that children and young folk are either good little minds or going through stages of juvenile delinguents. Diamonds again. A bad place is a violent one, a powerful Buick, etc., and added violence turns hell into pandemonium, and enough of it would be firestorm. I’d considered the possibility of accidental nuclear war pretty remote, but since Kennedy’s death it has seemed more likely. An ex-­ marine who got court-­ martialed for having an unregistered gun, who may have been seeking a whole wardrobe of guns by picking off the man next to Kennedy with his spectacularly improved marksmanship, ist, even after and who imagined himself a Marx-­ he became disillusioned with a Russian worker’s lot and or whatever, returned to these States without stirring an xa inch towaeds China, apparently (and kibbutzim don’t have Communist billing) -- Cuba, which he swung near to, more lively, at thatx: and thenx a aged strip-­ joint operator, of “no special middle-­

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po­ liti­ cal opinions” but one of those people who like to send souvenirs to the White House,* would if he could, nice guy and all, in mortal anger at a Communist’s shoot the President. Everybody is well-­ heeled, afraid, and violent. Everyman is. Or at least one of the three. Oswald was five years or so beyond the age of juvenile delinquency, but it turns out he was crazy anyway (as I believe), xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx some common touch in the head shared with other assassins, only now perhaps for the first time with a prognosis on record, more of less of one, a syndrome like a vague fingerprint. Martin Luther King might be pressing as hard, going as fast, as he thinks safe, or sane. And there are not too many suicidal soldiers in a war--or not during most of it, anyway, between the start and the finish. All right, I know grandpa was a draft-­ dodger in the days of the Romanoffs, and the N AA C Phave strategists (of a sort, at any rate). But is anybody aiming for a massacre? Of course violence never stays in one form, no more than energy or matter in rods of good men’s sons become physics. The hot-­ barricades again. And the goalposts, say, and a few other things. Sitting-­ in is something more stand, and the cheer-­ than being in the grand-­ leading, “thrills,” etc., however much or little there be, are rather less crude. A hundred million barricades? citizens   ? A hundred million philosopher-­ If I were a negro I might rather like to see other negroes kept out of Grossinger’s, as well as myself, as I would like to see white men stay away from there too; but being white I feel this complexion issue as xxxxx an uglier or else xxxx

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a more specifically or definitely ugly thing than empty life, or what have you, xxxxxI suppose because the former is an uncomplicated evil, let alone unrelieved; It has the direct impact. Something uniquely visible as well as silly and all, hence unremitting. Anyway, widespread. Italian, used to be visible enough too, when I was small. A stranger, an unfamiliar-­ looking human. A child sees, and except for active experience, in varying degree, the concern is with the self, with identixxxxxxxfications, which are relatively static and stable, the visual. Now at any rate that I’m past the picturesque exotic, romantic, somewhat, besides the unfamiliar as disturbing, evil, contemplating practices I’m glad for instance of Indians here in the U.S. who have retained enough of their past (no Indian having been so uprooted as an african migrant) so they aren’t so much in quest of our toys. (As I read a couple of years ago. They find it or feel it “prof itable”x anyway --in the instance of the Navaho sheep-­ raisers, to continue the business as a communal enterprise.) Besides razing xxxthose old dollhouse servants’ quarters |what Oppenheimer for one is talking about in Kulchur 12|  there is the further little matter of a change in the nation’s--or is it by now the world’s ? -- living diet or staple   |a concern shown ibid.by Spellman and Sorrentino|.  Make up your own wagon, never mind the band. I’d like to see men in office who would xxxx lead away from the recently congealed bare fetish of economic growth, with some explicitness (an essential of community and wholeness being communication) move off from the eternal xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and indiscriminate

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speeding-­ up of lives, and shift a real impetus towards clean air and water supply, schooling that wouldn’t be at cross purposes and come to so little by so much lumping and extroversion, and a population keeping itself of a size roughly to allow room for thother forms of life upon which we depend on to exist, and great publicity campaigns to remind us it is not as yet feasible to grow much wheat on the moon.--to name some formidable tasks I am impressed with. This xxxxx might involve, say, xxxxxxxx federalizing Detroit, when there are enough cars on the road. The origi­ nal investments in a successful undertaking of widespread dimensions like this yield xxxx big enough returns, and maybe stock in general could xxxxxx hold good only tounto about the fourth generation without man losing the will to exist, petrifying, freezing. Why not xxx look for some way to encompass the death of money, if the occasion arises, seeing that people die, in whatever sense. Or you might subsidize a food crop where tobacco is now. Automobile makers and dealers try to sell as many cars as they can, get on the radio and everything, and people listen all though, for the sake of the weather report, or any “news” that might be given, on any subject, and they go out and buy a replacement every few years. Last election on a TV hearing devoted to minor parties I saw the Beat Candidate for President, and the Vegetarian, among others whose addresses I entirely forget. The Beat said he was merely standing up as a representative of youth, and lectured on the hypocrisy of the old (he did not speak like a winner, quite frankly.). The

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Vegetarian had a plan on air pollution, and another one as I recall on soil chemistry. At a slightly mathematical moment, and in view of Sorrentino’s thought, I wonder how far the Muslims for example could give heed to the Vegetarians while largely ignoring their program, what are the chances. “Revolution” as a word for what’s going on can hardly be too accurate--its speed having an irrational value, being a limit, for what world you want to take in--and is considerably under suspicion (gas is too numerous to revolve, it can only if it becomes enough of a star, condenses enough), but xxxxxxxx whatever Malcolm X says or doesn’t say “a singing, praying revolution” is not quite of a class with purple cows, at least you’ve heard of “Revolutiona||s||?||| in the heart” for centuries past, though the cloud chambers are always very leaky, and realities in general have more or less of a volatile streak. As for the broad, institutional type of revolution, maybe there was only palace coup down to 1640 and 1775-­ 1800 a.d.  (while I haven’t read about Sparxxxxxtacus, haven’t any idea whether he was ready to set up a government): and hard to tell whether any palace revolution had the intent to carry through with anything beyond token reforms. Warfare is something palpable of course. The tragedy of murdering a snake is about as much forgotten as wholesome actions are xxxxxxxxxx obfuscated and damped down. I heard Malcolm X being interviewed on a Boston radio/phone show in Oc­ to­ ber. (After News and Weather) Denials of hatred and expressions or rather manifestations of it. Of course,

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naturally, there was a xxxxxxxxxwhetstone present in the studio in the form of a student of extremist groups, journalist now making this “field” his “specialty.” What about that? During the broadcast, every ten minutes or so there was a commercial --one of the unsung ones, for a perfume, is about the solidest thing I’m hearing yet, or since I was of an age to be really fascinated by the best breakfastfood of the land, might now be causing Gilette to drop its Blue Blades. Some other night a listener phoneding in got mad when his time ran out, mistaking the xxxxxx, mike, controlroom, transmitter, transistor and all for back yard and fence, or anyway Town Hall or a private wire (“Now listen, this is a serious complaint you keep inviting people to phone and then when they’re just getting to their point you tell them they have to make way for news and commercials all the time ..”) The men in the studio had to take a clear preponderance of things in stride of course. Who can have mountains moving about? (this is Amplitude modulation) While one night in July or August at a round table with an i interviewer on TV were Jimmy Roosevelt, Farley, Tom Corcoran, Henry Morganthau and Henry Wallace reminiscing on F.D.R., with vari­ ous photos and movies interspersed, and the program ending up with Roosevelt’s First Inaugural, which I realized was a fighting speech, this being the only time I’ve heard more than one sentence of it : and the citation of “money-­ changers in the Temple” made me connect the man who reputedly said to turn the other cheek* with the man who just as reputedly drove the money-­ changers out.

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Odo et amo. But I knew it before. Browning “hated that which hinders loving.” I don’t see how you can compartment your armchair off from your motor anyway. Sit-­ ins have got some visible trace of the grandstand play, an amount anywhere, for whites at any rate, and free­ dom rides are larger operations. They certainly can be. Yet what is being aimed for? Is it annihilation (as some annihilation must take place), or reform (which is mostly the fantastic, the impossible)? Or are you Crusaders or Saracens? Turning the other cheek leads to lying down eventually. And Socrates was a mortal. Sticking your neck in, taking ar ride, pushing your head at the 5 and dime, it’s a great thing to have the reformees participate. Or maybe they better go to Cape Kennedy some more, not being advanced enough. Get back on the hot-­ rod you would’ve stayed on if it weren’t for us, or go find a tractor to drive in the Peace Corps. Corrupt the Indian youth. It looks like we’ll have to xxxx adopt measures that not very many white men can take a mind to. Gullibility is a likely thing. You get no joy out of the sweet light. Back to the bleachers! Pro

Con A house divided is uncomfortabe

Appendix A Images of Selected Typescripts

For those interested in the particularities of Eigner’s material text, this section collects images of some of the typescripts transcribed above. Arranged chronologically, all typescripts presented below are located in the Jargon Society Collection at the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo, the State University of New York. In selecting the following images, my intentions have been several. First, I wanted to show the degree to which Eigner’s material textual practice (in either his poems or his prose) explores the limits of any page frame. In this regard, I find his cards among the most interesting (and, as an editor, most frustrating) for the concision and occasional urgency encouraged by the genre of the postcard on the one hand and Eigner’s typically broad realm of reference and allusion on the other. When braided with the material format of the card—at 3.25″ × 5.5″, with necessary space for addresses, postmarks, and postage, and Eigner’s own habit of typing the fronts and backs of these cards at angles to each other—the result is a fascinating literary material object that cannot easily be represented other than by an image; see, for example, the images below of cards dated Sep­tem­ber 9, 1959, and De­cem­ber 31, 1967. Second, I have tried to present examples of Eigner’s material practice when they seem to add to or complicate meanings in the typescript itself. Some of the following demonstrate occasions in which Eigner has overtyped or emended his text in interesting ways; though I have tried to describe these occasions, my descriptions do little justice to the remarkable material nature of the texts themselves, and I encourage readers to consider these images for a sense of Eigner’s material page. Other examples demonstrate the ways in which the text of Eigner’s correspondence interacts with poems he shares with Williams; see, for example, the letter dated May/June 1956. Still other examples offer a more

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radical approach to the very nature of “correspondence” and “materi­ality.” In these examples, the substrate of the typescript itself may be of interest, as in the case of the letter dated August 30, 1960, where Eigner painstakingly “types into” Williams’s proofing comments and questions. Finally, and more generally, I have wanted to present for examination varied examples of Eigner’s material textual practice so that users of this volume can evaluate my own decisions as editor and transcriber of this material. I invite readers to compare typescripts presented below with my transcriptions above and to consider the ways in which I have attempted to describe these material constraints. I hope that through consideration of these images, readers may keep in mind that the book that precedes this section represents a ­series of my own (sometimes fraught) decisions regarding how best to present the vari­ous and at times competing features of Eigner’s typescripts.

Figure 1. Letter, Eigner to Williams, and holograph manuscript, May/June 1956

Figure 2. Card, Eigner to Williams, Sep­tem­ber 9, 1959

Figure 3. Letter, Williams to Eigner, with emendations from Eigner, August 30, 1960

Figure 4. Card, Israel Eigner to Williams on behalf of Larry Eigner, Sep­tem­ber 28, 1962

Figure 5. Letter, Eigner to Williams, De­cem­ber 20, 1964

Figure 6. Card, Eigner to Williams, De­cem­ber 31, 1967

Figure 7. Letter, Eigner to Williams, February 18, 1971

Figure 7. Continued

Figure 8. Letter, Eigner to Williams, May 21, 1971

Figure 8. Continued

Figure 9. Letter, Eigner to Williams, April 3, 1974

Figure 9. Continued

Figure 10. Letter, Eigner to Williams, July 20, 1978

Appendix B List of Correspondence and Additional Prose

Letters are identified by date and sorted according to writer and recipient (Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams and vice versa). Prose pieces are identified by title. For ease of reference, the list includes the numbers assigned to letters in this volume plus page numbers for each letter and prose piece.

Larry Eigner to Jonathan Williams   (1) Tuesday, Dec 29, ’53. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14   (2) 1/ 26 / 54 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15   (3) Friday Oc­to­ber 29th 54. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16   (4) Dec 29 54 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17   (5) Wednesday July 13 55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18   (6) Friday Aug. 12 55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19   (7) Saturday Sep 3rd 55 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22   (8) Janu­ary 30 [1956]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23   (9) March 19th 55 [1956?]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 (11) [May/June 1956]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 (12) Monday July 20th 56. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 (13) Friday August 10th 56. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 (14) Friday End of Sep­tem­ber 56. . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 (15) [Oc­to­ber 25, 1956]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 (16) [No­vem­ber 27, 1956]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 (17) Thursday Feb 7th 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 (18) 13th March 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 (19) Sundae March 23 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 (20) April 17 [1957]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

206

Appendix B

(21) [ June 18, 1957?] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 (22) Friday July 19th 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 (23) Saturday [ July] 26th [1957]. . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 (24) Sundae Oc­to­ber 7th 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 (25) Tuesday Nov. 19th 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 (26) Thursday 21st [No­vem­ber 1957] . . . . . . . . 47 (27) [De­cem­ber 6, 1957]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 (28) [De­cem­ber 10 or 19(?), 1957]. . . . . . . . . . . 49 (29) Saturday Dec 21st 57. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 (30) Friday Janu­ary 3rd 58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 (31) Friday Jan 10th 58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 (32) Thursday Jan 16th 58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54 (33) Monday May 5th 58. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 (34) May 31, 1958. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 (35) Wednesday Sept. 9 [1958] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 (36) Thursday night Jan 23 ’59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 (37) Wednesday 25th Feb [1959] . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 (38) Wednesday March 25th 1959 . . . . . . . . . . . 59 (39) May 8 [1959]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 (40) mond 18 may 59. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 (41) Friday 10 July [1959]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 (42) Wednesday 26th [August 1959]. . . . . . . . . 63 (43) Friday [August 29, 1959]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 (44) Wednesday [Sep­tem­ber 9, 1959]. . . . . . . . . 65 (45) [Oc­to­ber 7, 1959]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 (46) Wednesday 18th [No­vem­ber 1959]. . . . . . 67 (47) [De­cem­ber 1959] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 (48) Mercredi [ Janu­ary 29, 1960]. . . . . . . . . . . . 69 (49) Wed. Feb.3 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 (50) Feb.13 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 (51) Friday March 25th 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 (52) Friday April 8th [1960]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 (53) Saturday 16th April 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79 (54) Thursdy [May 20, 1960] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 (56) Thursday 22 June [1960]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 (58) [ June 30, 1960]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 (59) Sunday Aug. 27 60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 (61) Friday Sept.2 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89

List of Correspondence and Additional Prose

(62) Oct. 20 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 (63) 31 Oc­to­ber 1960 Monday . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 (64) Fri. Nov. 11 [1960]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 (65) Sat 26 Nov 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 (67) Fri Dec 9 60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 (69) Fri. Dec 30 60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 (70) Tuesday Feb. 21 61. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 (71) May 11 61 Thursday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 (72) [Sep­tem­ber 21, 1961]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 (73) Monday 29th Janu­ary 62. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 (74) [February 3, 1962] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 (75) Sunday 25 March 62. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 (76) 9/28/62. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 (77) Jan 28 63. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 (78) [Late De­cem­ber 1963] Xmas & 5 60. . . . 114 (79) Apr 26 64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 (80) Nov.3 64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 (81) Sundy 20 Dec 64. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 (83) 2 22 65 Monday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 (84) 1/31/67. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 (86) Mnday mr 20 67 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 (87) Sat.Apr 8 67 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 (88) Dec.31 67 Sunday. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 (89) Tue. Nov 26 68. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 (90) Fri.nov 29 68. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 (91) Jan. 6 6X9. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 (92) Thursday Feb.18 71 10:30 pm. . . . . . . . . . 149 (93) Mrch 22 71. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 (94) Friday May 21 71. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 (95) Apr 3 74 wdn night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 (96) Friday nght Jan 31 75. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 (97) Thursday July 20 78 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163

Jonathan Williams to Larry Eigner (10) May 9/56. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 (55) June 15, 1960. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 (57) June 26, 1960. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

207

208

Appendix B

(60) August 30, 1960. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 (66) Dec 5/60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 (68) Dec 13/60. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 (82) Jan 2, 1965. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 (85) March 16, 1967. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

Additional Prose Religion in the Big World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 The plea that clothing be put upon cows. . . . . 175 On learning something more, recently, of the population raises. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 On “Rights” [United we sit divided we race] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182

Notes

Notes to the Introduction 1. The epigraph is from “Qs and As (?) Large and Small: Parts of a Collaborate: The Stony Hills Interview,” in areas / lights / heights, edited by Benjamin Friedlander (New York: Roof Books, 1989), 151. 2. Kyle Schlesinger, “The Jargon Society,” Jacket 38 (2009), http://jacketmagazine .com/38/jwd02-­schlesinger.shtml. 3. Jonathan Williams, interview with Bary Alpert, Vort 4 (Fall 1973): 59. 4. I can attest to circumstances like this in the context of another archive of Eig­ner’s correspondence (it, too, awaiting the light of day). When Eigner’s poem “BRINK” first appeared in 1957, in the first number of John Wieners’s magazine Measure, Robert Duncan responded with an open letter shared among fellow poets and editors. Upon receiving Duncan’s open letter, Eigner set about retyping it in order to distribute it to his own correspondents. In the process, he inserted his own characteristic marginalia and commentary in brackets, and also appended a four-­paragraph endnote to his copy of Duncan’s letter. Originally cataloged as a draft of Duncan’s open letter on Eigner, this manuscript is located in the Robert Duncan Archive at the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. 5. Eigner’s ON MY EYES, for example, can fetch prices over $200, while some of Charles Olson’s Jargon books are at times worth several thousand. 6. Interestingly, the presses Eigner mentions in letters of this period are of­ten those with which Williams seems to have imagined himself in competition—not for book sales, but on the level of design and execution. Whether Eigner was deliberately goading Williams, or whether these presses were simply those that the two men held most in common, remains ambiguous. 7. Among the less sensitive of these comments, Eigner noted in one card (August 29, 1959), “(Eh, je peux attendre — a moins pour les autres exemplaires et je le veuxx ? ) Quelle a faire donc ??” Eigner’s idiomatic and abbreviated French is at times unclear; this translates as “Well, I can wait at least for the others and I want it. What’s the big deal, then?” Since Eigner had just asked about the terms of the production of ON MY EYES, his addendum seems to indicate that he was also to receive additional

210

Notes to Pages 10–16

Jargon books as part of the deal—certainly not the “lightening [of ] a shelf ” for which his mother might have hoped. 8. Larry Eigner, “Omnipresent to Some Extent: Jack Foley’s Radio Interview with Larry Eigner, Recorded for KPFA-­FM’s Poetry Program, March 9, 1994,” transcribed in “Larry Eigner,” in Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, vol. 23, edited by Shelly Andrews (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1996), 19–62. 9. Larry Eigner, “Method from Happenstance,” in areas / lights / heights, 6.

Notes to the Correspondence (1) Tuesday, Dec 29, ’53

Maximus look great  Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, vol. 1, 1–10, Jargon 7 (1953). And I was real curious abt the the Patchen Kenneth Patchen, Fables & Other Little Tales, Jargon 6 (1953). Letters 11-­22  Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, vol. 2, 11–22, Jargon 9 (1956). That Laubies cover  Robert Creeley, The Immoral Proposition, Jargon 8 (1953), with cover illustration by René Laubiès. the V in the upper right  Reference is unclear. The cover of Creeley’s The Immoral Proposition has a significant portion of negative space in its upper-­ right corner. However, Eigner’s own From the Sustaining Air was also published in 1953, by Creeley’s Divers Press and with a cover by René Laubiès; that design does in fact have a black V shape in the upper right of the cover.

(2) 1/ 26 / 54

Patchen, JARGON 6  Kenneth Patchen, Fables & Other Little Tales, Jargon 6 (1953). which I see from CONT  Contact. -­1.50 [. . .] $3.00  Written in pencil, possibly by Larry Eigner. Bob sent me a copy  Written in ink by Israel Eigner. Jargon 8  Robert Creeley, The Immoral Proposition, Jargon 8 (1953).

(3) Friday Oc­to­ber 29th 54

I tried a theme on Olson for the symposium he says you’re getting together  Williams wrote to Charles Olson on July 2, 1954, proposing as a fundraising device, “a kind of Miscellanea of Yrs in 32 pages, say: cld include a few new poems, the notes by [Robert] Duncan, statements by R[obert] C[reeley], a complete Bibliography which I cld work up; — all being designed to raise funds for publication of mss, the MAX II in particular.” In a letter from August 20, 1954, Williams noted that he intended to include Duncan, William Carlos Williams, Creeley, Cid Corman, Irving Layton, Kenneth Rexroth, and Vincent Ferrini, and that Creeley had suggested Sherman Paul and Carl Sauer. On No­vem­ber 8, 1954, Wil­liams wrote to Olson of a package from Eigner that included his essay on Olson, “Religion in the Big World.” The letters from Williams to Olson are in the Charles Olson Re-

Notes to Pages 16–17

211

search Collection, Box 221, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. For Eigner’s “Religion in the Big World,” see “Additional Prose” in this volume. Recently read of Gerhardt’s death  Rainer Gerhardt committed suicide in 1954. See Faas, Robert Creeley: A Biography, 107–14, for an account of Creeley’s visit with Gerhardt in postwar Germany. See also Creeley’s remembrance “Rainer Gerhardt: A Note,” in The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley, 279–81. set me off on OCCASIONALLY  Eigner’s “O c c a s i o n a l l y” appears in his From the Sustaining Air (Divers, 1953); in Eigner’s Collected Poems, the editors describe a note on the typescript: “LE note in Stanford ts: ‘My mother said the first line, really, when I started to tell her what Creeley wrote me abt R.. Gerhardt’s living conditions—the same word she was angry at an aunt of mine for saying abt our circumstances, pretty of­ten quoting them’ ” (vol. 4, “Notes,” iv). B,pellegra  Pellagra, a potentially fatal deficiency of vitamin B (niacin), characterized by dementia. Eigner seems to be suggesting a nutritional/biological cause for Gerhardt’s suicide in 1954. Saw yours in CONTACT 6  Eigner’s reference here is unclear. Williams does not appear in Contact 6; however, within Contact 6 there is an advertisement for another Canadian little magazine, CIV/n. Williams and many of Eigner’s Black Mountain peers appeared in this publication, and CIV/n 6 (Sep­tem­ber 1954) contained work by Williams. Say I take it you got the dough for the Patchen book and the MAXIMUS 2nd volume a year or so back  Charles Ol­ son, The Maximus Poems, vol. 2, 11–22, Jargon 9 (1956); Kenneth Patchen, Fables & Other Little Tales, Jargon 6 (1953). See letters 1 and 2 for Eigner’s request for these volumes. I submit also Olson’s note  Eigner and Williams trade this scrap of paper back and forth several times.

(4) Dec 29 54

Congrats on getting out o th’Army, probably Williams discussed in vari­ous contexts his time in Germany and the early Jargon books he produced there. In conversation with Richard Owens, Williams recalled his efforts to avoid the draft and his transfer to Germany once enlisted (see Jacket 38 [2009]). In an unpublished letter to Charles Olson upon his return from Germany, dated No­vem­ber 8, 1954, Williams wrote that he would soon settle in a “little, decrepit wooden house with a garden, long porch, etc., in the middle of a block off the street, in the Marina section [of San Francisco]. Very close is a gallery where Jack Spicer and some others operate. Also, expect to be doing stock work in a fawncee grocery dept by the end of the week so I shld be eating well too” (Charles Olson Research Collection, Box 221, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries). My brother  Larry’s brother Richard. Rxroth on one of the FM stations  Kenneth Rexroth. I am he whose brains/ scattered mor e more  See William

212

Notes to Pages 17–18

Carlos Williams, The Desert Music and Other Poems, p. 86, lines 283–85: “I am that he whose brains / are scattered / aimlessly.” that essay  Eigner’s essay on Olson, “Religion in the Big World,” was sent with the letter dated Oc­to­ber 29, 1954 (see letter 3 and “Additional Prose” in this volume). i do seem to have lost the power to make like ­Frank­en­burg  Specific reference is unclear, but Lloyd Frankenberg was a poet and literary critic who compiled Pleasure Dome: An Audible Anthology of Modern Poetry Read by Its Creators (Columbia Masterworks, 1948), which included T. S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Ogden Nash, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Elizabeth Bishop. A later print version appeared: Pleasure Dome: On Reading Modern Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 1949). Story--69 pp, 11x8½, dble-­ spaced. Wd go nice with the 3 in ORIGIN, in the order 1 2 3 4. Luck See Origin, 1st ser., 9 (Spring 1953), 10 (Summer 1953), and 12 (Spring 1954), for the pieces “Act,” “Quiet,” and “Around.” Eigner’s next prose publications in Origin (“The Eye Doctor” and “A Bus to Bermuda,” Origin 19 [Summer 1956]) are far too short to be the “69 pp” prose piece Eigner mentions. None of Eigner’s contemporaneous prose seems to approach this length. It is possible that this is a reference to Eigner’s unpublished prose work “Through, Plain,” described as a novel by Ben Friedlander (see “Ben Friedlander on Larry Eigner,” in vol. 193 of Dictionary of Literary Biography). DIVERS cant do it  Robert Creeley’s Divers Press published Eigner’s From the Sustaining Air in 1953. Has Cid sd to you  Cid Corman.

(5) Wednesday July 13 55

the ad for Stefan Wople [. . .] what’s YR connection with recording?  Archival material in the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, suggests that Jonathan Williams did the layout and design of an ad for Stefan Wolpe’s Counterpoint/Esoteric release (on a single album) of three pieces: “Sonata for Violin and Piano,” “Passacaglia,” and “Quartet for trumpet, tenor saxophone, percussion, and piano.” In an interview on April 10, 1993, Williams recalled his first experience with Wolpe’s music and his subsequent friendship with the composer: I had to leave Black Mountain because I was forced into the army medical corp. I chose to do that as a conscientious objector [rather] than go to jail, which seemed to be where I was headed. And I would come back to Black Mountain every once in a while. [. . .] That would be where I met [Wolpe]. I designed a piece of advertising, a mailer, for his record that came out in ’55. Maybe I simply designed it at Black Mountain and had a printer in Germany do it that I’d used while I was over there earlier. I’d printed the first volume of Charles Olson’s The Maximus Poems in Stuttgart in 1953, and I imagine that’s the printer I had do the mailing piece. That’s when our friendship started. And I was in and out of Black Mountain a lot in 1954–56, until the college closed. I saw a great deal

Notes to Pages 18–19

213

of him and his wife Hilda. He came to the house here in Highlands on several occasions. We became very good friends. (Recollections of Stefan Wolpe, Wolpe.org, Home of the Stefan Wolpe Society, accessed Sep­tem­ber 11, 2015, http://wolpe.org/page10/page10.html#Jonathan%20Williams; bracketed ellipsis in origi­nal) the Fielding Dawson ad  Williams designed Fielding Dawson’s Krazy Kat and One More, a small pamphlet that was printed in an edition of 150 at the San Francisco–based Print Workshop in March 1955. Creeley’s LOVELY  Robert Creeley, All That Is Lovely in Men, Jargon 10 (1955). Mumford  Lewis Mumford, an early Melville scholar and theorist of technology and the built environment. The Later DHL  The Later D. H. Lawrence: The Best Novels, Stories, Essays, 1925–1930 (Knopf, 1952). What’s Olson trying to do [. . .] PLUMED SERPENT Olson’s “The Escaped Cock: Notes on Lawrence & the Real” appeared in Origin 2 (Summer 1951). Olson’s “D. H. Lawrence and the High Temptation of the Mind” is contemporaneous but was not published until 1979. See Collected Prose: Charles Olson, 138–40, esp. 135–37. D. H. Lawrence’s The Plumed Serpent was published in 1926 by Knopf.

(6) Friday Aug. 12 55

if I’d aknow THAT LOVELY ARE to be still available  See letter 5 in which Eigner inquires about the availability of Robert Creeley’s All That Is Lovely in Men, Jargon 10 (1955). i paid for MAXIMUS and perhps (I forget now) the Olson MISCELLANY [. . .] you put an ad in BMR5 which offers a lot of items in­ clud­ ing this one for $25 but without a separate price for any one of them  See letter 3 in which Eigner reports trying a “theme” on Olson for this “miscellany.” In the back matter of Black Mountain Review 5 (1955), Williams placed an announcement for “The Maximus Poems / 11–22, by Charles Olson”: “A special edition is offered together with The Maximus Poems / 1–10, Mayan Letters, An Olson Miscellanea (collected criticisms of Olson’s work by William Carlos Williams, Katue Kitasono, Ernst Robert Curtius & others), and Y&X . . .—Advance subscriptions in­clud­ing all books: 25 dollars” (ellipsis in origi­nal). The proposed volume, however, seems never to have been produced. How you like 1st poem ORIGIN XVI? It cdve bn ­ anonymous, ok, but it’s bad mine. Very the puzzler, as i got 3 copies for one thing  Origin 16 (Spring 1955). Irving Leif notes in his bibliography of Eigner’s work that the poem is “I have felt it,” and that “Robert Creeley is erroneously listed as the author of this poem both in the table of contents and at the top of the poem” (83). a business mill like GOLDEN QUILL PRESS  The Golden Quill Press appears to have been based in Francestown, New Hampshire; titles contemporaneous to Eigner’s mention of the press here are mostly unremarkable (perhaps

214

Notes to Pages 20–21

reason for his regard for the press as a “business mill”) but include Burnham Eaton’s True Places, Willis Eberman’s This, My Bequest and Other Poems, and Evelyn Eaton’s The Small Hour (all published in 1955). which Stefanile has got me onto  Felix Stefanile. I mustve thrown out the BALLAD FOR HELEN ADAM ad  From Eigner’s description, this appears to have been a circular from Williams advertising proposed or available books, specifically by Robert Duncan. In her biography of Duncan, Lisa Jarnot notes that in mid-­1955, Duncan was briefly at work on a project called Ballads for Helen Adam; this project, however, was abandoned in favor of what would become Caesar’s Gate, published by Robert Creeley’s Divers Press in 1955 (see Jarnot, Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus, 141). Duncan’s eventual Jargon book, Letters, was published as Jargon 14 in 1958. I’ll try to get the $2.50 for the Dawson books in here, and also the $2.50 for theAWLS  Williams designed Fielding Dawson’s Krazy Kat and One More (Print Workshop, 1955). Eigner’s mention of plural “books” may be a stray keystroke, or it may indicate his interest in the Jargon books Dawson illustrated during this time and for which Williams may have already been advertising. In addition to a subsequent pamphlet Williams produced for Dawson, Ajax, which Eigner ordered in letter 7, Dawson provided illustrations for several Jargon titles. Judging by date, references for Eigner’s request may include Stuart Z. Perkoff ’s The Suicide Room, Jargon 17 (1956), and 14 Poets, 1 Artist, Jargon 31 (1958); Gilbert Sorrentino’s The Darkness Surrounds Us, Jargon 40 (1960); and Williams’s own The Empire Finals at Verona, Jargon 30 (1959), and Jammin’ the Greek Scene, Jargon 13c (1956). Reference for “theAWLS” remains unclear. I’ve forgotten what A.T.I.L.I.M. is. Maybe it’s Cree­ley’s bk  Robert Creeley’s All That Is Lovely in Men, Jargon 10 (1955). Thanks for that Olon letter scrap back  See letter 4. I havent got an y copy, didn’t make any, or did i, maybe i sent one to Ch at that --of the article, so if you havent thrown it away yet, dont, if you can  See letter 4 for reference to Eigner’s “article” on Olson; for the piece itself, “Religion in the Big World,” see “Additional Prose” in this volume. That bit of verse there,? Nuts, Scraps  Eigner’s prose piece on Olson, “Religion in the Big World,” begins with a verse fragment, whether in tribute, pastiche, or parody, that recalls Olson’s style and engagements in the poem “In Cold Hell, in Thicket” (a poem Eigner touches upon in the essay itself ). See “Additional Prose” in this volume. Yes, Stefanile is doing a chapbook from me, verse, of course, NOT the prose volume i spoke of to you [. . .] The 70pp main piece, which Bob has a copy of, is a mess  For reference to Eigner’s prose, see letter 4. Eigner appeared of­ten in Felix Stefanile’s Sparrow from 1955 through 1962. Eigner appeared in Sparrow 3 (May 1955), where his contributor’s note mentions that “LARRY EIGNER will have a group of poems featured in Sparrow Number Four” (15). Eigner was featured in Spar-

Notes to Pages 21–22

215

row 4 (Oc­to­ber 1955) with a dozen poems in­clud­ing one on the cover, though he was not the sole author. The above letter from Eigner to Williams was sent in the interval between nos. 3 and 4 of Sparrow. a change of “Bollson’s” in line 4 to, say, “Bollison’s”, and after line 8 an insert & c  Reference is unclear. I also enclose 2 pieces  These pieces appear to have been lost, or they may have been passed on to Robert Creeley without Williams retaining a copy. There are no extant pieces (prose or otherwise) corresponding to this letter. I just wrote August now after lunch. I hear this Connie is on your coast, by the way, at the moment./ So i guess i was getting to dig Stein this morning after all. Also Ferrini  References to “August” and “Connie” are unclear. Stein presumably refers to Gertrude Stein, whose writing Eigner appreciated and to which he refers in interviews and writings, in­clud­ing his 1994 interview with Jack Foley (“Omnipresent to Some Extent”), his 1989 collection of prose areas / lights / heights, and the last poem in the posthumous collection readiness / enough / depends / on. Eigner continually refers to Vincent Ferrini in his correspondence with Williams. BMR5 is grt, that 4th photo and all. Edelstein, Dun­can, Layton. Tru ck story. Gdman. Not read much of it yet. BREAD AND WINE just last night. Freud’s biog. P ­ ropertius. Crusade. And I never cd actually get fired onto Aa Copland, or Appalaichain spring  All references in this paragraph are to selections in Black Mountain Review 5 (1955). Eigner’s comments r­ e­gard­ing “Aa[ron] Copland” are in response to his reading of a review/essay by Williams on Charles Ives entitled “If Nature Is Not Enthusiastic about Explanation, Why Should Tchaikovsky Be?” (207–9). Eigner’s reference to “that 4th photo” is to a small selection of photographs (eight total) by Aaron Siskind and introduced by Williams. These photographs, under the title “Eight Photographs,” are of billboards, signs, and other advertising images in Chicago; the photograph to which Eigner refers stands out among the others for being a picture of a sign consisting entirely of hand-­lettered text, from top to bottom and left to right (77–86). Gillis  Don Gillis, an Ameri­can composer and radio producer known, like Copland, for his accessibility and celebration of popu­lar and contemporary culture. Virgil Thompson’s stabat mater  Virgil Thomson, an Ameri­can composer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music (1949). His “Stabat Mater,” for soprano and string quartet, is based on a poem by Max Jacob.

(7) Saturday Sep 3rd 55

The money for AJAX  A Jargon broadside/pamphlet (noted as no. 2) containing three prose poems by Fielding Dawson: “The Escape (For Jack Rice),” “The Murder of (For Marlon Brando),” and “The Hook (For Olson, For).” These poems are printed on several leaves wrapped within what appears to be a timesheet or score­card with an acrostic of the name “Fielding Dawson” entered into the grid. The last page values the publication at 75¢.

216

Notes to Pages 22–24

after 2 years went back to Hart Crane’s Bridge Eigner has noted the importance of Crane in his work. See his 1994 interview with Jack Foley, “Omnipresent to Some Extent,” and his comments there about his own early poem “A  W i n t e r e d  R o a d.” The reference to “2 years” suggests that Eigner was reading Crane around the publication of his From the Sustaining Air (Divers, 1953). I also got to Ol-’s Late War, [. . .] he ­ prefers easy­ ­ going life, (even lethargy, vs. violence  Anecdotes of the Late War, a Jargon broadside (no. 1) with an eight-­section poem by Charles Olson. a copy of SPARROW 4  Oc­to­ber 1955, published by Felix Stefanile, containing twelve poems by Eigner; see Leif ’s bibliography for titles. ATILM, which I also lent to feller up in Maine, is great, (or something on that order), and lays it on the line. Driving car, etc [. . .] But i dont quite get R’s comment on D  Robert Creeley’s All That Is Lovely in Men, Jargon 10 (1955) contains his famous poem “I Know a Man,” and the cover photographs by Williams depict the front windshield of a car, the occupants in the front seat barely visible beneath the sun’s glare upon the glass. Dan Rice provided illustrations. Creeley’s note on the font flap of the book compares his own prosody to that of improvisational jazz musicians like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis: “I am interested,” Creeley writes, “in how . . . ‘time’ there is held to a measure peculiarly an evidence (a hand) of the emotion which prompts (drives) the poem in the first place. If this seems hopeful, let me point to the ‘line’ of Miles Davis’ chorus in But Not For Me—Bach is no different, but the time is.” Eigner’s “feller up in Maine” is probably Arthur McFarland, a frequent correspondent who was also a friend of Denise Levertov’s. I here subscribe to the Layton  Irving Layton, The Improved Binoculars, Jargon 18 (1956). Yesterday heard on the radio Wm Faulkner’s Caaeead­mon recrding Nobel Prize Spch e sec.s de I Dying e altrui cosa  This is the first example of Eigner blending languages in his correspondence with Williams. His reasons for doing so in this instance are unclear; later occurrences appear to be motivated by a need for discretion or privacy. Faulk­ner’s Nobel speech and selections (“e sec.s de”) of As I Lay Dying, “A Fable,” and “The Old Man” were recorded as William Faulkner Reading from His Works by Caedmon Records in 1954. And wk ago 4th part SOUND AND FURY on TV. Franchot Tone,etc. Ethel Wters. It lookedfine. Punch. Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury was adapted for television and aired as a single episode on the NBC series Playwrights ’56. It stared Franchot Tone as Jason and Ethel Waters as Dilsey.

(8) Janu­ary 30 [1956]

The copy i sent to Asheville  See letter 7 with Eigner’s note regarding Sparrow 4. ANOTHER ONE [. . .] ALAS  “A n o t h e r  O n e” and “A l a s, 

Notes to Pages 24–25 217

A l a s,  W h o ’ s  I n j u r e d,” written (as dated in Eigner’s Collected Poems) approximately a year apart and grouped by Eigner for his Sparrow publication. You are very welcome to get C Olson to let you see the mss I sent him  Reference is unclear. Blackburn (or Levertov,more so likely) rather fullblown in cfson to Creeley.?  Paul Blackburn, Denise Lever­ tov, and Robert Creeley. Falkner’s COLLECTED STORIES [. . .] the tales abt ces nego-­ owning Choctaw commune  Possibly the Random House edition of Faulkner, Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950); several stories in this volume engage (either explicitly or implicitly) with race relations in the South. Pretty gd set in TV SOUND E FURY i tht  See letter 7 for Eigner’s comments on this television program.

(9) March 19th 55 [1956?]

the price for the Zukofsky  Louis Zukofsky, Some Time, Jargon 15 (1956). Recently tried FLAME  Flame was edited by Lilith Lorraine (pseudo­ nym for Mary Wright, who was herself a science fiction author). I just got together some stuff to the number of 45 See subsequent letters in which Eigner continues to tally the number of poems in an unnamed collection; this appears to be the manuscript that became ON MY EYES. BERN PORTER  Bern Porter Books is advertised in the back matter of Black Mountain Review 5 (1955): “eleven years of the significant contemporary.” Immediately above the Bern Porter ad is a Jargon notice advertising The Maximus Poems / 11– 22, by Charles Olson (see notes to letter 6 for the text of this ad). See notes to letter 3 for Williams’s own description of this project to Olson. The hordes of my reject slips  This letter printed on the reverse of a rejection slip, dated March 3, from the magazine Accent: Dear Mr. Eigner, There are some striking lines scattered through these poems—but no one piece seems well sustained. But please don’t throw us over. Sincerely, Walter Edens CITY LIGHTS BKS  Published by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. SHEAF #3 (tho not, #2 or#1)  Eigner’s “T h e  W e t  S n o w” appeared in Sheaf 3. yours in ORIGIN #18 [. . .] Turnbull, his first poem there  Origin 18 appeared in spring 1956; Eigner appears to have misdated this letter. The volume includes Williams’s “Everybody’s Homesick Soldier Boy” and “The

218

Notes to Pages 26–28

Old Frisco Grist-­Mill,” and Gael Turnbull’s “Homage to Jean Follain,” “The Moon,” and “The Sensualist.”

(10) May 9/56 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

Thanks for your recent check, but you’re already subscribed to the Olson Maximus Volume II  The most recent payment indicated by Eigner seems to have been on Sep­tem­ber 3, 1955 (see letter 7; Eigner indicates “the money for AJAX”). Prior to this, note Eigner’s frustration around the advertised “Olson Miscellany” (letter 6), his payment for “the Zukofsky” (letter 9), his query about his subscription to volume 2 of The Maximus Poems and a Patchen title (letter 3), and his actual payment for the Olson title (letter 1). Zukofsky will be along in July; the Messrs Kenneth by Sep­ tem­ ber. I’m no less tired of waiting than you are. The Duncan LETTERS (Zohar type) will be a big item Louis Zukofsky’s Some Time, Jargon 15 (1956); Kenneth Patchen’s Poem-­Scapes, Jargon 11 (1958) and Hurrah for Anything, Jargon 21 (1957); and Robert Duncan’s Letters: Poems 1953–1956, Jargon 14 (1958). For commentary on the production of the last title mentioned here, see the Flood Editions of Letters (2003) with an afterword by Robert J. Bertholf.

(11) [May/June 1956]

M2 [. . .] Maybe it was the SYMPOSIUM I haven’t taken care of yet. By god you shd’ve kept the dough [. . .] but yr business methods have these little oddities Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, vol. 2, 11–22, Jargon 9 (1956). For reference to the Olson “Symposium,” see letters 3 and 6. Eigner’s comment about Williams’s “business methods” prefig­ures later friction between Eigner and Williams, as well as Eigner and his family, regarding the financing of Eigner’s eventual Jargon publication, ON MY EYES. Here, Eigner seems to have sent money that Williams returned, hence his comment “you shd’ve kept the dough.” On CAESAR’S GATE, and yrs, etc  Robert Duncan’s Caesar’s Gate: Poems, 1949–1950, with collages by Duncan’s partner Jess, was published by Robert Creeley’s Divers Press in 1955. The reference to Williams’s work is unclear but could include recent publications in little magazines; his most recent book publication was Four Stoppages: A Configuration, Jargon 5 (1953), and his next book, to which Eigner would of­ten refer, was The Empire Finals at Verona: Poems 1956–1957, Jargon 30 (1959). Having got, as Olson says, this idea of precision from the typewriter, we shd take up the pen script again, the latter being freer and not so specialized See Charles Olson’s 1950 manifesto “Projective Verse” in which he declares that the tab and return stop of the typewriter allow the poet to precisely score the poem for breath and performance (Collected Prose: Charles Olson, 239–49). Consider also this very early call on Eigner’s part for a script-­based poetics, its proximity to his draft of the

Notes to Pages 28–29

219

poem “I am a machine for walking,” and his later close relationship with Robert Grenier, who has become known for his own handwritten poems. Only it’s Cid’s tape-­ machine, I wd guess, that’s the ultimate  See Cid Corman’s De­cem­ber 1952 note in Poetry entitled “Communication: Poetry for Radio,” where he discusses—with reference to his own radio show, This Is Poetry—the role of the radio in creating and reaching an audience for poetry. On reading poetry aloud, Corman reports, “It is amazing . . . how much comes clear in the final delivery, that necessary interpretation of the whole and its nuances, that is otherwise of­ten overlooked. Comments are improvised. I follow the advice of ­Marianne Moore, who wisely wrote me when I first started and asked her counsel: ‘Be spontaneous, above all’ ” (213). Eigner’s own maxim of “immediacy and force” dovetails with Corman’s notes about the recited poem, as do Eigner’s comments more than twenty years later, in a 1977 interview collected in areas / lights / heights: “A poem read aloud . . . being interrupted by a question or two from whatever audience—or ­remarks passed by poet or reader would be pretty good, getting the poem unfrozen and back into circulation again” (151). See also Michael Davidson, who notes that Corman describes “transcribing directly onto a tape machine as a distinct genre which he calls the ‘oral poem.’ The importance of this method, he says, lies in the uniqueness of the event ‘with each listener as a partaker of the “con-­versation.” The words of the oral poem find their counterpoint and harmonic life only in the ears of the attentive listener who truly enters the act.’ ” (“  ‘By ear, he sd’: Audio-­Tapes and Contemporary Criticism,” 112). BMR (Cr,Zuk, et al) [. . .] over my head at least as much as ever, but, have I ever said it bvor, a real corker  Black Mountain Review 6 (1956) contains Robert Creeley’s “Goodbye” and “Air: Catbird Singing” and Louis Zukofsky’s “Song of Degrees.” as EP sd:”to appear prompt,regular,and in 1 plce See Pound’s comments in the May 1917 issue of the Little Review: “I wished a place where the current prose writings of James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and myself might appear regularly, promptly, and together, rather than irregularly, sporadically, and after useless delays” (3). ...ance  This poem eventually appears in Eigner’s ON MY EYES. In the typescript, Eigner has entered numerous notes. On this poem, Eigner retains almost all spacing and lineation as indicated in the handwritten manuscript, and adds a note to the typescript regarding the title, “. . . ance,” which was eventually struck from the poem: “I’d like this title to be pretty well realized as ‘Trance’/ and or ‘Dance’ ‘Prance . . . and have the impression of a few words as well, not just a one-­shot, deliberate heading. But of course the trouble with what I’ve done above is that it can easily be very puzzling. Yet I’d say keep it, after all” (Larry Eigner, typescript of ON MY EYES, Poetry Collection; ellipsis in origi­nal).

(12) Monday July 20th 56

Do you mean by ‘broadside’ ad/cards or like Olson’s broadside of a poem there  In a letter to Charles Olson, dated Oc­to­

220

Notes to Pages 29–31

ber 20, 1956, and held at the Dodd Research Center, Eigner reports that “Not 6 wks ago [. . .] Jonathan wrote that the two of you were compiling a broadside for me [. . .] to try to raise money for a bk and then last I’ e heard from him, a month ago, in reply to a query whether this is an announcement card or what he wrote it wd be something like your LATE WAR.” This project seems not to have materialized, possibly because, shortly after this invitation, Eigner and Williams began discussing publication of Eigner’s full manuscript. Couple of wks ago mailed my 70-­piece opus to GREENWICH BOOK PUBLISHERS in NYC. In two days got a letter from THE AMERICAN PRESS to whom I’d sent it back in May or sometime  This manuscript, already in circulation in the mid-­1950s, seems to form the kernel of what became Eigner’s ON MY EYES. As the following letters document, Eigner continued to add poems and revise their arrangement until the manuscript was in its final proofing stages. they told me I’d have to pay $800 as my share of pub. costs  Eigner’s “share of publication costs” was an issue in the production of his Jargon volume as well. Indo-­ European Dict. and now herbal. Whats that ? How to use? What next?  Reference to “Indo-­European Dict.” is unclear, but it is possibly to an Indo-­European dictionary (Eigner’s later poems, such as “health / holy,” explore etymological relationships among words). The reference to “herbal” is unclear. Showed ATILM to wealthy scorned aunt [. . .] Like elvis presley tryin to do poetry  Robert Creeley’s All That Is Lovely in Men, Jargon 10 (1955).

(13) Friday August 10th 56

yr own 3 vol  Jonathan Williams, Poems, 1953–1955 ( Jargon 13). As was his usual practice, Williams of­ten collected subscriptions for books well in advance of their publication. His own Poems, in three volumes, included Amen / Huzza / Selah (13a), Elegies and Celebrations (13b), and Jammin’ the Greek Scene (13c). people around here [. . .] The book just comes under a wrong institution, unpopu­ lar  Eigner is possibly referring to his family, who come to disapprove of his connections with Williams—hence the “un­ popu­lar” nature of Jargon to “people around here.”

(14) Friday End of Sep­tem­ber 56

the McClure and Metcalf  Michael McClure, Passage, Jargon 20 (1956); Paul C. Metcalf, Will West, Jargon 25 (1956). I “shd” get myself Ameri-­ Grain  William Carlos Williams’s In the Ameri­can Grain was released as a paperback by New Directions in 1956. Paradise a hell, like Man and Superman says  A ­reference to George Bernard Shaw’s play Man and Superman (1903), especially its third act, set in a “hell” of surface pleasures and diversions. In the third act of this play, re-

Notes to Pages 31–32

221

leased as an LP in 1952 by Columbia as Don Juan in Hell, the character Dona Ana laments her virtuous life as a life of wasted opportunity and deferred indulgence. Eig­ ner’s book-­buying “budget,” self-­imposed for “namby-­pamby reasons,” echoes alongside Dona Ana’s lament. the Oppenheimer  Joel Oppenheimer, The Dutiful Son, Jargon 16 (1956). his first one in ORIGIN XIV (top of page) Oppenheimer has two poems in this number of Origin: “Lovesong” followed by “An Approach to Le Bain” (105). Are you anxious about it. [/] Some perversity in me.  Reference is unclear, but it is possibly a reference to Irving Layton’s prose work in Origin 14, “A Plausible Story,” where a character considers “man’s illimitable perversity” (95). the 70-­piece thing I spoke of, just that I begin to feel inclinations towards brking it up [. . .] I’m not much at editing, except i have this grouping sense  This letter begins the conversation between Eigner and Williams regarding his eventual publication through Jargon of ON MY EYES. While the Jargon Society Collection at the Poetry Collection in Buffalo contains two draft versions of the manuscript for ON MY EYES, those two versions are nearly identical with the final published version. The “70-­piece thing” that Eigner describes is apparently an early version of the manuscript, yet it appears not to be a part of the Jargon Society Collection. Possible explanations for this include the fact that Williams seems to have of­ten passed Eigner’s manuscripts on to several other readers, in­clud­ing Charles Olson and Denise Levertov. Here it is though, as it may well serve as a tenta­tive start  As will be clear in the following letters, Eigner continued to add to and alter the manuscript almost until its publication, prompting Williams to note in an August 15, 1957, letter to Charles Olson, which included manuscript additions from Eigner, “This, I think, is the last batch from Larry. I’ve begged him to stop” (Charles Olson Research Collection, Box 221, Archives and Special Collections, at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries). I sent some of this same (BORODIN for one, to Harlequin, having recd a letter from Barbara Fry  “B o r o d i n” appears in ON MY EYES, but according to the Leif bibliography, it does not appear any­where else (Harlequin or otherwise). Several other poems from ON MY EYES do appear in Harlequin 2, no. 1 (1957), edited by Barbara Fry; see the Leif bibliography for titles. I sent her the 3 latest,* apud altrui, which i stick in here too  “D a y s” and “M o t h e r s” appear in ON MY EYES. “T h e - -” appears in THE -­/ TOWARDS / AUTUMN (Black Sparrow, 1967); though Eigner sent this poem with the previous two, the typescript for “T h e - -” is not among the Eigner papers in the Jargon Society Collection. Eigner’s “apud altrui” appears to be a variant on the Italian for “others.” Also, if theres a copy of a thing called “Combat” vem­ ber down there somewhere in yr State,--that’s in No­

222

Notes to Pages 32–35

Harle­quin, at any rate according to Fry. I got no copy. All i remember is, Blackburn has one  Paul Blackburn. According to Leif, “C o m b a t” appears in Harlequin vol. 2, no. 1 (1957). That “The--” piece I could well turn over to Bob, eh?  Presumably, Robert Creeley, then editor of the Black Mountain Review. Article someday in the Times: “x Literary M ­ anifestations of Mumford’s Regionalisme” ! [. . .] Anyway, I know what the “bald jaw of stone” is, etc. What a burgh ! For “bald jaw of stone,” see Charles Olson’s Letter 7 of the Maximus Poems. “Mumford” refers to Lewis Mumford (1895–1990), Melville scholar and theorist of technology and the built environment. Eigner’s imagined article “someday” echoes the review Mumford actually wrote of Olson’s work on Melville, Call Me I­ shmael; Mumford’s review, “Baptized in the Name of the Devil,” appeared in the New York Times Book Review, April 6, 1947. travelogue map  This map may be viewed among a short selection of letters, “Larry Eigner, Six Letters,” edited by Jennifer Bartlett and George Hart, origi­ nally published in Poetry magazine (De­cem­ber 2014), and available on the Poetry Foundation’s website. I wonder if Olson quite comes up to the stature of Thomas Wolfe (6 ft 9 it says i LIFE). Is Asheville a pretty interessin place ?x Oldfashioned dialect? Or did W just get it frae bks.  In late Sep­tem­ber 1956, Life ran a two-­part article on Thomas Wolfe, written by Robert Coughlan—“Tom Wolfe’s Surge to Great­ness” and “Grand Vision, a Final Tragedy”—featuring previously unpublished letters and numerous photographs of Wolfe’s Asheville home, family, and surrounds. Wolfe’s efforts to write America by focusing on his own local context chimes with Olson’s Maxi­mus Poems, as well as with Jonathan Williams’s home in Asheville, North Carolina. Of course H Crane fr Ohio fed on der Bible.­ Hoosier  Eigner’s interest here in Crane, and above in Wolfe, reflects his own writing, in its blending of vernacular (“Hoosier”) aural observations (of­ten via media channels) and intertextual quotations and allusions. Olson’s CALL ME ISH was before my time. Olson’s Call Me Ishmael was published by City Lights in 1947. As far as being “before [Eigner’s] time,” this perhaps alludes to the book’s publication before Eigner was in personal correspondence with Olson and other Black Mountain poets. Victor Herbert down New Orleans or the Hunters of Kentucky or Tiger Rag tailgate funeral as per C ­ ine­ rama abt this time last year  Victor Herbert (1859–1924), composer, conductor, and Tin Pan Alley publisher, whose operetta Naughty Marietta was set in colonial New Orleans. Naughty Marietta was performed in the first decades of the twentieth century and was televised live Janu­ary 15, 1955, starring Patrice Munsel and Alfred Drake. “The Hunters of Kentucky” was a popu­lar song written by Samuel Woodworth to celebrate victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans dur­ing the War of 1812. “Tiger Rag” was performed by New Orleans bandleader and jazz

Notes to Pages 35–36

223

pioneer Oscar Celestin. As Eigner notes, a performance (featuring Celestin) of “Tiger Rag” appeared in the travelogue Cinerama Holiday (1955). All references here pertain to music in and about New Orleans.

(15) [Oc­to­ber 25, 1956]

I havent made out that Wolfe thing yet and dont know how it is--it’s all scribbled. I expanded it.  In the letter preceding this one (letter 14, dated “Friday End of Sep­tem­ber 56”), Eigner inserts a few lines excerpted from his reading of a Life magazine feature on Thomas Wolfe, noting “Here a few lines which you [Williams] might,or somebody might, ? , be able to incorporate.” The jotting quickly becomes a two-­page poem, which Eigner notes in closing, “Well, it was a few lines 15 minutes ago.” That poem, which Eigner continues to revise, becomes his “The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe.” Saw Moby Dick movie and rereading it too and added to Wolfe. Not like my “Dying” though,  Moby Dick was televised in May 1954, staring Victor Jory and Lamont Johnson. A theatrical version was released in the summer of 1956, directed by John Huston and starring Gregory Peck as Ahab and Richard Basehart as Ishmael, with a screenplay by Ray Bradbury. Eigner’s poem “D y i n g” (ca. 1952–1953) begins, “And yet they hunt the great whales / the beauties they see.” “D y i n g” appears in Eigner’s From the Sustaining Air (Divers, 1953). Hope things are ok. I CD just as well go on submitting to mags in the meantime, n’est ce pas ?  In letter 14, Eig­ ner responds with surprise to Williams’s apparent request to publish the collection Eigner is then assembling—what he calls “the 70-­piece thing.” Here, Eigner makes clear that he will continue to submit for magazine publication those pieces and others that may end up in the eventual manuscript. His query—“Hope things are ok”— will become a frequent refrain as ON MY EYES takes another four years to materialize, owing to financial issues, Williams’s travels, and difficulties determining a final typescript for the manuscript from the many poems mailed to vari­ous recipients. His addendum in French—“n’est ce pas”—prefig­ures his later use of French when he and Williams discuss financing the project (Eigner indicates that these discussions are sensitive at home, and on more than one occasion, he suggests that Williams not write openly about their efforts to finance the book). ARK II here. And [Olson] says it again. Yrs i ennjoyed, and, Bob’s.  Ark II / Moby I was edited by Michael McClure and James Harmon. Contributors included many of the New Ameri­can poets, such as Denise Levertov, Michael McClure, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Jonathan Williams, Robert Creeley, and Ed Dorn. The Charles Olson, Jonathan Williams, and Robert Creeley poems that Eigner notes are as follows: Olson’s “As the Dead Prey upon Us”; Williams’s “The Switch Blade (Or, John’s Other Wife,” “Catullus: Carmen XVI,” and “Grecque Musique d’Ameublement (Bar-­ Fixtures Dept.”; and Creeley’s “Ballad of the Despairing Husband.” Iwonder how long McClure takes to accept or ­reject.  Michael McClure edited Ark II, but he did not edit Ark III. WILL WEST looks pretty hot, the round. (Bks like GRT

224

Notes to Pages 36–38

RIVER,put you to sleep on nil sp and th vast past  Paul C. Metcalf, Will West, Jargon 25 (1956). Reference to “GRT RIVER” is unclear.

(16) [No­vem­ber 27, 1956]

to deliver to Layton  Irving Layton was living and teaching in Canada. Williams would have been delivering copies of Layton’s The Improved Binoculars, Jargon 18 (1956). Shd i kp sendin stuff till you call a halt ?  In a letter from Williams to Charles Olson, dated August 15, 1957, Williams shares “the last batch from Larry,” noting “I’ve begged him to stop” (Charles Olson Research Collection, Box 221, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries).

(17) Thursday Feb 7th 57

Souster’s new COMUSTION venture  Combustion was a mimeo-­ style poetry newsletter published by Raymond Souster. This note appears, with slight variations, at the top of each 8.5″ × 14″ issue: “COMBUSTION is a review of modern poetry published irregularly from 28 Mayfield Ave, Toronto 3, Canada. Contributions of off-­beat, experimental poetry both origi­nal and translated invited. No payment, usual return rules. COMBUSTION is distributed solely by mailing list: a postcard confirming your interest will bring it to you regularly. Donations, of course, are always welcome.” NEW WORK MOVES CROSS COUNTRY announcement at top of p.5  Williams posted a notice in the first issue of Combustion (1957): WRITERS TO READERS: NEW WORK MOVES CROSS-­COUNTRY. Jonathan Williams, poet and book designer of Highlands, North Carolina, is to begin an exploration of the total Ameri­can book public. Mr. Williams will represent an association of writers’ presses which publish non-­commercial work of value, which recognize that the means of distribution in America are at pres­ent closed to experimental writers. These presses are aware too of the neglect and isolation of many thousands of alert readers whose tastes are not served. Mr. Williams will travel by car, with a complete exhibition of books by NEW DIRECTIONS, GROVE PRESS, JARGON BOOKS, DIVERS PRESS, BERN PORTER BOOKS, CITY LIGHTS POCKET POETS SERIES, BLACK MOUNTAIN REVIEW & GRAPHICS WORKSHOP, PAINTED BOOKS BY KENNETH PATCHEN, and many other presses in America and abroad. aunt who cf’d Creeley to Elvis  See letter 12. Ferlenghetti  Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I’ll be in ARK, forthcoming  Ark III (1957), a little magazine pub­ lished in San Francisco. Eigner did not appear in this volume. Layton intriguing  Irving Layton, The Improved Binoculars, Jargon 18 (1956). Kp up, sure [/] yrs, yrs [/] S H E L L  Reference is unclear.

Notes to Page 38

225

(18) 13th March 57

I have writ a play, of sorts, and Corman suggests I “contact” Duncan  Robert Duncan and Cid Corman. Eigner’s play, murder talk: the reception (suggestions for a play), eventually appeared in the sixth num­ber of Larry Goodell’s mimeo magazine Duende (1964), along with five poems and a prose piece (“Bed Never Self Made”). As published in Duende, the play is introduced with a reprinting of Duncan’s response to Eigner’s letter and play and appended with an afterword by Eigner regarding the work as an experiment.

(19) Sundae March 23 57

My ma said to send you a copy, [. . .] She’s wonder­ing, too, if you shd get permission from the Dr. to use this On the inside cover of Eigner’s Jargon title, ON MY EYES, is an excerpt from a letter William Carlos Williams wrote to Robert Creeley responding to Eig­ner’s chapbook From the Sustaining Air, published by Creeley’s Divers Press in 1953. Eigner notes that the copy he supplies to Jonathan Williams is an “exact copy,” reproducing apparent omissions. The letter as it appears in typescripts of the manuscript is identical with how the letter appears in the published volume; however, the origi­nal version of the letter has significant differences, some of which Eigner notes above and which he and Jonathan Williams apparently edit out. The origi­nal version, as retyped by Eigner and sent to Jonathan Williams, reads as follows: 12/4/53 Dear Bob: Eigners book is charming. I haven’t got such a relaxed feeling from any­ thing in years. It comes from the competence of the writer, his relaxation in the face of the world -­of which indeed he seems scarecely conscious that it exists. There is no tension whatever but a feeling of eternity. It is hard to say how he has achieved this in the world today. As far as I can see it comes from the poets complete relaxation before his and a perfect ear. It’s strange how oldfashioned he makes much of the work of the past appear. But is always so with every new and outstanding writer. Let me see anything he writes. His complete relaxation is wonderful to behold. It is contagious -­not that his text is not at times incomprehensible but that is a minor fault that adds piquancy to the total picture. Thank him and you.

Sincerely, (signed) Bill

As published in ON MY EYES, this letter is compressed into a single paragraph, with minor emendations to the grammar and sentence structure and significant omissions, as Eigner observes in his remarks to Jonathan Williams, regarding Eigner’s apparent “oblivion to” or “relaxation in the face of the world.” The typescript of this let-

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ter was discovered in the Jargon Society Collection at the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, where it had been filed as a letter from Williams to Bob Brown (owing to its address to “Bob”). The letter remains in its origi­nal location (Box 574, Folder 19), but now with information identifying its provenance. Permission to reproduce William Carlos Williams’s letter was granted by Daphne Williams Fox, managing agent for the Estates of Dr. William Carlos Williams and Dr. William Eric Williams. I hadn’t made the insert of the 2nd no. 25 (IT’S GET­ ­ TING THERE) in the different copies, so in what Charles took it is missing.  In the typescript of ON MY EYES, “O p e n” is presented as no. 25; “I t ’ s  G e t t i n g  T h e r e” is presented as no. 25b. In ON MY EYES as published, “O p e n” becomes no. 24a, and “I t ’ s  G e t t i n g  T h e r e” becomes no. 24b. In the table of contents prepared for the typescript, Eigner notes the deletion of no. 15: next to the entry “H,” Eigner types “|deleted|.” A review of Eig­ner’s manuscripts in the Jargon Society Collection suggests that this poem may be “M a s s.” Minus the stray “H,” this poem eventually appears in another time in fragments (Fulcrum, 1967) the photostat i have of O’s VIEW OF HISTORY lectures  Acc­ording to Melissa Watterworth Batt, curator of Olson’s papers at the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, Olson was preparing material as early as 1951 for a series of lectures to be given at Black Mountain College. Olson lectured from this material at the college in the summer of 1956, and then left for San Francisco in February 1957 after preparing an outline for similar lectures to be delivered on the West Coast. Materials at the Dodd Research Center indicate that by 1957, Olson’s lectures had been transcribed as well as circulated by his students and others. Eigner reports to Olson in a card dated April 27, 1957, “Weiners [ John Wieners] lent me yr lectures,” and then again in a letter of August 12, 1957, “Wieners lent me syllabus of yr VIEW OF HISTORY back there, and I got it photostated and studied it a few weeks, then sent the Photostats off to that guy in Maine” (Box 221, Charles Olson Research Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries). Eigner refers to this material several times in the coming months and years. Olson’s Special View of History eventually appeared from Oyez in 1970, edited by Ann Charters in collaboration with Olson himself. Arthur McFarland is most likely “that guy in Maine.” Wish my vol. cd be as compact as that Levertov Denise Levertov, Overland to the Islands, Jargon 19 (1958). That Patchen! I written this disc jockeyt abt it  Jonathan Williams published several Patchen titles. Titles contemporaneous to this letter include Hurrah for Anything, Jargon 21 (1957) and Poem-­Scapes, Jargon 11 (1958). It would be interesting to know how Eigner presented this work in a letter to a local “disc jockey” and what led him to write in the first place. While Eigner was a restless, even relentless booster, one imagines that there might have been something in the local radio programming that would make relevant a recommendation of this nature.

Notes to Pages 40–41

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(20) April 17 [1957]

NEW REPUBLIC and NATION  According to Leif, Eigner did not publish with either of these magazines. duncan’s address  See letter 18, where Eigner first asks for Robert Duncan’s address so as to share his play murder talk. Alteration in DAYS (r5)  See the poem “D a y s” (no. 33) in ON MY EYES. All manuscripts in Williams’s possession contain the alignment Eigner notes above, as does the version of the poem printed in ON MY EYES.

(21) [ June 18, 1957?]

Manuscripts and Eigner’s notes to Williams date to June 18, 1957. Williams bundles the typescripts and sends them to Charles Olson in a letter dated August 15, 1957. That letter details Williams’s travel and readings across the country, as well as his efforts to sell Olson’s Jargon publications. The twelve manuscripts in this bundle, in­clud­ing two versions of the same poem, appear in the following order, as labeled by Eigner; all poems, except for the first two, begin on their own leaves, and only five (which I have marked below with an asterisk) eventually appear in ON MY EYES. “Something I won’t see” (u9) “Time runs on, they say” (typed at the foot of the previous poem) *“G l a s s” (u3) “Pure” (u8) *“D a y s” (r5) “but the walls are so naked” (u7) *“T h e  P a r t y  o n  t h e  F i e l d s” (t8) “T h e  P a r t y  i n  t h e  c o u n t r y  o n  t h e  f i e l d s” (t8) “T H E  S T.  B E R N A R D  L O O K I N G  A T  T H E  T O Y” (t9) *“P L E I N” (u6) “Association” (u5) “O  p o s s i b l e” (x5) *“BOXES” (u4) The bundle begins with Williams’s postscript to Olson, “This, I think, is the last batch from Larry. I’ve begged him to stop.” --Been waiting for a poem to come back from Enslin. No copy here. Will ask Cid or Wieners to send  Ted Enslin, Cid Corman, and John Wieners. The poem in question is uncertain, but given the reference to Wieners (who published Eigner in Measure), it is possible that the poem may have been among Eigner’s contemporaneous Measure or Origin publications: “M i l l i o n e n” and “BRINK” in Measure 1 (1957), “cruel and dark, the city” in Measure 3 (1962), or “A  g o n e” in Origin 20 (1957); all of these poems appeared in ON MY EYES. The Zukofsky came last Monday  Louis Zukofsky, Some Time, Jargon 15 (1956).

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Notes to Pages 41–43

Dry Blake gulch But u8 is my reaction of last ­ ues­day ))  The poem Eigner notes here as “my reaction” to Zukofsky’s Some T Time is “Pure.” The phrase “Dry Blake gulch” is unclear in its reference. ((u9))  Following the text of “u9” (“Something I won’t see”), Eigner inserts a horizontal line of dashes across the page and then enters the text of the next poem, “Time runs on, they say.” Following that poem, Eigner adds a comment, beginning with “This cd be an inscription at the start of the book? In re Gk tragedy.” This cd be an inscription at the start of the book? In re Gk tragedy  The poem “Time runs on, they say.” In addition to considering an epigraph, Eigner soon sends Williams a series of potential titles for the manuscript that becomes ON MY EYES. HYPOCRITE DAYS by Douglas Woolf, (DIVERS) [. . .] Olson’s O’Ryan Poems (MIGRANT) [. . .] Levertov a journal? JARGON 19  Douglas Woolf, The Hypocritic Days (Divers, 1955); Charles Olson’s O’Ryan poems were slated to be published by Gael Turnbull’s Migrant imprint in 1957 but were eventually published by the White Rabbit Press in 1958 and again in another edition in 1965; Denise Levertov, Overland to the Islands Jargon 19 (1958). This an experiment all right [. . .] This is, of course, an experiment  At the foot of both versions of the poem ((t8)) (here titled “T h e  P a r t y  o n  t h e  F i e l d s”), Eigner appends a note about the poem’s organization; the note itself varies in its particulars, but it is the same in its effect. This poem appears substantively identical in these pages; emendations exist, however. Most notable is the inclusion of what is presumably an earlier version of the title, “T h e  P a r t y  i n  t h e  c o u n t r y,” emended to “T h e  P a r t y  o n  t h e  f i e l d s,” and finally collected as “T h e  P a r t y  i n  t h e  F i e l d s.” These correct either version to the same final text as it will appear in ON MY EYES. However, this manuscript version and the version in ON MY EYES differ from that in the Collected Poems: lines 16–18 of the manuscript and published version read as “near there, right on the beach I’d think it // two steps down / there”; the same lines in the Collected Poems read as “near there, right on the beach I’d think it was // two steps down / there”—inserting “was” just before the stanza break. See letter 32, where Eigner attempts to correct the typescript by inserting “was” into the line. Thus, the Collected Poems presents the poem as Eigner intended; Williams appears to have missed this correction in preparation of the final version of ON MY EYES. ((x5))  At the foot of this poem, Eigner appends a handwritten note, perpendicular to the poem text; reading the note requires turning the page 90 degrees counter­clockwise.

(22) Friday July 19th 57

Rbt Duncan’s de Herbina, SF, address  See letter 18. writin Olson xxx abt his lectures  See letter 19. WC Wms i cd probably move on from PATERSON now etc  Though Jonathan Williams never published a volume for William Carlos Wil-

Notes to Pages 43–44

229

liams, the latter wrote introductions or notes to several Jargon titles, in­clud­ing Irving Layton’s The Improved Binoculars, Jargon 18 (1956); Mina Loy’s Lunar Baedeker and Time-­Tables, Jargon 23 (1958); and Giuseppe Gioachino Belli’s The Roman Sonnets, Jargon 38 (1960). but I think I’d like a gander at what i take to be that travelogue of Levertov’s  Denise Levertov, Overland to the Islands, Jargon 19 (1958). I havent got the BORDERGUARD bklist any longer In 1957, Williams produced a pamphlet (this “bklist”) advertising vari­ous avant-­garde small presses, in­clud­ing Jargon, Black Mountain Review, Divers, Bern Porter Books, City Lights Pocket Poets, Windhover Press, Untimely Press, and Kenneth Patchen’s Painted Books. The grouping overlaps with Williams’s traveling array as advertised in Combustion (see letter 17). gave it, to this relative of Corman’s [. . .] on Boyleston Street opposite the Arts Fest in Boston ­Pub­lic Garden  Cid Corman. According to the City of Boston Archives and Rec­ords Management Division: The Boston Arts Festival, origi­nally called the Boston Art Festival, began in June 12, 1952 with Nelson W. Aldrich, a Boston architect, as the general chairman of the committee in charge of the festival. The Festival began under the auspices of Daniel J. Ahern, the executive chairman of the New Boston Committee along with Mayor Hynes. The first festival included a free program of painting, sculpture and music presented outdoors at the Boston Public Garden. Over the years, the Festival would expand upon this program by adding film, dance, and theater. The duration of the Festival was gradually increased as well. At vari­ous times, the selection process of the art shows and the perceived focus on modern arts attracted controversy, and the Festival of­ten faced budget shortfalls due in part to the decision to allow free admittance to all performances while trying to provide quality programming on a large scale. Nonetheless, the Festival continued to operate with the goal of presenting a mass audience with a “broad cross-­section of the arts of our time [and arts] of as high an artistic standard as economically possible” until 1964. (“His­tori­cal Note,” in “Guide to the Boston Arts Festival Records,” compiled by Jessica Bitely, City of Boston Archives and Re­cords Management Division, accessed Janu­ary 15, 2018, http://archives.cityofboston .gov/repositories/2/resources/472; bracketed interpolation in the origi­nal) Of particular relevance for this year was that poet E. E. Cummings gave a reading on June 23. the enclosed group, is rath-­foolish of me, but it’s another grp, once I put it together I cant wholly divide it in my head, and I think you’d like to see the xx first 2 or 3, and the last one  This manuscript bundle is not in the

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Jargon Society Collection. The “grouping sense” that Eigner describes in letter 14 means that such inclusions, organized by Eigner himself, offer great criti­cal potential. This is complicated by the fact that Williams of­ten passed Eigner’s manuscripts on to other readers, particularly Olson and Levertov (e.g., see letter 21 in this volume). As Eigner gives relatively clear descriptions of the group here (“P u r e . then w1-­9”), this group may be reconstructed by consulting the Collected Poems; see note below on “The group begins with P u r e .” Went to Brandeis where I saw Dr. Williams  In a letter dated June 16, 1957, and collected in The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky, William Carlos Williams reports to Louis Zukofsky, “They gave me anorher nice party at Brandeis U. last week”; according to the notes to that correspondence, “Williams was honored at a ‘Poetry Program’ at Brandeis University on 7 June 1957” (478). The Zukofsky is an irritant (see ELEMENTS in this group)  Louis Zukofsky, Some Time, Jargon 15 (1956). Eigner refers to his poem “T h e  E l e m e n t s” (w2). The group begins with P u r e . then w1-­ 9  Using ­Eig­ner’s titles and/or first lines, this group is as follows: “Pure” (u8), “Place just right” (w1), “Between us” (w), “T h e  E l e m e n t s” (w2), “RURALS” (w3), “the first to get it” (w4), “RURALS  2” (w5), “Off the house  back” (w6), “MODERN’S WET” (w7), “A tall cat arches” (w8), “H u n t s / J i g” (w9). Of these poems, only “Place just right” appears in ON MY EYES (as no. 63 in manuscript and as no. 61 in the final publication of that book). In manuscript copies, this poem is noted by Eigner as “to be in MEASURE IV,” though only three issues of Wieners’s Measure ever appeared. Of the remaining poems in this group, and according to Leif ’s bibliography, only “Pure” and “MODERN’S WET” are published—“Pure” in the magazine some/thing (ed. David Antin and Jerome Rothenberg, 1968) and in Eigner’s Flat and Round (Pierrepont Press, 1969), “MODERN’S WET” in Poetry Review 4 (1965). Note also Eig­ ner’s shuffling of the poem “Pure” (again occasioned by reading Zukofsky) between this grouping and that in letter 21.

(23) Saturday [ July] 26th [1957]

Duncan wrote [. . .] an editor of EVERGREEN ­REVIEW  Eigner had queried Williams for Robert Duncan’s address in order to send the latter an experimental play; see letters 18 and 20. Don Allen was among the found­ing editors of the Evergreen Review and would later collect Eigner in his The New Ameri­can Poetry (Grove, 1960). I may well get the  Siegel  Eli Siegel, National Book Award Nomi­ nee in 1958 for his Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems (Definition Press, 1957). Siegel’s book contained a letter from Williams praising Siegel’s poetry. It sure looks like xx ye Dr. is going out very enthusiastically; whereas you, and me  In 1957, William ­ Carlos Williams published an edition of his selected letters through New Directions. By “going out,” Eigner seems to refer either to Williams’s deteriorating health or to his ongoing literary production (or both).

Notes to Pages 45–46

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Cid  Cid Corman. I’m grateful to Olson and hope the job is not getting troublesome  Williams shared Eigner’s manuscripts with several readers, in­ clud­ing Denise Levertov (who would eventually be credited with selecting the poems for Eigner’s ON MY EYES) and Charles Olson. handling for instance  Eigner and others report the difficulty Eigner had in handling manuscripts and other materials. As is noted above, books on the floor or on high shelves posed difficulties for him, and his copies of books of­ten become tattered with use (see his comments on the Jargon edition of Olson’s Maximus in letter 14).

(24) Sundae Oc­to­ber 7th 57

this plan is still on though the printing says Sep­ ­ tem­ ber, since you mailed it Oct 1 [. . .] Here is the am’t.  Reference is unclear. Eigner’s comments about printing and amount suggest the subject is a specific book or set of books advertised for sale by Williams but yet to be either mailed or printed. I do have quantities of books. Though MAXIMUS III and the Duncun. I already got POEMS OF HUMOR AND ­PROTEST The exception Eigner appears to make with “though” suggests that “though” he has “quantities of books” at this point, he does not yet have “Maximus III” or “the Duncun.” Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, Jargon 24 (in association with Corinth Books, 1960); Robert Duncan, Letters: Poems 1953–1956, Jargon 14 (1958); Kenneth Patchen, Poems of Humor and Protest (City Lights, 1954; 2nd ed., 1957). “Ins and out outs and freshets”, yes That may f ­ inish me off  Reference is unclear, but see letter 27, where Eigner seems to suggest that this is a phrase Williams has supplied. The term “freshets” may originate in Williams’s then ongoing production of Duncan’s Letters, in the preface of which Duncan describes “The breaking up of cold clouds” as “releas[ing] freshets. . . . These remind of the appearance of crowds at the margins of my solitude—and that there might be a crowd of one who writes” (x). I was last up to Gloucester in ’56  See letter 14. I wonder if you know if F and O are at daggers’ points by now  See Olson’s address to Vincent Ferrini in Letter 5 of The Maximus Poems ( Jargon 24, in association with Corinth Books, 1960), where Olson criticizes Fer­rini’s limited scope of knowledge and reference as they pertain to the place and history of their shared village of Gloucester. See also Cid Corman’s The Gist of Origin (Grossman, 1975), xxviii–xxix, for larger context leading up to this situation. The former’s new bk is pretty gd  Possibly Ferrini’s Timeo Hominem Unius Mulieris (Heron Press, 1956).

(25) Tuesday Nov. 19th 57

the Patchen  Either Kenneth Patchen’s Hurrah for Anything, Jargon 21 (1957), or Poem-­Scapes, Jargon 11 (1958). BMR #6 [. . .]  Black Mountain Review.

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Notes to Pages 46–47

I sent the cash for THE DRESS to the press [. . .] THE WHIP and IF YOU  Robert Creeley’s The Dress is advertised for sale by the Windhover Press in the Black Mountain Review 7 (August 1957): “Being a collection of poems and stories by the author of ‘Le Fou’, ‘The Kind of Act Of,’ ‘The Immoral Proposition’, ‘The Gold Diggers’ and ‘All That Is Lovely In Men’; together with a drawing by Philip Guston.” Williams published Creeley’s The Whip, Jargon 26 (1957); Creeley’s If You was published in 1956 by the Porpoise Bookshop / Peregrine Press. he returns the all the mss,figuring he says, that I’m my own best editor  See letter 21 for the manuscript bundle Eigner sends to Williams and which Williams forwards on to Olson on (respectively) June 18, 1957, and August 15, 1957, for context. your poem on the empties ((CARN)) in Naked Ear Eigner is quoting Olson here; the reference is to Eigner’s poem “CARN.” According to the Collected Poems, “CARN” was written ca. 1950–1952; Leif lists it as appearing only once, in Naked Ear 9 (1958). Souster  Raymond Souster, publisher of Combustion, a mimeo-­style poetry newsletter. For the rest, I take it nothing wrong in trying Ferlenghetti concurrently  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, publisher of City Lights Books.

(26) Thursday 21st [No­vem­ber 1957]

Wieners has taken quite a few  Eigner published poems in Wien­ers’s magazine Measure. In no. 1 (1957), Eigner published “M i l l i o n e n” and “BRINK,” the latter of which occasioned an important open letter from Robert Duncan on Eigner’s poetic practice. Both poems in Measure 1 later appeared in ON MY EYES. In Measure 3 (1962), Eigner published “cruel and dark, the city.” While Measure only ran to three issues, Wieners accepted material from Eigner for future issues; Eigner notes in his manuscript and correspondence poems slated to appear in issues 4 and 5. For Eigner’s comments and lists of poems in Measure, see letters 22, 28, and 30. In Eigner’s proposed table of contents for ON MY EYES, he notes twelve poems as appearing or “to be in Measure.” In addition to those noted in the table of contents, Eigner also marks the manuscripts of the following for appearance or acceptance in Measure: “A  S l e e p” (“air is mild”), “T h e  M o v i e  o f  i t,” “For Sleep,” “Before setting, the sun on my eyes,” and “every day afterwards I sat at the table with her.” Slated for publication in issues of Measure that never materialized, most of these poems subsequently only appear in ON MY EYES. To add a small degree of complication to this, “Before setting, the sun on my eyes” is marked as appearing in Measure 2 (though this is not confirmed by Leif ) and clearly lends the title to the future book; “every day afterwards I sat at the table with her” is marked as accepted for Measure 5. Eigner’s receipt of Duncan’s open letter is yet another moment that indicates how complex Eigner’s archival record actually is. Meticulously counting the syllables in every line of the nearly 100-­line poem, Duncan argues in his open letter that Eig­ ner’s fluctuations in syllable count per line are intuitive rather than intentional, and

Notes to Page 48

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Duncan somewhat problematically contrasts this “intuitive” practice of the line with his own “contrived” or crafted practice. Upon receiving Duncan’s letter Eigner retyped it in order to distribute it to his own correspondents. In the process, he inserted his own characteristic marginalia and commentary in brackets, and also appended a four-­ paragraph endnote—itself a remarkable gloss on Eigner’s own thoughts about the poetics of the line as well as about the relationship between the poet and audience. A portion of that endnote is as follows: ( ( ( ( All that syllable-­ word count. ? How might it not have been otherwise? although it would be different if so--in a number of places these aren’t the first words, in BRINK, thought of -- or anyway some lines were interpolated, certainly. The count lends ballast to the discussion? huh? [. . .] How do you contrive, or come close to it? writing long things or short ones. Only way I can tell is to do the best you can think of, that sounds best. And the best gets you to immediacy and force, which involves obscurity as soon as you bring in another reader (with a listener you can offer “notes” without losing force much) And so community between millions is blocked in this instance too, in language itself. Originally cataloged as a draft of Duncan’s open letter on Eigner, this manuscript was located in the Robert Duncan Archive at the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries, University at Buffalo, State University of New York. The typescript is incomplete—only pages 4 and 5 of Eigner’s retyped version were found—but these pages include an abundance of Eigner’s marginal and bracketed commentary. nal list i didnt care for, poem i have in my origi­ exactly, when i saw it in COMBUSTION, but last night i rd it in mss again and liked it  Combustion began in Janu­ary 1957 and ran until 1960. Eigner appeared in nos. 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, and 13. At the time of this letter, the only issue in circulation was no. 3 ( July–Sep­tem­ber 1957); all other issues appeared in 1958 or later. In Combustion 3, Eigner published “the ragged lines of,” “T h e  S t u d i o,” and “C o u p l e  o f  Y e a r s.” Leif does not list Eigner’s appearance in Combustion 3 and instead notes these three poems as only appearing in ON MY EYES. I found a letter from Ferrini to you in the centre, saying you shd phone him when you got to Larry’s place   !  And a story i had sent Creeley a yr or so ago Eigner appears to refer to the “mss” he rereads; he has no prose in Combustion 3, and there is no “letter from Ferrini to [Williams]” published in Combustion 3 either.

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Notes to Pages 48–49

This editing job  Selecting and collating the typescript for ON MY EYES; details of this process appear in subsequent letters.

(27) [De­cem­ber 6, 1957]

I can do it, I find--wking in bed with folders btwn my legs  The selection, arrangement, and editing of his manuscript for ON MY EYES. See letter 25 for Eigner’s report that Olson has excused himself from assisting in the editing of this manuscript. As you sd, though, my ins and outs  See letter 24 for previous reference, which yet remains unclear. I have right now a bang-­up sequence of 103 (or cn make it 106)  The extant table of contents drawn up by Eigner notes “87 pieces in 96 or 97 pages of this 8½ x 11 inches size.” That document is itself a transitional one, with multiple entries and emendations: for example, listing poems while also noting their deletion from the manuscript. a thing calld It’s Getting there [. . .] Longest is BRINK if not GETTING THERE  These poems appear in the middle third of the manuscript, and both appear in the final publication (three pages each). On “BRINK,” see letters 21 and 26. Mrs Leonard Corman  Sister-­in-­law of Cid Corman, married to Cid’s younger brother Leonard. Shortest is 3 lines--on the same p.i’v put 1 of 15 11; single inst of 2 on th same sheet  The shortest poem in the typescript as well as the final publication is “O l d  M a n.” Though Eigner’s comment might suggest that the “shortest” has been entered on the remainder of a page given to another, fuller poem, the reverse is actually the case: in typescript, “O l d  M a n” is entered at the top of the page and followed at the bottom by “Mirror.” Interestingly, in typescript, both poems are numbered (nos. 81 and 82), but in published form, of the pair only “O l d  M a n” receives a number (no. 79), even though “Mirror” is longer and is printed on its own page. Both typescripts of ON MY EYES in the Jargon Society Collection (a fair copy and a copy in­clud­ing printer’s specs) reproduce this “single inst[ance]” of two poems on the same leaf. Eigner’s “1 of 15 11” remains unclear; it may be a reference to the vertical space taken up in the typescript by the poem “Mirror”: in­clud­ing the title and spaces between stanzas, “Mirror” does indeed take up fifteen lines; however, there are twelve lines of verse, not eleven. It seems format wd be like BINOCULARS rather than PROPOSITION. And those strings on the latter are pretty delicate  Irving Layton’s The Improved Binoculars, Jargon 18 (1956), was produced in a vertical octavo format (with the long edge as the spine); Robert Creeley’s The Immoral Proposition, Jargon 8 (1953) was produced in an oblong octavo, stab-­bound on the short edge with exposed black thread. Despite this surmise on Eigner’s part, ON MY EYES will also be produced as an oblong octavo. theres a chance I dig the stff as much as anyone

Notes to Page 49

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cd--when it comes to.puttin it together  As is indicated by the discrepancy between Eigner’s count in this letter and the table of contents associated with the typescript, the collection continued to grow even as Eigner and Williams were settling format and length; hence Eigner’s request for “an outside limit.” See Williams’s letter to Olson, dated August 15, 1957, reporting his request to Eigner to stop sending additional poems (Charles Olson Research Collection, Box 221, Archives and Special Collections, at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries). I ha repetitn all right--but not too little solid, central gravity  Possibly meant to read “have/hate repetition”; see Eig­ner’s comment regarding his work in letter 28: “I hadnt realized how much repetition i’ve piled up, and continue to. Two themes generally: space, landscape, the neighborhood; and the sad state of society.” Also one nil thing ,mellow, a lapse, variety that fits  Reference is unclear; perhaps it is a comment about a poem that Eigner feels is outside the “solid,central gravity” of the manuscript. Regardless, his subsequent description of this “nil thing” as “variety that fits” is fascinating. Cd you cut the Laubies ?  René Laubiès illustrated or provided cover art for several of the Jargon publications. As Williams advertised in a De­cem­ ber 1957 circular, “Xmas Mish-­Mosh Message,” he planned at that point a volume of Eigner’s “with inks by Laubies”; in the same notice, Williams described a book of “poems by Lorine Niedecker, with photos by Harry Callahan.” Eigner may have wanted to “cut” in order to either preserve room for poems or reduce overall cost of production (and possibly both). ON MY EYES was eventually published with several photographs from Harry Callahan. See letter 30 for further reference to Laubiès and the shaping of ON MY EYES. Ferleghetti did ok by Levertov  Denise Levertov’s Here and Now was published in 1957 by Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Books. And Stef’s worst was #4  Felix Stefanile published Sparrow; Eigner was featured in Sparrow 4 (Oc­to­ber 1955), with twelve poems in the pamphlet and a poem on the cover.

(28) [De­cem­ber 10 or 19(?), 1957]

i miscounted. Last night i rechecked, again and again [. . .] I cd restore a few of the deletions I’ve made and even add others  Letter 27 notes as many as 106 pages, which Eigner here reports having cut to 88, with the possibility of cutting further to 79. See also notes to letter 27. As i qtd you, the ins and outs  See letters 24 and 27 for this allusion. 4 or 5 of the sequence are going into MEASURE 4 [. . .] Also the 2 in MEASURE #1  For previous mention of Measure, see letters 21, 22, and 26. “M i l l i o n e n” and “BRINK” appear in Measure 1; Wieners’s Measure does not extend beyond three issues.

236

Notes to Pages 50–51

(29) Saturday Dec 21st 57

repetitions kp revealing themselves, bathetics, etc. On repetition, see letters 27 and 28. G e t t i n g  t h e r e  is just abt lost. Mrs Corman  See letter 27; Mrs. Corman is Cid Corman’s sister-­in-­law, married to Cid’s younger brother Leonard. shd I mail you all 4 copies at once or just one at first, for you to look over  Two copies exist in the Jargon Society Collection, both of which are comprised of origi­nal typescripts and mimeographs; one of these copies has printer’s specs on it while the other does not. And if you wd still like Duncan, I’m willing to let somebody else dig again. In that case I wonder what I shd mail to Duncan, from here  Robert Duncan assisted Eigner in the preparation of typescripts for several publications, and he was instrumental in preparing typescripts for Eigner’s appearance in The New Ameri­can Poetry (Grove, 1960) and for another time in fragments (Fulcrum, 1967).

(30) Friday Janu­ary 3rd 58

HURRAH FOR ANYTHING again New Years Eve [. . .] JRNAL D’ALBION MOONLIGHT  Both are books by Kenneth Patchen. Hurrah for Anything, Jargon 21 (1957). The Journal of Albion Moonlight was published in 1961 by New Directions; prior to this, it was privately published in vari­ous editions by Patchen beginning in 1941. the misanthropy is Dahlberg’s! I was wondering Edward Dahlberg. yr MESHOOGA [. . .] Xmas card  In winter 1957, Williams circulated a four-­page booklist from “Jargon (in conjunction with the MACON COUNTY MESHUGGA SOUND SOCIETY),” offering “its Xmas Mish-­Mosh Message and Winter-­Solstice Jeremiad.” In the circular, Williams compares the price of Jargon books to a fifth of liquor—“$4.98 in New York, $3.95 in Wash­ing­ton, DC, $4.15 in North Carolina, $4.73 in South Carolina, and $5.18 in Georgia. A copy of Zukofsky’s Some Time costs $3.00, even in the Land of Nod”—and then goes on to preface his booklist with the qualification: “Since 1952 I have been inditing epistles in this irascible, ulcerating style, belaboring my friends, my antagonists, and about a thousand assorted Laodiceans. I do not need to be told how tedious this can become. I have done the best I could, to trot out the Good Manners and Appropriate Witticisms. So, this much can be said, clearly and simply, about Jargon: I have published the books I wanted to publish, in the style I thought they deserved.” More than fifteen titles are offered, several more are noted as out of print, and still others, in­clud­ ing Eigner’s yet untitled collection, are listed as “projected.” Eigner’s volume is listed “with inks by Laubies”; the next proposed volume in the list is an untitled collection of L ­ orine Niedecker’s, “with photos by Harry Callahan.” Eigner’s correspondent in New York City remains unknown. See letter 27 for previous mention of “inks by ­Laubies” in relation to the planning of ON MY EYES.

Notes to Pages 51–52

237

If you bring this off [. . .] it’ll be miraculous The publication of Eigner’s manuscript. (KK ok. Naturally this is the first I’ve heard of him.)  Reference is unclear, but it is likely to Karl Knaths being proposed as yet another artist to do work accompanying Eigner’s text. See letter 41, where Eigner responds to Williams’s “Further Tired Fried Homilies.” A number of my reservations I put down in ­ brackets as I was copying, along with other things [. . .] (for instance the stricture i suddenly had in re PAREIL, no. 26). But let me know. There’s no. 25, for ­ ­instance  Eigner’s manuscript is heavily emended with many such “reservations.” WET SNOW is no longer an alternative beginning, but migh replace COUPLE OF YEARS or something?  As noted above, the manuscript and table of contents changed continuously as Williams and Eigner moved toward publication. I have 89 pieces on 93 pp ((nos 81-­ 2 on one page)). Nos. 38 and 39 were 2 pp each, but i managedx to get them on one page (the latter I had deleted some lines from. No. 38 is “The Sweep of Dark,” and Eigner notes on the manuscript where he has deleted blank lines in order to fit the poem onto a single sheet; the first line of no. 39 is “Peabody Sq.,” but it is listed in the table of contents as “D r a g g e d.” #9  “What happened?” As noted above, the manuscript and table of contents changed continuously as Williams and Eigner moved toward publication. Last night i went through it again and jotted down 19 possible titles [. . .] The next best wd seem to be THE LESS I / TAKE FOR GRANTED, 1st lines of no. 33 Eigner refers to Henry V, act 2, scene 3, lines 3–6. “The dead become eternal” is the last line of his own “THE HEBREW BURIAL-­GROUND NEAR ALCOTT’S,” and “the last poem” seems to refer to his “X,” the last poem in the manuscript. “THE LESS I / TAKE FOR GRANTED” is from Eigner’s poem “BRINK,” which occasioned an important letter from Robert Duncan when it was published in Measure 1 (1957) and an equally important response from Eigner upon his having read Duncan’s open letter (see letter 26 for reference to “BRINK”). In no. 74 theres a ftnote which I’d say shd be printed in brackets [. . .] I like the idea of finding ways of working in explanations (clarities).  To the manu­ script of this poem, “In a dull place,” Eigner added the note after a movie of hunting in Bechuanaland by John Marshal of the Harvard Af­ri­can Expedition. On “working in explanations (clarities),” and Eigner’s notational practice more ­generally, it is important to consider that his footnoted suggestion to have this infor-

238

Notes to Pages 52–54

mation “just printed somewhere low on the left, as in the ms” in fact became his practice in later decades. I wrote Wieners how I was finally using so many from MEASURE, IV especially  On Eigner’s involvement with Measure, see letters 21, 22, 26, and 28. Measure does not run past the third issue. I take it this wdnt come out till late this year anyway, at the earliest  Eigner was still answering proof questions in Sep­tem­ber 1960 and received the book on Oc­to­ber 31, 1960. Thomas McGrath [. . .] the California Quarterly McGrath edited the California Quarterly from 1951 to 1954 and was a poet himself. B M R  Black Mountain Review. My father made out the table of contents  As noted above, the manuscript and table of contents changed continuously as Williams and Eigner moved toward publication.

(31) Friday Jan 10th 58

Cid [. . .] that missing ms [. . .] 1 of the 4 Cid Corman. See letters 27 and 29 for reference to the loss of the manuscript for the poem “I t ’ s  G e t t i n g  T h e r e.” Eigner is preparing copies in quadruplicate; the typescript for this poem, however, does not exist outside of the collated manuscript. a replacement for no. 25. Then 26 cd be cut out, and 27,(?) and 43  As noted above, the manuscript and table of contents changed continuously as Williams and Eigner moved toward publication. Damn the repetitions  See letters 27 and 28 for Eigner’s commentary on the “repetitions” that appear in his work. Dudek [. . .] DELTA  Louis Dudek edited the magazine Delta.

(32) Thursday Jan 16th 58

(que j’ai fait dan les trios exemplaires ici) Translation: “that I have made in the three copies here.” Eigner occasionally inserted French phrases into his correspondence with Williams; these seem at first (as in this example) to be instances of affectation or play, but as the financing of Eigner’s ON MY EYES came to present problems, Eigner would of­ten write potentially sensitive material in French, presumably to hide these conversations from his family. in no. 7, cross out, last 3 lines [. . .] in no. 13, 5th line fr bottom  Of the two complete manuscripts in the Jargon Society Collection, one has the emendations to no. 7 and no. 13, and the other does not. In one version, the last three lines of “Do the dogs know why they bark?” are vigorously struck through in blue ballpoint pen, and the correct “was” is inserted in pencil into the latter poem. Both appear to have been done in Eigner’s hand. However, neither of these proof corrections appear in the manuscript as published; both poems are printed without the changes Eigner notes. Have just lked at those jazz photos (in BMR7) and yr commentary  In the Black Mountain Review 7 (1957), eight photographs of

Notes to Pages 54–56

239

Af­ri­can Ameri­can musicians, taken by William Russell, are published under an introduction by Williams called “Music Is to Make People Happy” (83–85). 2nd issue of Dudek’s DELTA which came tday--telling of Wilhelm Reich [. . .] (All i’d known was, he’d had some hand in “gestalt” therapy.)  Delta 2 contains a piece by Dudek on Reich, “Wilhelm Reich, in Memoriam.” For his radical approaches to sexuality, Reich was a controversial fig­ure in psychoanaly­sis; he died in 1957. I’m letting D see nos. 1-­ 8. [. . .] “mutnik ..” [. . .] (They came back fr THE NATION.  The first eight poems in the ON MY EYES typescript are “T h e  W e t  S n o w,” “THE FINE LIFE,” “T h e  A i r,” “F l e c h e . .,” “Something that really happened,” “THE CONCRETE GLASS,” “Do the dogs know why they bark?,” and “T h e  D e a d  D o g.”

(33) Monday May 5th 58

Only uncle who takes after grandfader has so much he dont no what to do  See Eigner’s “Rambling (In) Life” in areas / lights / heights (Roof, 1989), 127–35, for Eigner’s own account of his grandparents and aunts and uncles; this description seems to apply to his paternal grandfather and one of his uncle’s on his father’s side. the boston committee for a sane nuclear policy The National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy published an ad in the New York Times, on No­vem­ber 15, 1957, with the large heading “We Are Facing a Danger Unlike Any Danger That Has Ever Existed.” Signed by nearly fifty national fig­ures, in­ clud­ing scientists, academics, politicians, and members of the military and clergy, the ad was picked up and carried in regional and university newspapers. I bn thinking of getting other stuff around here multi­ graphed or something, because not enough carbons to go round.  In multiple subsequent letters, Eigner entertains the idea of photostatting or otherwise reproducing copies of his own work for distribution. Un­ til Eigner struck a deal in 1965 with the University of Kansas, in part brokered by his cousin Edwin Eigner (then a professor at the school), the circulation and retention of his own manuscripts would remain an issue for Eigner. Like that series beginning with FEAR ITSELF. “OR FEAR ITSELF” is the third poem in Eigner’s LOOK AT THE PARK; this collection was privately produced in 1958 in an 8.5″ × 11″ edition, and this note appears to indicate that Eigner was still assembling the work, with the intention of circulating it. My dr. uncle used to go around with Vinc too Vincent Ferrini. The Levertov hasnt got here yet  Denise Levertov, Overland to the Islands ( Jargon 19, 1958).

(34) May 31, 1958

Ten by Ten  Reference is unclear. On number 39 My brother suggests: “Peabody Sq.” in caps.

240

Notes to Pages 56–59

above “dragged” as heading to make the whole thing clearer.  In both manuscripts of Eigner’s ON MY EYES, “Peabody Sq.” appears to have been typed at a later date, either on a different machine or with a fresh ribbon. Up to see Olson two weeks ago  Mid-­May 1958.

(35) Wednesday Sept. 9 [1958]

how about dispensing with illu the illustrations, etc.?  See letter 27; “illustrations” seems to refer to proposed inclusions by René Laubiès (as in other Jargon publications). At this point, it may be due to either cost or space issues (or both) that Eigner requests “dispensing with” them. (And a lot of mimeo-­ ing still looks all rigit to me.)  See letter 33 for Eigner’s comments on “multigraphing” or photostatting his own work. we had quite a little talk abt my prose, for instance, and she described her husband’s novel, etc.  At the time, Levertov was married to Mitchell Goodman; his novel The End of It was published by the Horizon Press in 1961.

(36) Thursday night Jan 23 ’59

my uncle th doctor [. . .] Other relative of mine, a doctor, in Brooklyn [. . .] A cousin in Silver Springs Md  See Eigner’s “Rambling (In) Life,” in areas / lights / heights (Roof, 1989), 127– 35, for Eigner’s own account of his grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Ferrini’s acquaintance  Vincent Ferrini; see letter 33. Am i still next on the slate?  As subsequent letters reveal, the Jargon production schedule provoked strong reaction from Eigner’s family. I take it it must’ve bn the copy i sent you--of the ms--that Don Allen said he has or has seen  Eigner will shortly appear in Allen’s The New Ameri­can Poetry, among the other “Black Mountain poets” (Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov, Joel Oppenheimer, and others). if its illustrations  On “illustrations,” see letters 27 and 35. My uncle is a real Eigner, but no harm or crime ­asking  Eigner’s efforts to help Williams fundraise for the Jargon publica­tion were frequently met with resistance. this collection I’ve had mimeoed  LOOK AT THE PARK (privately printed in 1958). See letter 33 for reference to this publication.

(37) Wednesday 25th Feb [1959]

I bought another book off Souster--the Peter Miller. Very fine print job I notice, anyway .. Maybe he cd/wd handle mine  Peter Miller published Meditation at Noon with Raymond Sou­ ster’s Contact Press in 1958. Uncle’s a friend of Ferrini’s  Vincent Ferrini; see letter 33.

Notes to Pages 59–61

241

(38) Wednesday March 25th 1959

I’m mailing a copy of the ms to Souster [. . .] maybe Ferrini cd get it done  Raymond Souster and Vincent Ferrini. Cd cut 1st 8 pp, I tjink  See letter 32 for reference to these same poems. Have you got my ms or has Allen?  Don Allen; see letter 36.

(39) May 8 [1959]

Excuse me (I regret it, youre ok in the end [. . .] Anyway, Souster turned it down, for Canadiam reasons See letter 37 for Eigner’s previous comments on sending work to Raymond Souster, as well as for explanation of Eigner’s frustrations hinted at here. I’ve just mailed it to Leroi Jones  LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen founded the literary quarterly Yugen and Totem Press. Denise  Denise Levertov. Blackburn  Paul Blackburn. and since you cited YU-­GEN in yr moratorium letter In March 1959, under the heading “SLEEPERS, A WAKE,” Williams wrote an open letter “declar[ing] a moratorium on the press and to express doubts that any of the [forthcoming] titles will ever be published by Jargon.” Among those titles is ­Eigner’s project, listed as Poems. One leaf of this letter is extant in the Jargon Society Collection; presumably a fundraising letter, and complementing Williams and Eigner’s conversations over printing costs, the blank reverse of several sheets of this letter were used by Williams to print proof copies of Eigner’s manuscript. Justifying Jar­gon’s high production costs—“I do think it has been the best designed of all the contemporary avant-­garde presses”—Williams, in the open letter, disparages by comparison “magazines like Yugen 4.” In withdrawing his manuscript and specifically sending it to ­LeRoi Jones at Yugen/Totem after Williams has openly criticized that press’s aesthetic, Eigner appears to be at once legitimately seeking to publish his work with an active press and to be playing against Williams’s pride in order to compel further work through Jargon on his own manuscript. the idea of selling myself short is fantasy  This is presumably a comment in response to Williams’s efforts to retain Eigner for ­Jargon and also expressing his low estimation of other presses, specifically Jones’s Totem. On this note, see the correspondence between Eigner, Williams, and Bill Brown of C ­ oyote Books around a proposed reprint of ON MY EYES by Coyote, Janu­ary through March 1967 (letters 84–86). RED NOTEBK  Henry Miller, The Red Notebook, Jargon 22 (1958). i tht you sd you were satisfied with my selection, sequence, and typing; so yo here you are saying you ­ nearly sent it to Gloucester a 2nd time! [. . .] I’ll write Denise to hold up any work  For another read by Charles Olson in an effort to shape the manuscript.

242

Notes to Pages 61–62

(40) mond 18 may 59

Cormans signboard of a bk  Cid Corman’s contemporaneous publications include The Marches, and Other Poems (Origin, 1957), Stances and Distances (Origin, 1957), A Table in Provence (Origin, 1959), Clocked Stone (Origin, 1959), and The Descent from Daimonji (Origin, 1959). Of these, A Table in Provence and Clocked Stone are the largest; both are approximately 12″ × 15″. YUGEN the mag looks gray, true  See letter 39 for comments on Yugen. the CASTRO ok  Through Totem Press, LeRoi Jones published the pamphlet Jan 1st 1959: Fidel Castro, containing work by Joel Oppenheimer, Gilbert Sorrentino, Ron Loewinsohn, Jack Kerouac, and himself. The cover consists entirely of large sans serif type, black on a white background. But how can you get Dr Wms, or count on him, who might go any day now.  William Carlos Williams had been in poor health since a heart attack in 1948; he had written to Robert Creeley in praise of Eigner’s Divers Press book From the Sustaining Air (1953). Slightly emended comments taken from that letter are reprinted on the front flap of Eigner’s 1960 Jargon publication, ON MY EYES; see notes to letter 19 for further context. No word from Allen yet, on that antho-­ ogy. O well. How did he get to see my mss. (Anyway, I dont want to do no more retyping...)  Don Allen’s The New Ameri­can Poetry will cement Eigner’s literary his­tori­cal connection with the Black Mountain poets.

(41) Friday 10 July [1959]

yr moratorium letter  See letter 39 for reference to Williams’s “mora­ torium letter.” yr “More Fried ”  Williams circulated an open letter under the heading “Further Tired Fried Homilies,” dated June 24, 1959. Williams begins the letter with a quotation from Marianne Moore: “How to overcome indifference is the problem. The burden of proof is on the writer.” Noting that this quotation appears “in the Spring 1959 issue of the Wagner Literary Magazine,” which “is focused on ‘The Beat Poets,’ Ginsberg, Corso, and Orlovsky,” Williams goes on to lament the ways in which their more sensational work takes up the vast majority of pub­lic and criti­cal attention and appetite for poetry: “Towards the back of the issue is an article, Three Neglected ­Poets, namely: Mina Loy, Louis Zukofsky, and Parker Tyler. In all charity, it is difficult to see how they remain less so after this blithely sketchy notice.” All of the preceding serves as context for Williams’s in-­depth four-­paragraph pitch for the works of Mina Loy and Eigner, the latter of which is at the time languishing without funding: “If I could find one Ameri­can who felt that $1000 spent on a volume of Larry Eigner was more important than 16% of a Cadillac, I’d go to press immediately.” Noting that he thinks “Eigner is to [him] the most interesting young poet around next to Robert Creeley,” Williams also reports William Carlos Williams’s assessment of Eigner, sent to Creeley on the publication of Eigner’s From the Sustaining Air (Div-

Notes to Pages 63–64

243

ers, 1953), though Eigner notes that this name and others Williams mentions in the open letter wouldn’t be recognized by anyone in his family. REPORTER mag out of circulation; only Readers D ­ igest, SatEvePost gets handed round  Popu­lar publications of vari­ous po­liti­ cal and literary commitments. Corman? Turnbull? ..Eckman  Cid Corman, Gael Turnbull, and Frederick Eckman, editors of presses (Origin, Migrant, and Golden Goose, respectively) that published Eigner’s contemporaries. Turnbull had a medical degree, hence Eigner’s appellation “Dr T.” Denise sent me a copy  Possibly a reference to Levertov’s own book, Overland to the Islands, Jargon 19 (1958), which Eigner reports as overdue in letter 33. Told that man i dint think you’d cash till ready t go  Un­clear, but seemingly the uncle that Eigner mentioned previously.

(42) Wednesday 26th [August 1959]

Hope u got my note 2 wks ago  Ca. early August 1959; this letter has not been found, and the previous extant letter dates to July 10 (see letter 41). Friendship,Maine [. . .] McFarlands and ­Goodmans Arthur McFarland was an early and ongoing correspondent of Eigner’s who lived in Maine near Denise Levertov and her husband, Mitch Goodman. balloons of colored pencil around the comments to the printer, and switch the blue sheets out of the sd white copy [. . .] Shd I draw the balloons through all the copies?? [. . .]  Both copies of the manuscript in the Jargon Society Collection are marked in this way; one manuscript has the additional emendation of a hard left margin marked in pencil on several poems. Both manuscripts are also combinations of typescript, carbon, and mimeographed leaves (the “blue sheets” and “white copy” of Eigner’s comment) So I 10 days ago wrote Leroi Jones and Olson for the other 2 copies  See letter 39, where Eigner reports mailing the manuscript to LeRoi Jones, and letter 40, where Eigner reports that he will request that Jones “hold off till Oc­to­ber.” the Modern Sequel Odyssey  The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel was published by Nikos Kazantzakis in 1938 and translated into English in 1958. Joyce Cary’s MR JOHNSON  Joyce Cary’s novel of British colonialism in Nigeria was published in 1939 and went through numerous editions. A 1959 edition was in circulation at the time of this letter.

(43) Friday [August 29, 1959]

( Eh, je peux attendre -- a moins pour les a ­utres exemplaires et je le veuxx ? ) Quelle a faire ­ donc ??  Eig­ner’s idiomatic and of­ten abbreviated French is at times unclear; a

244

Notes to Pages 65–66

rough trans­lation: “Well, I can wait at least for the others and I want it. What’s the big deal, then?”

(44) Wednesday [Sep­tem­ber 9, 1959]

Olson has, at least temporarily, lost his copy, and no word from Leroi Jones  See letters 39 and 42 for Eigner’s efforts to retrieve copies of the manuscript from Charles Olson and LeRoi Jones. the bt-­ up old compilation from which i made up the quadruplicate  See (among others) letters 27 and 29 for Eigner’s comments on preparing this “quadruplicate” document. its now in Maine  Presumably with Denise Levertov (and possibly shared with Arthur McFarland), both of whom were then living in Maine. I think she’s using it to make her selection for Turnbull’s MIGRANT  Levertov selected and introduced poems that Eigner published in Migrant 3 (1959); her “A Note on the Poetry of Larry Eigner” appeared with Eigner’s “F o r  S l e e p,” “With the world a chameleon, I come,” and “If you weep, I think that.” The first two are in ON MY EYES. I’ll mail the 2 corrected copies I have here to NAVO  Later correspondence from Eigner to Williams is addressed to Williams, in care of the Navo Construction Company in New York City; manuscripts mentioned here appear to be the two extant manuscript copies of ON MY EYES.

(45) [Oc­to­ber 7, 1959]

Incidentement, je pense qu’il serait necessaire pour vous a indiquer ou a einvoyer lce derniier dixieme part, quand vous ecrivzez quand vous avez le reste. Et a qui.  Eigner’s French loosely translates as “Incidentally, I think it would be useful for you to indicate or to send out the last tenth part, when you write, when you have the rest. And to whom.” Ferrini [. . .] Gloucester [. . .] I dont want to query CITY LIGHTS or anyone else as things are still uncertain. (Do you HAVE TO have illustrations ? Are they ready ? Wd I have much of a chance at N D ­ irections, think you??  Indicating the uncertain status of publication, Eigner is at once considering possible distribution venues (e.g., Gloucester, City Lights), ques­tion­ing the material constraints of the book as proposed (i.e., the inclusion of potentially expensive or slowly produced “illustrations”), and asking ­Williams—­as his potential publisher—about the likelihood of yet another publisher taking apparently the same work. Duerden’s FOOT got here  Richard Duerden’s Foot 1 (1959) contained several poems by Eigner, in­clud­ing the substantial “The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe,” the beginning of which appears in letter 14 (see Leif ’s bibliography for titles in Foot).

Notes to Pages 66–67

245

LOOK AT THE PARK  LOOK AT THE PARK was mimeographed in an 8.5″ × 11″ format and distributed privately. Ferlenghetti  Lawrence Ferlinghetti. a more ornery format  Here Eigner appears to play with the sounds of “ordinary” and “ornery.” Characteristic of Kr, of course, to visit Hollywood and Iowa, and Hyde Park, but not Rutherford  The general reference is to Kenneth Rexroth, though the specifics remain unclear. In a letter to Charles Olson, dated August 15, 1957, and held at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries, Jonathan Williams disparagingly reports on Rexroth’s grandstanding at a poetry reading, and for which one of the attendees plans to anonymously mail the poet a Brooks Brothers suit; the implication here is that Williams has shared a similar story with Eigner. the ghost of McCarthy  Leading the “Red Scare” during the Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy died in 1957; Rexroth was a committed anarchist, pacifist, and conscientious objector.

(46) Wednesday 18th [No­vem­ber 1959]

“O souls/ go into everything”  Possibly an allusion to Olson’s “As the Dead Prey upon Us,” published in Ark II / Moby I (San Francisco, 1957). See The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Excluding the Maximus Poems, 388–95. I almost had a visit from Le Jones,he writes, while sending me Loewinsohn’s WATERMELONS and MM’s FOR ­ARTAUD  Ron Loewinsoh n, Watermelons (Totem, 1959); Michael McClure, For Artaud (Totem, 1959). Mes frere m’apportais EVERGRN %8 aussi..(O’s thing there nice.)  Eigner’s French roughly translates as “My brother also brought me Evergreen 8.” Evergreen Review 2, no. 8 (Spring 1959), included Olson’s “The Company of Men,” as well as Jack Kerouac’s “Belief & Technique for Modern Prose,” Allen Ginsberg’s “At Apollinaire’s Grave,” and Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry from ­Africa.” I’m hung up on ULYSSES [. . .] after some Joyce Cary  Though not entirely clear, this is presumably a reference to James Joyce’s Ulysses; this follows Eigner’s references to the other “Joyce” here ( Joyce Cary), as well as his earlier reported readings of The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (see letter 42). PENNY POEMS, broadside galore  The Penny Poems Broadside series, published out of New Haven, Connecticut, produced scores of broadsides, in­ clud­ing roughly half a dozen of Eigner’s poems. Don Allen is using PASSAGES. And I came up w/ a title for the (bk) when he asked what it was : O n  M y  E y e s  “P a s s a g e s” appears in ON MY EYES as well as The New Ameri­can Poetry, edited by Don Allen. This is the first reference to the eventual title of the Jargon book in Eigner’s letters to Williams.

246

Notes to Pages 67–69

disappointed at “cruel and dark, the city”, ROUND MOVIE .. Let it go.Now I see and now dont.  For Eigner’s comments on reexamining poems once he has sent them out, see, for example, letter 26. Jim Lowell [. . .] LOOK AT THE PARK et hier snt me $1  Jim Lowell was a Cleveland-­based bookseller; Eigner’s LOOK AT THE PARK was privately printed and distributed in 1958. Eigner’s French: “and yesterday sent me $1.” Et pere est un mummy veritable  Eigner’s French translates loosely as “And father is a true mummy” (i.e., stoic or static). See Ibsen: DOLL’S HOUSE ; i saw,Sunday  On Sunday, No­ vem­ber 15, 1959, Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was broadcast live on NBC, staring Julie Harris and Christopher Plummer.

(47) [De­cem­ber 1959]

FORM OF WOMEN and 1450-­ 1950  Robert Creeley’s A Form of Women, Jargon 33 (in association with Corinth Books, 1959). Bob Brown’s 1450–1950, Jargon 29 (1959). The cover of Creeley’s book modifies a photograph by Robert Schiller; the cover of Brown’s book is a photograph taken by Williams. Brown died, and Eigner was thirty-­two, on August 7, 1959. (Cd you let me know of a pub.date so i can write bkstores?)  The date of this letter is unclear; the poem upon which the letter is written has been dated loosely to De­cem­ber 1959; given the uneven progress toward publication of Eigner’s Jargon book, his question about “a pub.[lication] date” does not necessarily indicate that publication is imminent. I have placed this letter here in the chronology, though this is speculation.

(48) Mercredi [ Janu­ary 29, 1960]

Fortune Press  Fortune Press published three of Vincent Ferrini’s works: The House of Time (1952), Five Plays (1960), and I Have the World (1967). Paper Ed  The Paper Editions Corporation distributed books in the City Lights Pocket Poets series as well as for Bern Porter Books. Eigner also mentions “PAPERBACK EDITIONS” and “PAPERBOOKS” when considering distributors for his Jargon book. See letters 51 and 53 for possible alternate references. yr Empire Finals  Jonathan Williams’s The Empire Finals at Verona, Jargon 30 (1959). you qte Creeley: how to live  Possibly an allusion to Robert Creeley’s untitled 1957 review of three volumes by Denise Levertov (Here and Now), Joel Oppenheimer (The Dutiful Son), and Louis Zukofsky (Some Time). According to Creeley’s review (retitled “An Intensely Singular Art” in The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley), the three volumes (the latter two published by Jargon) “relate to this one center: how to live. It is not, how to stay alive, because that is something else again, almost now beyond our determination. But—in the time we have, what shall we do? Do you love me? Where are we? These are interesting questions” (126).

Notes to Pages 69–74

247

And th Layton,they came today  Irving Layton’s A Red Carpet for the Sun, Jargon 35 (1959). J’envoi ceci par la femme clning qui arrive chaque deux semaine qnd mes p va dehors Elle ne regard sans specs  Eigner’s French translates loosely as “I am sending this via the cleaning lady who comes every other week when parents go out. She does not see without her glasses.” I wonder what was Mina Loy’s situation  Williams published Mina Loy’s Lunar Baedeker and Time-­Tables, Jargon 23 (1958).

(49) Wed. Feb.3 60

--one or another of these  In Eigner’s “another,” the letters o-­t-­h are superimposed with u-­m-­b. It is unclear which set of characters was typed first; the alternatives are “another” or “anumber.” other people (and I dont refer to just my family Turnbull for instance mentioned he’s tired of yr ­ complaints abt funds)  Gael Turnbull. These comments are in reference ­ to Williams’s constant fundraising in support of Jargon. the reply from FORTUNE  See letter 48 for both Eigner’s mention of his queries to Fortune Press and his reports of his family’s reaction to Williams’s fund­ raising. When I asked Ferrini  See letter 48. RED CARPET  Irving Layton, A Red Carpet for the Sun, Jargon 35 (1959). the intro. in MIGRANT #3  Denise Levertov’s “A Note on the Poetry of Larry Eigner” appears as a preface to several of Eigner’s poems in Migrant 3 (1959). you have 23 titles otherwise  A reference to the growing Jargon catalog. LOOK AT THE PARK [. . .] SUSTAINING AIR [. . .] I sent him yr OPEN LETTER  LOOK AT THE PARK (privately published in 1958); From the Sustaining Air (Divers, 1953); see previous letters for reference to Williams’s “SLEEPERS A WAKE,” especially letter 39. Denise [. . .] asked her abt Guggenheim  Denise Levertov. Parts of Eigner’s subsequent Guggenheim application are extant in the Robert Duncan Archive at the University at Buffalo’s Poetry Collection; in that document, Eigner seeks funds to support him in his development of his poetic practice, as well as more concrete support in management of his papers, in­clud­ing mailing and typing. A man I sent the appeal to last yr replied he wdnt know what to do with 40 copies  In “Further Tired Fried Homilies” (see letter 41), Williams notes looking for subscribers to Eigner’s book at a rate of $100, for which they’d receive forty books. The mag betwn Worlds has writ me today. Thanks fer telling Newman abt me  Between Worlds: An International Magazine of Creativity was published out of Puerto Rico between 1960 and 1962 and edited by

248

Notes to Pages 74–76

Gilbert Neiman. Eigner published in vol. 1, no. 2 (1961). Charles Newman edited TriQuarterly. I really fig­ure you know what y’re doing (in Catullus, Chameleon )  See Williams’s The Empire Finals at Verona for the poem “The Chameleon.” Like Louis Zukofsky, Williams also took Catullus as a model for poetic composition. Miles .. standards seems like really putting the old twos together collage world all right [. . .] Pika-­ don There, factorial numbers indicate manifolding ? References are unclear. Dudek’s Layton on the Carpet, in Delta #9 [. . .] He also has a review, ibid, of LETTERS, and BAEDECKER Louis Dudek reviews Irving Layton’s A Red Carpet for the Sun, Jargon 35 (1959); Robert Duncan’s Letters: Poems 1953–1956, Jargon 14 (1958); Mina Loy’s Lunar Baedeker and Time-­Tables, Jargon 23, (1958). The enclosed verses are looking into Zukofsky’s SOME TIME again  See letters 21 and 22 for Eigner’s previous comments on Zukofsky’s Some Time, Jargon 15 (1956). Eigner does not specify poems here, and they appear to have been lost, separated from the Jargon files, returned to Eigner, or passed on to other readers. As organized in the Collected Poems, poems contemporaneous to this letter (i.e., Janu­ary–February 1960) touch on music, birds, and time—familiar themes for both Zukofsky and Eigner. I wd like to see the Woolf  Days,  etc., and hope to pay yoy for ..C a r p e t  and Verona too  Douglas Woolf, The Hypocritic Days (Divers, 1955); Williams, The Empire Finals at Verona, Jargon 30 (1959); and Irving Layton, A Red Carpet for the Sun, Jargon 35 (1959). Corman’s 10-­ y-­ poem, PRIMAVERA, looks fine to me Cid Corman’s Invitation to Primavera was featured in Combustion 12 (1960), running more than ten pages of the issue. When asked if i didnt want to watch TEMPEST the nth time i replied [. . .] i didnt like Meurice Evans and I had hrd TEMPEST a lot on the radio  On February 3, 1960, The Tempest aired as a made-­for-­T V movie starring Maurice Evans as Prospero, Richard Burton as Caliban, Lee Remick as Miranda, and Roddy McDowall as Ariel. (She had charged Tuesdy that i havent enough “respect” for her and fathr’s way of “handling” you.)  See letter 44, where Eigner collages several phrases recording his parents’ advice on how to deal with Williams. On the tone Eigner adopts here and in the preceding, note that Eigner is thirty-­two years old. a time Creeley sd damn to him  Reference is unclear.

(50) Feb.13 60

8th st.bkshop  As Williams recalled in an interview with Barry Alpert in Vort 4, he had worked at the Eighth Street Bookshop around the time of the production of The Empire Finals at Verona, Jargon 30 (1959). The shop was located in Green-

Notes to Pages 76–78

249

wich Village; Eli Wilentz, proprietor and occasional publisher, was listed as a Jargon patron in the back of Eigner’s ON MY EYES. both Woolf novels, and Denise’s new N Direction bk  Douglas Woolf ’s work of the era includes The Hypocritic Days (Divers, 1955) and Fade Out (Grove Press, 1959); Levertov’s 1959 New Directions book was With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads. Rexroth: 100 .. Gk & Latin, [. . .] Red Carpet During the late 1950s, Kenneth Rexroth released two volumes of translation: One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (New Directions, 1955) and One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (New Directions, 1956). There is some ambiguity in Eigner’s reference, but these are potential titles that correspond with his purchase request. Other titles in this request include Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, Jargon 24 (in association with Corinth Books, 1960); Giuseppe Gioachino Belli, The Roman Sonnets, Jargon 38 (1960); Walter Lowenfels, Some Deaths, Jargon 32 (1964); Jonathan Williams, The Empire Finals at Verona, Jargon 30 (1959); and Irving Layton, A Red Carpet for the Sun, Jargon 35, (1959). Blackburn’s new Harpers book  Possibly Paul Blackburn’s 1960 book Brooklyn-­Manhattan Transit: A Bouquet for Flatbush (Totem Press).

(51) Friday March 25th 60

FORTUNE PRESS  See letters 48 and 49 for Eigner’s previous mentions of this press. if I take 200 copies at $2.00 apiece. (List price wd be $3.00.)  See letter 53 for the eventual agreement between Eigner and Williams. review copies to NYTimes and Poetry,  See letter 66 for Williams’s list of “people in strategic positions.” writing P de Bo er in Hoboken, and PAPERBACK ­EDITIONS  In his 1959 “Further Tired Fried Homilies,” Williams notes that distribution of Jargon titles is handled by Paper Editions Corporation; Jargon books “will be distributed to retail bookstores by Paper Editions Corporation, so orders should be placed at your bookshop, not to Highlands, N.C.” It’s unclear if this is Eig­ ner’s reference; Eigner also mentions “Paper Ed” and “PAPERBOOKS” when considering distributors for his Jargon book. See letters 48 and 53 for possible alternate references. “P de Bo er in Hoboken” appears to be a mistranscription of “B de Boer,” distributor for several little magazines, in­clud­ing Origin and Black Mountain Review. Dennie’s book [. . .] for savor, etc  Eigner continues to refer to works by Douglas Woolf and Denise Levertov: Woolf ’s The Hypocritic Days (Divers, 1955) and Fade Out (Grove Press, 1959) and Levertov’s 1959 New Directions book With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads.

(52) Friday April 8th [1960]

I trust you got my letter of two weeks ago,  See letter 51. I remember what’s bn sd  In addition to the funding difficulties im-

250

Notes to Pages 78–80

plied in this letter, see also letters 36 and 49 for Eigner’s reference to his family’s resistance to or disapproval of Williams and of Eigner’s own pursuit of poetry. I’ll write FORTUNE to go ahead  See letters 48 and 49. the Ignatow tip. He’s using something  David Ignatow served as editor for a number of periodicals, in­clud­ing Ameri­can Poetry Review, Analytic, ­Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Nation. Ignatow also edited a special section of the Chelsea Review (on “Po­liti­cal Poetry”) where Eigner published “OR FEAR ITSELF”; Leif indicates this as Chelsea Review 8 (Oc­to­ber 1960): 69. THE FIFTIES, #3, is better’n #2,  Edited by Robert Bly and William Duffy, The Fifties 2 (1959) includes an ambivalent review of Robert Creeley, focusing on his idiom and other aspects of style; no. 3 (1959) includes poems by David Ignatow and Denise Levertov, Jerome Rothenberg’s translation of Paul Ce­ lan’s “Todesfuge,” and a satirical piece on New York literary critics, purportedly authored by “Diana Tilling.” Responding to an issue of the Partisan Review, the latter begins, “My name is Diana Tilling and I am very important. My husband is Lionel Tilling, and he is also very important. Between the two of us, we are so important that everything we do, think, or say deserves a lot of space in the Partisan Review” (54–56). Eigner refers to the Celan and the satirical pieces as the “best thing[s]” in The Fifties 3. FOOT  Eigner appeared in nos. 1 and 8 of Richard Duerden’s Foot. Duerden’s Foot featured many West Coast writers, in­clud­ing Robert Duncan, Philip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, Jack Spicer, Kenneth Rexroth, Lew Welch, and Michael McClure. FADE OUT  Douglas Woolf, Fade Out (Grove Press, 1959).

(53) Saturday 16th April 60

Denise’s reading in Boyleston Hall [. . .] Mr K ­ earny [. . .] Kearne  See Grenier and Faville’s chronology in volume 1 of The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner: “Good Friday 1960: — Hears Denise Levertov read in Harvard Yard, meets Robert Lowell & is introduced to Gordon Cairnie (proprietor of The Grolier Book Shop in Cambridge) by Charles Olson at Harvard Advocate Building” (xxiii). Ferlenghetti [. . .] he’d stock L o o k  a t  t h e  P a r k  if it were in ordinary page size  Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Eigner’s LOOK AT THE PARK was self-­published in 1958, in an 8.5″ × 11″ stapled edition. PAPERBOOKS  The Paperbook Gallery in Greenwich Village was run by Martin Geisler (also a patron of Jargon, as listed in the back of Eigner’s ON MY EYES). Geisler was an early advocate for paperbound books, even writing and self-­publishing a guide to the process called How to Set Up and Operate a Paperback Bookshop (1961). Eigner also mentions “Paper Ed” and “PAPERBOOKS” when considering distributors for his Jargon book. See letters 48, 51, and 53 for possible alternate references. C i t y  L i g h t s  Gr r o l i e r ’ s  City Lights Books (San Francisco, CA); Grolier’s Book Shop (Cambridge, MA).

Notes to Pages 80–83

251

(54) Thursdy [May 20, 1960]

PARK [. . .] Jim Lowell  LOOK AT THE PARK, Eigner’s 1958 self-­ published pamphlet of poems; Jim Lowell was a Cleveland-­based bookseller. after receiving from Turnbull a spare copy (tear sheet) of Denise’s intro and sel  Gael Turnbull’s Migrant published a selection of Eigner’s poetry with a prefatory note by Denise Levertov in Migrant 3 (1958); this was later reprinted as the preface to ON MY EYES. D Allen’s anth/y arr. last wk [. . .] I enjoy the biog.s a gd deal  Don Allen’s The New Ameri­can Poetry included (as Eigner notes) important statements of poetics and biographical notes serving to further contextualize Allen’s groupings of the poets into five schools. See that volume for the names Eigner lists, as well as their corresponding poems. “YUE #6” is Jones’s Yugen. H James?--i rd WASH SQ early cet an  Eigner’s French: “early this year.” At the time, multiple editions were in circulation of Henry James’s Wash­ ing­ton Square.

(55) June 15, 1960 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

The Holland-­ Goldowsky Gallery  This Chicago-­based art gallery was founded in 1959 by Bud C. Holland and Noah Goldowsky and featured Chicago-­ based artists, as well as members of the New York School, and Harry Callahan, whose photographs appear in ON MY EYES. The gallery is cited as a patron of Jargon in Eigner’s ON MY EYES. Callahan’s students at the Institute of Design Harry Callahan taught at the Institute of Design (part of the Illinois Institute of Technology) from 1946 until 1961. Charlotte  Of the many printers Williams used for Jargon books, he frequently used William Loftin’s Heritage Printers in Charlotte, North Carolina.

(56) Thursday 22 June [1960]

gave the newspaper a story, appearing under head of “Poet wins Laurels”  This item has not yet been located. royalties--on the Grove Press Anthology  “Grove Press Anthology” is a reference to The New Ameri­can Poetry. On “royalties,” Eigner later reports requesting that Allen send royalties to Williams and other publishers, in addition to depositing some in a trust fund managed by his brother Richard (see letter 78). I guess i cd sign em well enough--in Loy format This is presumably a reference to following Mina Loy’s example in her 1958 Jargon book, Lunar Baedeker and Time-­Tables ( Jargon 23). Yr “Distances to th friend” just hit me the other day, and th one above that, “Will and Kate ..” Williams’s “Those Troubling Disguises” and “The Distances to the Friend” appear in the Allen anthology, The New Ameri­can Poetry (108); “Those Troubling Disguises” begins, “Sat Will & Kate, / doing a Mr & Mrs / Eve & Adam . . . / Milton got murmured.”

252

Notes to Pages 84–86

(57) June 26, 1960 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

my thought was, your family would buy 200 copies at $2.00 per [. . .] I don’t believe we’ve mentioned a fig­ ure more than 200 before.  See letters 51 and 53 for Eig­ner’s proposal to purchase 200 copies at $2.00 each and letter 56 for Eigner’s mention of 250 copies. Maximus  Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, Jargon 24 (in association with Corinth Books, 1960). I remember you sent a check back in the winter for some stuff to Eighth Street  See letter 50 and accompanying notes.

(58) [ June 30, 1960]

Thats right,: agreement is for 200 copies for at $2.00 apiece  See letters 51, 53, and 57 for this agreement. Cid says Cairney  Cid Corman; Gordon Cairnie; see letter 53 for Eig­ ner’s introduction to Cairnie. Some long (i.e. full-­ page) pieces  See Eigner’s Collected Poems, ca. May–June 1960, for a sequence of several full-­page poems (390–410). as Whalen sd: “I’m going home and start typing./I’m tired of nothing happening.”  Philip Whalen’s poem “I Return to San Francisco” contains this couplet, cited correctly by Eigner except for the punctuation: “I’m going home & start typing / I’m tired of nothing happening” (Memoirs of an Interglacial Age [Auerhan, 1960], lines 8–9).

(59) Sunday Aug. 27 60

Looking back, again it is a prett y good book [. . .] I feel very glad, for now, etc  This is presumably a reference to Eigner’s ON MY EYES, currently in production. The idea of a pond of any size gives me a sinking sensation, and I have the manyana spirit  Reference is unclear. The phrase “the manyana spirit” seems to be an elaboration on the idea of “entropy,” but “entropy” itself may also borrow from Williams’s description of Jargon in his 1957 “Xmas Mish-­Mosh Message” circular, where Williams describes his own cross-­country efforts to promote Jargon and other small presses: “Acting on two poetic principles: 1) ‘Everything Ain’t Entropy’ (necessarily); 2) ‘It All Coheres’ (occasionally), Jargon set out to lay down some rails on a Wilderness Road. . . . I certainly thought that by devoting complete attention to publishing, I could at least break even from the sales of Jargon’s books to the group of readers in America whom Duncan had characterized as ‘those who long for the poem.’ The more I have sought them the more I wonder if they, in fact, exist.” BETWEEN WORLDS [. . .] Laudable purpose  On the “laudable purpose” of Between Worlds, note the editorial statement to the first issue:

Notes to Pages 86–88

253

Jacques Barzun in a book review recently wrote: “And now the artist has debarred himself from utterance of any kind; he is ‘acting’ and ‘experimenting,’ and presumably awaiting a brighter day to redeem his hopelessly mortgaged mind.” This magazine will be based on the supposition that such a statement simply is not true. It will be based on the proposition that creative writing, art, and music can bring about more understanding between peoples than creative physics can. And so we will print no book reviews or literary criticism. The ambience in avant-­garde and literary magazines or critics criticizing critics criticizing critics is like mustard gas and contaminates the creative works presented. It is this ambience that convinces us that our minds are mortgaged. (Between Worlds 1, no. 1 [1960]: 5) #1 BIG TABLE ??  The first issue of Big Table (which famously reprints content formerly set to appear in the Winter 1959 Chicago Review) includes extracts from William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch and Jack Kerouac’s “Old Angel Midnight,” and works by other members of the Beat Generation. Be seeing you, heres hope It’ll be exciting. L a r r y [. . .] L. Eigner  As usual, Eigner appends a valediction on the card’s reverse, near his address and in the upper left when the card is held in landscape orientation; this habit seems to indicate that the valediction on the front of the card was written after completion of the specific note.

(60) August 30, 1960 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

no necessity of your reading proof  Williams may have been correct in that this arrangement saved time, yet Eigner immediately points to several errors in his first letter sent upon receiving the book (see letter 63). Loftin [. . .] Ronald Johnson  William Loftin, proprietor of the North Carolina–based Heritage Printers; Ronald Johnson was at one time a romantic and traveling partner of Williams’s. a few spellings in the manuscript  All numbers provided here in the margins by Eigner correspond to the typescript table of contents Eigner origi­ nally included with the manuscript; as published in ON MY EYES, they are (respectively) numbers 46, 49, 60, 48, 16, and 29. Except for two corrections, Eigner’s notes were incorporated into ON MY EYES. Those two omissions are to “S t e p -­w i s e” (where Eigner’s request was not entered), and to “M e m o r i a l  D a y” (where an apostrophe was inserted despite Eigner’s note that there is “no error”). Nos. 48, 51,  It appears as though Eigner may have first started to list the numbers of the poems proofed in the previous section of Williams’s letter and then shifted to insert those numbers in the margins next to Williams’s questions. Migrant [. . .] Denise’s intro. et 3 poems  Denise Levertov’s introduction to ON MY EYES first appeared in Migrant 3 (1958) introducing a small selection of Eigner’s poems. ???  any others???  Final acknowledgments include Origin, Black Moun­

254

Notes to Pages 88–90

tain Review, Migrant, The Naked Ear, Sheaf, Measure, Combustion, Hearse, The New Ameri­can Poetry: 1945–1960, Fiddlehead, Delta, Harlequin, New Athenaeum, Sparrow, New Orleans Poetry Journal, and Foot. Break up the dogfight  This is apparently a reference to an early draft of a poem that is eventually more than thirty lines long. Beginning “Break the dogfight” (omitting “up”), that subsequent poem follows with “the lawnmower too” in the sec­ond line. Midway through the completed poem, Eigner includes revisions of the lines present in this letter: “the crickets / now dont / keep me up” becomes “the crickets / do not keep me / from nothing”; “planes take the air” becomes “passengers take the air.” “Break the dogfight” eventually appeared in Tish, no. 6 (1962), and in WATERS / PLACES / A TIME (Black Sparrow, 1983). Dorn’s MIGRANT essay on MAXIMUS ?  Ed Dorn’s What I See in the Maximus Poems was published as a small pamphlet in 1960 by Gael Turnbull’s Migrant Press.

(61) Friday Sept.2 60

In “ ..world a chameleon ” [. . .] “ chiascura” Listed as number 17 in the manuscript table of contents, “With the world a chameleon, I come” becomes number 16 in ON MY EYES. As published in ON MY EYES and the Collected Poems, Eigner’s “chiascura” becomes “chiaroscuro.” Comparison of the origi­ nal “chiascura” and the “corrected” “chiaroscuro,” along with Eigner’s preference not to “twist anybody’s tongue, for rhythm’s—metre’s sake,” and his valediction “from the Light Brigade” present fascinating potentials for the consideration of Eigner’s practice in relation to metrical patterning and canonical standards of recitation such as the Tennyson poem to which Eigner alludes (see the note below concerning the valediction). You say the proofs are already y back in Charlotte [. . .] I guess “hve” there is a littl better for same reason  On these proofing questions, see letter 60; ON MY EYES was printed at Heritage Printers in Charlotte, North Carolina. I still feel sluggish. “ the good of the intellect” An allusion to Dante’s Divine Comedy (canto 3, lines 16–18), where those who have lost the good of the intellect are condemned to hell; feeling “sluggish,” Eigner is perhaps “condemning” himself for not feeling more motivated. yrs from the Light Brigade  The valediction alludes to Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” which may be of significance here for several reasons, in­clud­ing Eigner’s frequently shared sense of futility in writing, publishing, or finances. After supper last night i played them ll. abt lawnmower & cricket into one of those longshots On ­ “lawnmower & cricket,” see Eigner’s postscript typed into letter 60. The phrase “one of those longshots” refers to the fact that the origi­nal half dozen lines became five times as long in revision. The statement “i played them ll” is unclear. On Eigner’s typewriter, the characters for the lowercase letter “l” (el) and for the numeral “1” are quite close

Notes to Pages 90–93

255

in appearance. Perhaps “ll” is an abbreviation for “lines,” or Eigner’s verb “played” is a euphemism for his having converted or developed the previously shorter work into something longer.

(62) Oct. 20 60

Dear people  This card is addressed to “Jonathan Williams and family.” Jonathan was to be here last week  See letter 60 referring to Williams’s planned Oc­to­ber 11 visit. the printers’ bills  On the payment arrangements between Eigner and Williams, see letter 58.

(63) 31 Oc­to­ber 1960 Monday

Callahan’s photographs [. . .] Grass in ­daylighttime  Harry Callahan’s photographs in Eigner’s ON MY EYES pre­ sent, in some instances, detailed close-­ups of grass, leaves, and other textured natural surfaces in black and white. A missed lacuna, I notice, in “natural environment” “or cats  each step of a  ” if my memory isnt playing tricks on me  In manuscript, as Eigner notes, this poem has one additional character space between “cats” and “each step of a.” Turbull’s check  Gael Turnbull. Congrats last wk from Zukofsky. And what a blurb. r  Un iqu typing!? Look at Olson  Here, Eigner appears to report Zukofsky’s observations about the typographic layout of ON MY EYES. I had that operation  See letter 70 for Eigner’s continuing reference to this medical issue. No announcement cards [. . .] Grolier’s, Ferrini See Williams’s proposal (letter 55) and Eigner’s response (letter 58) for mention of the announcement cards. See also letter 70 for when the cards finally arrive. Aside from stocking books at Grolier’s Bookshop in Cambridge, Eigner had also considered asking Vincent Ferrini to act as an agent selling books. I’ll take MAXIMUS, but it is true, as Cid remarked somex yrs back, that its unwieldy  Cid Corman. On the unwieldy format of Olson’s Maximus poems, see Eigner’s comment in letter 14. D a y s [. . .] It is surprising that, having got back to “hve”, in “Anyhow”, “chiascura” in “..­chamaleon” not so; which may be ok, at that, “chiaroscura” b ­ eing rather bumpy and onomopoeic there, besides ­ being the correct form [. . .] 24a [. . .] 24b  See Eigner’s proof comments in letter 61. Laytons RED CARPET  Irving Layton’s A Red Carpet for the Sun, Jargon 35 (1959). ball-­bearing  See the note above concerning Eigner’s “operation” and letter 70 for his continuing reference to this medical issue.

256

Notes to Pages 94–95

(64) Fri. Nov. 11 [1960]

Struggling with a poem in re that cover  Poems dated No­ vem­ber 7, 1960, and No­vem­ber 10–18, 1960, begin, respectively, with the lines “the squirrel trying this tree again” and “Smoothe pictures” (see Collected Poems, 435–36). The latter poem, dated over a week in No­vem­ber, is perhaps the poem Eigner mentions in this letter. Today went and deposited 5 copies w/ Ferrini [. . .] I bought the JARGON/CORINTH MAX off him  Vincent Ferrini; Charles Olson, The Maximus Poems, Jargon 24 (in association with Corinth Books, 1960). Denise wrote too  Denise Levertov. Got word from Ch. Hanna of Muehlenberg College Charles Hanna. that cover ties in with poem #1  The first poem of ON MY EYES is “T h e  W e t  S n o w.” Cid  Cid Corman.

(65) Sat 26 Nov 60

the Commission  This is possibly a reference to Gilbert Sorrentino’s The Darkness Surrounds Us, Jargon 40 (1960). As Williams recalled in conversation with Barry Alpert, I was very friendly with Sorrentino, and he just happened to have a little money in hand when I didn’t have any in hand, and sort of said well gee why don’t we do this book. Well Jargon had always been based on my decision, my enthusiasm, my asking them, and then all of a sudden you get in a position where people say you’ve got these books now, I’ve got some money, let’s do it. So I was reluctant to ever put the name Jargon directly on such books. If the author was involved financially, I thought maybe I’d better just say Jonathan Williams Publisher as distinct from the Jargon series. I’m not sure that this is absolutely clear cut through­out the history of the thing. (Vort 4 [Fall 1960]: 60) bestir myself agn to the lofty and dull calm heights  Although this line evokes the Romantics, especially Wordsworth, it appears to be Eigner’s own invention. no-­ one there has bt yet,F writes  Vincent Ferrini. Eigner had asked Ferrini to act as book distributor in Gloucester. See letters 45 and 64 for Eig­ ner’s mention (first) of giving Ferrini fifty copies and (later) delivering five. When the books arrive without a proposed announcement card (see letter 63), Eigner begins hand-­to-­hand distribution in this manner. I may be drawn into the newspap mill, by dint of one uncle  See Eigner’s previous reference to a similar notice placed in the local papers by an aunt in letter 56. I wrote Loftin [. . .] Cards not yet  William Loftin of

Notes to Pages 95–98

257

Heritage Printers; see Williams’s proposal (letter 55) and Eigner’s response (letter 58) for mention of the announcement cards. See also letter 70 for when the cards finally arrive. References to other individuals include Harry Callahan (“Callahan”), ­LeRoi Jones (“Le Jones”), Raymond Souster (“Souster”), and Robert Duncan (“Duncan”). Glster ph.also hit when F finally rd 1 of th poems aloud. Turnbull  Other than the references to Vincent Ferrini and Gael Turnbull, this note is unclear. Dan’s Purgatorio (beat?)  The sec­ond part of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Eigner’s parenthetical is unclear. Thoreau (Mod.L vol.) Maybe Ol dislikes T?  A Modern Library edition of Thoreau’s writings appeared in 1950 and included Walden, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, The Allegash and East Branch, “Walking,” “Civil Disobedience,” and several additional essays. It is unclear why Eigner would suppose Charles Olson “dislikes” Thoreau; in at least one account, Peter Anastas recalls that Olson “loved” Thoreau: “I also know that [Olson] loved [Thoreau]. . . . He loved the localism, the specificity. He loved Thoreau’s quotation and he quoted it to me many times, which sent me back to Henry David Thoreau, he loved the quotation: ‘Everywhere you go on the face of the earth, someone has been there before you.’ Olson loved that.” (“Charles Olson over the Years”). Chelsea Revw #8 i enjoy, largely--th pol.poems--tho hvnt got to th Dorn yet,  See letter 52 where Eigner discusses sending material to David Ignatow for this issue. A special subsection on “po­liti­cal poetry” included David Antin, Jerome Rothenberg, Langston Hughes, Chad Walsh, Harry Roskolenko, Donald Hall, Robert Duncan, Robert Sward, Allen Ginsberg, Ed Dorn, and Robert Creeley.

(66) Dec 5/60 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

To answer your question  See letter 65. I re-­ reminded Loftin about the mailing cards See notes to letter 65.

(67) Fri Dec 9 60

The 20 copies  Reference is unclear, but this seems to be in response to a request (missing) from Williams to Eigner for copies of ON MY EYES from the latter’s supply to be taken with Williams on his trip west. copyright too  See letter 66. A Jon Greene, now a freshman at Bard C ollege Jonathan Greene, who recalled the following in email correspondence with the author on March 12, 2015: I started Bard in 1960 and they had a mid-­term ‘field period’ and I was searching for something to do during this six-­week time. It was probably Denise ­Levertov who I had known for a few years who suggested I work with Larry Eigner for this period which would have started in early Janu­ary of 1961.

258

Notes to Pages 98–99

I tried to help Larry with companionship and perhaps sorting some things out. I did not complete the six week stint for my father died before that time was over and I had to go back to New York City to deal with that with my mother. I remember also perhaps distributing ON MY EYES some for Larry and JW . . . delivering 10 copies to the British Book Centre which I am sure was an order created by Diane Wakowski who worked there then. I got close to Larry and we stayed in touch. He sent me many poems and letters.

(68) Dec 13/60 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

(Patchen’s 49th birthday)  Kenneth Patchen. your sending the books so promptly  See letter 67. A couple comments in today  A reference to comments received from the following individuals (also listed in the letter): Donald Hall, James Dickey, Don Allen, Robert Duncan, and James Broughton. Eigner’s ON MY EYES appears not to have been reviewed by Dickey in the Sewanee Review. That’s pretty wild; i.e., Mr Jon Greene. Must make you feel terribly venerable?  See letter 67 and subsequent letters from Eigner detailing interactions with Greene.

(69) Fri. Dec 30 60

a 2nd edition  ON MY EYES arrived in Oc­to­ber of this same year; already, Eigner is considering a sec­ond edition, as he will in years to come. See letters 84, 85a, and 85b between Eigner, Williams, and Bill Brown in 1967. Didnt expect you to contact Don.Hall -­he very conservative -­was on tv in Boston some wks some yrs ­ ago -­and was in N.Orl. Potry Jrnal yrs ago, etc. -­ I didnt dope out why Bly paid him any mind  Donald Hall; Robert Bly. Eigner appeared four times in the New Orleans Poetry Journal: April 1955 (“Near the Beginning”), De­cem­ber 1955 (“WHO KNOWS JUST WHEN THIS WILL END”), July 1956 (“A flat-­faced dog”; “Afterwards”), and Sep­tem­ber 1957 (“HE MUST HAVE GOT UP EARLY”). Eigner, Vassar Miller, and Donald Hall appeared alongside each other in the De­cem­ber 1955 issue. I do feel venerable  See letter 68 on Jonathan Greene’s proposed visit to Eigner. Arn. Goldman, who wnts to lecture on it at U.of Manchester, wher he is bnd for a tching job Arnold ­ Goldman was a young Swampscott resident who, when enrolled in Swampscott High School (class of ’53), edited the student newspaper, The Swampscotta; after his doctoral work at Yale, Goldman held vari­ous academic positions in the US and UK, in­ clud­ing a period at the University of Manchester. Arnold Goldman, “Dorothy and Arnold Goldman,” accessed February 15, 2018, http://www.cowbeech.force9.co.uk /allbutnews.htm; Arnold Goldman, “Swampscott High School Class of 1953,” accessed February 15, 2018, http://www.cowbeech.force9.co.uk/class.htm.

Notes to Pages 99–100

259

JGreene,coming th 1st or 3rd,wd also like to go to Glster; he has summerd in Magnolia  On Jonathan Greene, see letter 67. Magnolia is approximately five miles south of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Of these efforts, Greene recalls: In Janu­ary of 1961 when I was living there in Swampscott, I stayed at a boarding house. Perhaps they gave me breakfast. Then I went out to lunch on my own, mostly to a place frequented by fishermen and I had fish chowder. There was one fancier place to eat and I had lunch there just a few times. Then I would go and work with Larry all afternoon and evening and the Eigners fed me in the evening. At one point we went to see Olson. But he was not in. In those days he did not have a phone (because of the cost of it). Ditto (no phone) Duncan in SF. I think Larry had written beforehand, but it did not work. And then I recall Charles wrote apologizing for not being at home when we came. (Email correspondence with author, March 13, 2015) the Letters beyond 19 require more larning than i’ll ever rch, involving those Bl.Mt.history lectures, eg.  On Eigner’s reading of Olson’s “Special View of History,” see letter 19. JARGON 13  A three-­volume collection of Williams’s own work, Poems, 1953– 1955, which materialized piecemeal over the next several years. th Lou Harrison  Lou Harrison, Three Choruses from Opera Libretti: Jargon’s Christmas in 1960, Jargon 41 (1960).

(70) Tuesday Feb. 21 61

JARGON 13  A three-­volume collection of Williams’s own work, Poems, 1953– 1955, which materialized piecemeal over the next several years. I suggested we tell you nevr mnd that but, nope Here Eigner seems to have suggested to his family that they forgo collecting payments from their share of sales of ON MY EYES; as Eigner reports later (see letter 78), he also suggested other funds be diverted to support Jargon. Jon.Gr brt me Sorrentino’s Darkness ... [. . .] the list on th back covr  See letters 67, 68, and 69 for prior mention of Jonathan Greene. Gilbert Sorrentino, The Darkness Surrounds Us, Jargon 40 (1960). The last poem in this volume is Sorrentino’s “The Outset.” Williams frequently listed books for sale as well as patrons of the press in the front-­or backmatter of Jargon publications; Eigner’s ON MY EYES was listed in Sorrentino’s book. Forward*,*into slough.! *name of a old yid. paper grnpa rd. The Jewish Daily Forward (now the Forward) was founded in the late 1890s as the Yiddish Forverts (“About Us,” The Forward, accessed Janu­ary 11, 2018, https://forward.com/about-­us/). Jon. tk 20, 10 to delivr to Phoenix Bkshop, 8 days ago.That afternn th cards came!  For mention of the announcement cards (“the cards”), see Williams’s proposal (letter 55) and Eigner’s responses

260

Notes to Pages 100–102

(letters 58, 63, and 65). See letter 71 for reports about Jonathan Greene’s depositing ten books at the Phoenix Bookstore (New York). In email correspondence with the author from March 15, 2015, Greene reports: “I did help distribute ON MY EYES for Larry. . . . Phoenix Book Shop was at 18 Cornelia Street, then later at 22 Jones Street (the next street over). Probably run by Larry Wallrich when I first went there, then later Bob (Robert A.) Wilson. I remember buying the first four issues of Black Mountain Review there for $7.50; also Duncan’s Caesar’s Gate (Divers Press).” 23 Jan. i had a 2nd operatn--wch Dr’s sure of;1st was dbtful.  See letter 63 for previous reference by Eigner to the “1st” operation. So JG was home whn his pa died a few dys later. Greene recalls: “I did not complete the six week stint for my father died before that time was over and I had to go back to New York City to deal with that with my mother” (email correspondence with author, March 12, 2015). All has to end, of course  Referring to Greene’s father’s death and/or Greene’s shortened stay in Swampscott, which Eigner had reported made him feel “venerable” (see letters 68 and 69). a missing line/st.in #39! Then in ms!  Here Eigner refers to the poem as numbered in the published ON MY EYES; no. 39 is “T h e  C a t ’ s  E a r s” (“radar whiskers”). In that volume, the poem is nine lines long; the sixth line is “another thing coming.” In the Collected Poems, based on manuscripts held in Kansas, the missing line is restored and noted as follows: “LE note in Kansas ts explains he ‘inadvertently omitted’ l.7 and ‘didn’t realize it till the book was out, it was so familiar in [his] head,’ ” (vol. 4, “Notes,” v). This poem appears correctly in Sparrow 9 (April 1958). they wish a 2nd printing on me, us,  See letter 69 for his first mention of a sec­ond edition; see also letters 84, 85a, and 85b between Eigner, Williams, and Bill Brown in 1967.

(71) May 11 61 Thursday

I see where Dr Wms writes he is a sick man except when he writes and thats me all right.  In his poem “The Cure,” William Carlos Williams writes, “When I cannot write I’m a sick man / and want to die” (lines 3–4). Jargon #13. Went to Cambridge around April 19 and saw “Empire Finals ” in window of Grolier’s but he didnt have the 13. I cdnt get in  Jargon 13 is a three-­volume collection of Williams’s own work, Poems, 1953–1955. On Grolier’s Book Shop, see letter 53 where Eigner reports meeting the shop proprietor, Gordon Cairnie. Williams’s The Empire Finals at Verona (1959) was Jargon 30. my brother asked for 5 copies and placed them with Dave Meltzer at Discovery Bookshop  Discovery Bookshop was ­located in San Francisco; David Meltzer clerked at the store in the 1960s. (Ferlenghetti didnt bite?  Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Many letters from Eigner to Williams describe Eigner’s efforts to get Ferlinghetti to publish or stock his work.

Notes to Pages 102–103

261

In Delta 14 theres a letter part of which raps me, from a guy in Cambridge who has seen my book--but fine format and photography he thinks--and Dudek’s reply that “six of the poems are really very fine”: and wherefore then did LD buy 3 copies off me  ??  Theres an ad on the back cover too, listing the price as $3.50  Inside the front cover of ON MY EYES, the price is listed at $3.75. Eigner appears concerned that those who buy at the cover price will need to be refunded the difference upon seeing the advertisement Williams makes for the book at $3.50. On the “letter part of which raps [him],” in Delta 14, a letter from John B. Van Sickle, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, thanks Delta editor Louis Dudek for nos. 1–13 of the magazine, but states that he “doesn’t agree with some of [Dudek’s] judgments, particularly the attention to Larry Eigner. His poems just don’t do anything. . . . [His] irritability is based as much on Eigner’s new book [ON MY EYES] as on the works [Dudek] print[s]. Beautiful photographs and format, but no poetry” (11). As Eigner notes above, Dudek’s response in the same issue of Delta is as puzzling as it is partisan. “One or two points where we differ,” Dudek addresses Van Sickle, Your estimate of Eigner: I see your criticism, but there are things you miss— first, the way that his poetry corresponds to a way of existence, e.g. his invalid state, a point of vision from which the world is largely subjective, keeps going out of control, yet maintains a human, imagistic, musical concatenation. Sometimes, to get at poetry, you must half-­close your mind, go into the twilight state, turn out the intellection (this is heresy to all the goddamn modern critics who have made a machine of the graduate-­school poetry reader, an analytical ­Univac—analy­sis can do everything but tell you whether you have a poem there or only a very intelligent complex structure), and if you do this, you may discover the lyricism behind Eigner’s bits of subjective chaos. He mostly fails, as most of us do. But about six of the poems in the book are really very fine. (13) Jonathan Greene [. . .] 10 at Phoenix, for which which Wallrich soon remitted us  See notes to letter 70 for Jonathan Greene’s recollections on these points. thanks for the clippings  Specific reference has been lost, but see letter 68 for additional comments reported by Williams regarding Eigner’s work. I may get that Arts and Architecture  In letter 66, Williams notes sending review copies of ON MY EYES to Peter Yates at Arts and Architecture. In April 1961 (vol. 78, no. 4), Yates reviews Eigner’s ON MY EYES and several other Jargon titles. As Eigner notes, he does not yet have the magazine, but “may get” it. See letter 72. How abt Between Worlds?  On the magazine Between Worlds, see Eig­ ner’s additional comments in letters 49, 59, and 73. Jones’ and di Prima’s Floating Bear is quite a ­resounding flood  LeRoi Jones and Diane Di Prima edited Floating Bear. Railroad Men  Railroad Men (Clarke & Way, 1961) was a photojournal-

262

Notes to Page 104

istic project by Simpson Kalisher in­clud­ing photographs of railroad men and transcribed tape recordings of their stories of railroad life. Williams provided an introduction to the book.

(72) [Sep­tem­ber 21, 1961]

Shavzin,of Penny Poems was here  Beginning in the late 1950s, Eigner published numerous poems with Alan Shavzin’s Penny Poems broadside series. Blackburn before that  Paul Blackburn. A yng poet in Leiden, whom frere Dr Joe th notable biochemist showed OME, wants to do an essay on me in a mag. De Gid, (The Guide) [. . .] Wilfred Smit ­Wilfred Smit was a Dutch poet. Leif does not list De Gid in his bibliography. Monday a note fr.Lew We-­ ch  Lew Welch. The relevant comments from Welch are that there is a speed in poems like the one starting “It’s getting there” which I’ve only seen in Olson & Whalen, and I think you’re even faster. By speed I think I mean only that really all the old lumber is finally gone, and that what is being got at is hit directly. The impression from that poem is exhilarating, a trip, a swift ride. But it is a much deeper thing you do in the poems which, like your title says you are doing, speak in that big range just before what we see enters the world of words. I don’t know of any poem in our language that does this better than the one about all that equipment about to work on that field, “the noise they make.” (Welch to Larry Eigner, Sep­tem­ber 7, 1961, available at Electronic Poetry Center, “Lew Welch,” accessed February 20, 2018, http://writing.upenn .edu/epc/authors/welch/to_eigner.html) Eigner’s “field, the only place” appears as no. 20 in ON MY EYES. Si vous recois de papie de Angleterre et/or les pays a bas, ne soupirez pas un mot.Il faut, peut-­ etre. Bien  Eigner’s French translates loosely as “And if you receive a letter from England or the Netherlands, do not say a word. But it may be necessary. Good.” Theres also this “workshop” fr P Wm Tillson at Purdue: P o e t  &  C r i t i c  Poet and Critic was a magazine founded by William Tillson and later revived by Richard Gustafson. The magazine published poetry side by side with critique of that poetry; the magazine’s subtitle offers context for Eigner’s scare quotes: “magazine of verse/a workshop in print/a forum of opinion.” Eigner’s “sparrows a good time” appeared in 1961, in “file #1”; his poem received response from James Weil. Additionally, Eigner also contributed a prose statement, later reprinted as “Poet and Critic,” in areas / lights / heights, 16. ARTS & ARCHITETURE seems quite a qqr concoction-of Better Homes and somet else [. . .] The perplexd revwer.No eye for spch, you cn see  For previous mention of Arts and Architecture, see letters 66 and 71. In letter 66, Williams notes sending re-

Notes to Page 105

263

view copies of ON MY EYES to Peter Yates at Arts and Architecture. In April 1961, Yates reviews Eigner’s ON MY EYES and works by a number of other recent Jargon authors, in­clud­ing Gilbert Sorrentino, Irving Layton, Robert Creeley, and Lou Harrison. His review is notable because while his assessment of much of the poetry is negative, he admits that, despite his dislike for the work, he still somehow finds it compelling. Yates concludes by noting, “Each of these poets, when he wrestles with the medium, can manage something with it. . . . I wrote Jonathan lately, after agreeing upon our differences, ‘Let us, nonetheless, continue loving one another’ ” (Arts and Architecture 78, no. 4 [April 1961]: 6–8, 30).

(73) Monday 29th Janu­ary 62

Bolingbroke  Roger Bolingbroke appears in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2; the specific reference here, however, is unclear. For Eigner’s references to Henry V in his search for a title to ON MY EYES, see letter 30. Et voila, physically, in past years it used to be hard to sit still--quiet arms and legs to sit and read, etc whereas now c’est tres dur a manger at the table, et al  Eigner’s French translates loosely as “it is hard for me to eat at the table.” La vie! So now je suis beaucoup comme pere, qui est L’homme Assise. Mere est la Femme Active, au Cerveau Ferme.. Vou Savez? Mai je fais un pas, et je suis sur la mer. Merci je n’ai sais jamais a faire, et ­maintenant  Eigner’s French translates loosely as “Life! So now I am just like father who is the fig­ure of the Sitting Man. Mother is the Active Woman, with a Strong Mind. You know? But, if I take a step, I am on the sea. Thank you. I have never known what to do, and now [. . .]” Floating Bear  Possible allusion to LeRoi Jones’s and Diane di Prima’s magazine of the same name. 17 years from hence [. . .] And good luck to ­Callahan  1979. References in this paragraph are unclear; Eigner presumably refers to the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, although there is also the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, inaugurated in 1961 in a building built in 1937. Callahan resided in France for a short time in 1957–1958. Ma tante y fera une visite  Eigner’s French translates loosely as “My aunt is going to visit it.” Nederland  Reference is unclear, but it is possibly to the book Holland: Paradise of Flowers / Nederland: Bloemenland, published in Amsterdam in 1954. Regarding the corresponding poem Eigner mentions, it is important to note that Eigner writes very little from late 1961 to early 1962; despite this fact, there are no readily clear correlates in his writing of this period. Saturday came a 7-­ pp. series of poems from Jackson Mac Low (“Miscellaney he calls it)  Jackson Mac Low composed a series he called 22 Light Poems, each of which was dedicated to a single person, and which was published in 1968 by Black Sparrow Press. The “Light Poems” continued beyond the Black Sparrow edition, and the “23rd Light Poem,” subtitled “7th Poem

264

Notes to Page 106

for Larry Eigner,” was published in 1969 as a broadside by Ian Tyson and Desmond Jeffrey of the Lon­don-­based Tetrad Press. Was going to say that a fresh copy wnt to Poetry Mag. 16(?) days ago. Ten copies you asked for mailed Saturday  These are presumably references to review copies of ON MY EYES the Eigners mail on behalf of Williams. Yes, 34 i am now, twice 17.--maybe an inspiration on yr part (?) ) I first saw yr Janu­ ary newsletter th 14th,circa, Sunday anyway [. . .] So then to get one of those Chicago Cards was very interesting Williams sent countless open letters, promotional mailings, and prospectuses for future projects. Presumably, Eigner’s references here are to such a mailing, though the allusion to his age (and its relationship to the number 17 or the previous comment about “17 years from hence”) is unclear. one Robert F. Grady, of Philadelphia [. . .] Larrsen, for one, whom i looked up in Between Worlds-­of course, and a lot of others  Robert Grady appeared alongside Eigner in Mother 8 (1964); Raymond E. F. Larsson appeared in Between Worlds 1, no. 1; Eigner appeared in issue 2 of the same volume. Dogtown and Dark Brown  Charles Olson’s Maximus, from Dogtown and Michael McClure’s Dark Brown were both published in 1961 by Auerhan Press. i submitted a bk ms to Wesleyan U Press  Eigner’s next major collection is another time in fragments, eventually published in 1967 by the Lon­don-­based Fulcrum Press. Like his ON MY EYES, which contains poems almost a decade old at the time of its publication, another time in fragments contains many poems written several years before their publication in a book. While the manuscript surely evolves until its publication, it is likely that a version of what later became another time in fragments is the manuscript he has sent to Wesleyan. For additional comments on this developing collection, see letters 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, and 94. 4 at Jonathn Greene’s--or did he say, yesterday, when he was here (!), all 4 were at th Blue Yak bkstore, and he had yet to check on em, B Y having folded  As Jonathan Greene recalls: “The Blue Yak was a bookstore run by poets Robert Kelly and some of his ‘deep image’ cohorts. I bought at least one Zukofsky book from them and went to publication party for Paul Blackburn’s The Nets there. It was a block or two above Astor Place. I think it was not open but for a few months” (email correspondence with author, March 15, 2015). Saturday J Greene and Chuck Stein spent 5 hrs straight with Olson, in Gloucester  On meeting Olson, Jonathan Greene recalls: At one point we went to see Olson. But he was not in. In those days he did not have a phone (because of the cost of it). Ditto (no phone) Duncan in SF. I think Larry had written beforehand, but it did not work. And then I recall Charles wrote apologizing for not being at home when we came. I first met Ol-

Notes to Pages 106–108

265

son early summer of 1962. Best as I can recall. Charles Stein who later did his PhD on Olson (later published) would know as he was with me. (Email correspondence with author, March 13, 2015) I had met Duncan early on: Spring of 1962 when I invited him to read at Bard (I was head of Lit Club and got all sorts of folks to read there then). Then summer of 1962 I took a trip around the country with my close friend Charles Stein. We visited Olson in Gloucester and then Duncan in San Francisco. (Email correspondence with author, March 17, 2015) See also letter 69 and accompanying notes. “Bert Wms what”  This is presumably a reference to Hart Crane’s The Bridge, where the phrase appears in Book 2 (Powhatan’s Daughter), section 3 (“The River”), line 5. There, it is understood as part of a collage of media references. Eig­ner’s use of the phrase is ambiguous. Cid sends you Origin ? though it seems we are ­ getting whacky by now, aint we? ? Anyway that Noh play in #3 knocked me out  Cid Corman and Will Petersen’s translation of Zeami’s Yashima appeared in Origin 2, no. 3 (Oc­to­ber 1961). I did a poem [. . .] It’ll go in Origin, #5 i take it  This paragraph refers to Eigner’s “un peu de / t o u r s  /  d e  l a  m e r  / (my old pal ),” which eventually appears in Origin 2, no. 6 ( July 1962). abt Bernstein playin Debussy’s La Mer in Carnegie Hall at a tv’d Children’s concert  Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts: What Is Impressionism aired on De­cem­ber 1, 1961. I stick a copy [. . .] Ideas rd abt the 14th, hiber­nation of spacemen, less oxygen needed, wake up as ­ abt to land after 1000 yr trip as yng as hell [. . .] And flowers travel in boxcars, dont they ? ­ Methuse­ lah problem, unsolved  Referring to both “un peu de / t o u r s  /  d e  l a  m e r  / (my old pal )” and (apparently) “It’s a wonder the Eskimoes don’t hibernate; after all”; both poem manuscripts are extant in this correspondence. Oubliez pstge  “Forgot/forget postage.”

(74) [February 3, 1962]

Don Allen’s  Don Allen, editor of The New Ameri­can Poetry.

(75) Sunday 25 March 62

no more time for plding for anything  Either “pleading” or “plodding.” The former may be a reference to “feelings lik a heel” (as a result of asking for things); the latter may be related to Eigner’s self-­deprecating references to his workload and ability to read material such as James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. br snt Finnegans Wake and Key  James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake; the reference to Key is unclear.

266

Notes to Pages 108–109

Guy in Philly [. . .] wanted my cards t ­ditribute Robert Grady (see letter 73 for previous mention of Grady). See Williams’s proposal (letter 55) and Eigner’s response (letter 58) for mention of these announcement cards. See also letter 70 for when the cards finally arrive. 2nd edition While ON MY EYES was never reprinted in any substantial way, correspondence between Eigner, Williams, and Bill Brown indicates that at vari­ ous points there was at least the possibility of this happening, as was the case with Eigner’s From the Sustaining Air, first printed in 1953 by Divers and later in 1967 by Toad Press (see letters 84, 85a, 85b, 86, 87, and 88). Nantaliala e J Wms  Reference here is perhaps to Williams’s advertise­ ment for the Nantahala Foundation (many Jargon books were at this time listed under the auspices of the Nantahala Foundation) and/or a prospectus for Williams’s own work. cousin Ed Ei  Edwin Eigner. th day of Orbit  February 20, 1962, when John Glenn orbited the Earth in the Freedom 7. I hrd on FM tape of a speech befor Hrvd Law S.Frum by Leo Szilard  Szilard was a Hungarian American physicist who after his involve­ ment with the Manhattan Project began to lobby against nuclear proliferation. The speech Eigner mentions here, titled “Are We on the Road to War?” and delivered on No­vem­ber 17, 1961, was one of Szilard’s first speeches on the national level against nuclear proliferation. Anglicn Chuch of N.Carolina i nevr conceived of Reference is unclear, though there are several extant Anglican parishes in central and south­ern North Carolina at the time of this letter. Wrote Allen e suggested he mi snd future royls you or Jonesways Hushh  See letter 78, where Eigner recalls this request that Don Allen forward royalties to Williams. S Nucl.Com  Reference is unclear, though it is apparently indicating an organization involving nuclear arms policy. Auerhahn fer Dogtwn Max  Charles Olson’s Maximus, from Dogtown, was published by Auerhahn Press in 1961. Eigner reports having ordered the volume in letter 73.

(76) 9/28/62

Garlands  Jonathan Williams’s In England’s Green & (A Garland & Clyster) (Auerhahn Press, 1962). bon voyage  Eigner’s next letter to Williams (letter 77) went by airmail to ­Lon­don. brain operation lowers muscle tonicity  In the Collected Poems, editors Robert Grenier and Curtis Faville note in their chronology that in Sep­tem­ber 1962 Eigner “undergoes cryosurgery to thalamus to correct uncontrolled movements of ‘wild’ left side; operation helps significantly; left arm & leg thereafter partially numb” (vol. 1, “Chronology,” xxiii).

Notes to Pages 110–111

(77) Jan 28 63

267

i seem unable to keep kindnesses in mind as I used-eg, “the spinners and the knitters in the sun” See Twelfth Night, act 2, scene 4, lines 41–47, where Orsino asks for “the song we had last night . . . it is old and plain. / The spinsters, and the knitters in the sun, / And the free maids that weave their thread with bones, / Do use to chant it.” By alluding to these lines, Eigner is perhaps suggesting either that he feels pressure to feign happiness or that he feels some identification with the “silly sooth” singers who sing to ease their work, or both. this surgery  See letter 76 and accompany notes. I’m embarrassed and unsettled by “thankyous and I’mproudofyouse etc. Quite a complex..  See letter 56 where Eigner reports his embarrassment (feigned, real, or both) at being written up in a regional paper for his appearance in The New Ameri­can Poetry. In paticula I’ve felt embarrassed abt writing yous, Though allasame i know, no obligationxxx as there s that extra 100 which I’m not asking abt any more [. . .] whereas you do ask for it passionately (...bitterly since abt ’54(?) even as i xx xxxx 57-­ 60&); ANd you caused me to ask for it, impractical, idealistic me.  This paragraph re-­treads some of the strained financial wrangling that surrounded the production of ON MY EYES. See letter 49 where Eigner reports, in the beginning of that letter, the “tantrums” he’s provoked by seeking from his family’s funding to support his publishing and, in the closing of that letter, his own contrition. “Let come beautiful people / ... of good colour ” Drawn from Ezra Pound’s 1914 “Come My Cantilations,” this allusion both sums up the frustrations Eigner reports above and transitions to the celebrations reported in the lines to follow (“cantilation” being a term for the ritual chanting of scripture during a Hebrew service). Somewhat like “Au Salon,” Pound’s “Come My Cantilations” dismisses social niceties and daily urban ennui: “Let us dump our hatreds into one bunch and be done with them” (line 2). By selectively quoting the Pound poem as he also notes the “compromise” he reaches with his parents about the royalties he has received from Poetry, and the “extra 100 [dollars] which [he is] not asking [Williams] about any more,” Eigner is almost certainly implicating Williams. “Let me be free of pavements,” the Pound poem continues in lines that Eigner does not cite, “Let me be free of the printers” (lines 4–5). i wrote to my cousin at Northwest­ ern to please return the last bklist of yrs, but no reply. I sent him that, the notice abt the Nahantala Nantahala Foundation and that autobi stuff you sent me in hopes it might be instrumental inn landing you an invitation from that Universe  See letter 75 for reference to the promotional material Eigner notes here. Larry’s cousin Edwin Eigner later went on to the University of Kansas. There he assisted with the development of an active poetry scene. On the particulars of this

268

Notes to Pages 111–112

“Universe” (at once an abbreviation for “University” as well as a metaphor for the university reading circuit), see Edwin Eigner’s recollections in Lisa Jarnot’s biography of Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus, especially pp. 242–43. The german anthology had arrived a few days e ­ ar­ lier, 1st visit or so .. a letter also from verlag to be interpreted--his wife being sudetenese and he ­ knowing german ..and on the eve of my going to have my butt cut the 3rd time we listene d to that G ­insburg/ Corso/? record together  In 1961, Gregory Corso and Walter Höllerer edited a nearly three-­hundred-­page bilingual (German-­English) anthology of poetry, Junge Amerikanische Lyrik. Often characterized by booksellers as an anthology of Beat poetry, the volume was broadly conceived. It included two poems by Eigner that Leif indicates as appearing nowhere else: “Idea of An / Impersonal / Death” (“the earth”) and “Space” (“the space of the corner”). In the Collected Poems, these two appear under slightly different titles and first-­line configurations; the former absorbs the title into the poem (“Idea of an impersonal death / the earth”), while the latter makes the title into an exclamation within the poem (“Space!”). In addition to Eigner, the volume contains work by Corso, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure, Frank O’Hara, Gary Snyder, and others, and includes both foldout pages (Corso’s “Bomb”) and a 45 rpm recording in a tipped-­in sleeve. The recording features Corso, Ginsberg, and Ferlinghetti reading (respectively) “Bomb,” “Sunflower Sutra,” and “Dog.” According to some, very few copies were issued with the foldouts and the recording (possibly as few as one hundred). my other brthr’s wedding [. . .] a mag.from campus Burning Deck [. . .] I sent then Journey tove, wich Jon Greene brought me july 3 (thats how retired ive bn!) Joe and Janet Eigner. Burning Deck, initially a little magazine produced on scrapped letterpress equipment, was begun in 1961 by Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop as they did graduate work at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Soon after, the Waldrops transitioned to producing chapbooks (also letterpress) and eventually produced Eig­ ner’s 1979 chapbook lined up bulk senses. The book Eigner sends (given to him by Jonathan Greene) is William Carlos Williams’s Journey to Love, published by Random House in 1955—hence Eigner’s comment about how “retired” he’s been. “the hater |is| harmed”  See Marianne Moore’s 1943 poem “In Distrust of Merits,” which offers an interesting braid of ableist language and moral/­ aesthetic self-­improvement: . . . the blind man who thinks he sees,— who cannot see that the enslaver is enslaved; the hater, harmed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There never was a war that was not inward; I must

Notes to Pages 113–115

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fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war, . . . (lines 3–6, 82–85) “Blear-­ eyed wisdom” it is getting,awful lot for me to handle.I now hve too mch stuff,myself,to select and arrange satisfactorily  An allusion to Yeats’s 1928 “Among School Children” (lines 59–60): “No beauty born out of its own despair, / Nor blear-­eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.” On impulse i sent Laughlin an ms Wesleyan had turnd doen early 62,combined w,one nrothr had stimulated me to sebd City Lights (F is booked for a long time) James Laughlin; Lawrence Ferlinghetti. On the manuscript in question, Eigner’s next major collection is another time in fragments, eventually published in 1967 by the Lon­don-­ based Fulcrum Press. For additional comments on this developing collection, see letters 73, 79, 81, 83, 84, and 94. I only wish ther were more copies [. . .] write Jonathn and ask him  On Eigner’s continuing efforts to see a sec­ond edition of ON MY EYES, see letters 84, 85a, 85b, 86, 87, 88 between Eigner, Williams, and Bill Brown of Coyote Books around a proposed reprint of ON MY EYES by Coyote.

(78) [Late De­cem­ber 1963] Xmas & 5 60

Florida’s Cypress Gardens the patst few weeks--and have meant to same perion |Articule ridiculing it i S Eve Post . | The Saturday Evening Post from No­vem­ber 23, 1963, features an article by Roy Bongartz called “The Superswamp: Cypress Gardens: Florida’s Eighteen-­Karat Illusion,” on Dick Pope’s waterski spectacle in central Florida. Eig­ ner’s “something to show [Williams]” appears to be the poem “Up and Ahead” (dedicated to Williams), which begins with the lines “an hotel / a resort / is / an amusement park.” This poem is dated in the Collected Poems to No­vem­ber 19, 1963; it is possible that Eigner received this issue of the Saturday Evening Post by subscription, earlier than its newsstand release. those inreviews for KPFA  On Oc­to­ber 15, 1968, KPFA affiliate WBAI broadcast an interview Williams made with Maeve Peake, wife of writer and illustrator Mervyn Peake. According to the 1968 WBAI Oc­to­ber Folio description of this broadcast, “When in England the Ameri­can poet Jonathan Williams tape recorded conversations with a number of English writers. Mervyn Peake, author of the famed Gomerghast Trilogy, has been too ill to communicate but his wife Maeve talked interestingly and enlighteningly with Williams about the books and the circumstances of their writing” (p. 16). Williams would have been in England from fall 1962 to summer 1963. Heasuring ings to 16th in. july-­august etc. -­unable to do it before increased steadiness  This appears to reference Eig­ ner’s recent surgery and physical therapy. See letters 76 and 77 and the chronology provided by Grenier and Faville in their Collected Poems.

270

Notes to Pages 115–116

draws and cut lines where i said  Eigner’s manuscript practice increasingly came to include lines of hyphens typed across a leaf, with the statement interspersed among the hyphens “A LINE THAT MAY BE CUT.” This was also the title of Eigner’s 1968 Circle Press book. Anyway i am now fascinated with photostats Beginning at least as early as a letter dated May 5, 1958 (letter 33), Eigner considered photostatting his work for easier distribution. I have only 2 spare copies left  Presumably a reference to the dwindling supplies of ON MY EYES. Jargon 36  Eigner’s own ON MY EYES. The plumber who used to live upstairs  The Eigners rented the top floor of their home at 23 Bates Road. that portable,dry process, ANKENCOUTUA [. . .] yes, 300.00  In 1962, the Anken Chemical & Film Corporation began advertising a portable photocopy machine “built into an attaché case” “for traveling executives or others who need to make quick copies of reports while in the field.” The device was advertised to weigh 12.5 pounds and retailed for $149.50. Eigner’s estimation of “yes, 300.00” is unclear in its reference. my uncle has a wet machine at his insurance office Wet photocopying processes existed alongside the dry transfer process of machines such as the Anken mentioned above, though they were eventually supplanted during this time period. ask Callahan if its ok  This is a request for permission to copy Callahan’s photographs. As subsequent letters will reveal, a sec­ond edition of ON MY EYES is slated from Coyote Books, but without the photographs by Harry Callahan. Despite these plans, Coyote never executes the sec­ond edition. 23 months ago I sent my typescript to Sanesi at Cid’s sug.. i send him th bk as well as mss  Roberto Sanesi was a translator of English and Ameri­can poetry into Italian; Cid Corman translated Sanesi’s poetry into English. Denise [. . .] between ere and Mainxxe  Denise Levertov and Arthur McFarland (a frequent correspondent of Eigner’s) lived in Friendship, Maine. Raytheon  Massachusetts-­based defense contracting firm. i need Jacqueline’s staff  In addition to the context of the Kennedy assassination, in Kulchur 12 (to which Eigner refers as this letter proceeds), ­LeRoi Jones’s “Exaugural Address: For Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, who Has Had to Eat Too Much Shit” is pasted into this number. But take up soe by Kulchur 12,  “Rights” got down some notes on it  Kulchur 12 (Winter 1963) featured a section called “RIGHTS: Some Personal Reactions” (2–31). The feature included LeRoi Jones, A. B. Spellman, Robert Williams, Gilbert Sorrentino, Edward Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer, Donald Windham, and Denise Levertov. The twenty-­nine-­page feature is prefaced with the editor’s note: “The contributors to Rights were asked to supply us with a variety of

Notes to Pages 117–118

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personal reactions to the civil rights crisis. Their comments are as varied as they are personal.” Following the last note (Levertov’s) is a dedication of the entire issue of Kulchur to W. E. B. DuBois, who had died that year. Eigner’s “notes” on the Kulchur 12 feature, “On ‘Rights,’ ” mailed with letter 79, might more properly be called an essay, and are included under “Additional Prose” in this volume. now on the essay in re A by Kelly after pause to take in ll, etc., etc  Robert Kelly’s “Song? / After Bread: Notes on Zukofsky’s A 1-­12” immediately follows the feature “RIGHTS” in Kulchur 12 (Win­ ter 1963). Andhave some thread to The Age of Anallysis, yet, the Mentor 20th-­ cent philosophy museum lecture.. White­ head (an excerpt passage frm Modes of Thought) seems to have molecules rather than Lucretius night fog, hegel’s linear, Vico etc’s circular, Dante’s corkscrews ... But it looks like peyote may not stand up to John Dewey. It’s a problem.  The Age of Analysis, edited by Morton White and published in 1955, was one of six books in the New Ameri­can Library’s Mentor Philosophers series; this volume focused on twentieth-­century philosophy. W.H.O. rather thn I F I F  The World Health Organization (WHO) was founded in 1948. The International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) was founded in 1962 by Timothy Leary and others sympathetic to his work in response to restrictions on Leary’s research into psychedelic drugs. Saki H H Munro stories don from bbc tapes last few weeks  Saki: The Improper Stories of H. H. Munro was an eight-­part televised series produced in 1962 for Granada Television. O, as to copying On E yes, I wdnt sue anyone. I’d bn thinking ofCharles Ives, in fact, I remember; while then yr forms came  Williams was an advocate of Ives’s music; the composer is relevant here, presumably, because Ives did not copyright his own work. On the forms Eigner mentions, see letter 66. I asked Rago not to pay me and he complied [. . .] Allen’s check  Henry Rago edited Poetry magazine from 1955 to 1969; Don Allen edited The New Ameri­can Poetry: 1945–1960. On Eigner’s refusal or redirection of royalties, see letter 56, as well as later comments in this letter. A jaunt to ferrini s proposed by mother brought me in handshake with a psychiatrist, photographer, poet, who has the bk, etc,  Vincent Ferrini. The other in­di­vidual mentioned here remains unclear. after all but goodbye James Dean. Oswald was psycho-­ And Ruby, “a man of no special po­ liti­ cal opinion |sic|, admired Ike and Kennedy both ..”  The opening of this letter, noting a poem based on an article in the Saturday Evening Post from No­vem­ber 23, 1963, suggests that Eigner began writing in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination. I tht maybe someone wd go through Nevada Arizona and

272

Notes to Pages 118–120

kill that Swede down there playing Christ. If Minister X got shot I wonder wd he say, Ah Allah. Well, he crazy too, I largely think, since we all have cause In February 1963, a large ring-­shaped cloud appeared over Flagstaff, Arizona. The cloud was seen by some as a sign indicating the appearance of numerous angels to the self-­ proclaimed prophet William Branham, then living in Arizona. Photographs of the cloud appeared in Life (May 17, 1963) and Science (April 19, 1963, cover). “Strange Cloud in Arizona 1963,” LivingWordBroadcast.org, accessed Janu­ary 10, 2018, https:// www.livingwordbroadcast.org/LWBPublications/AZ_Magazine.htm; “Supernatural Cloud,” The William Branham Home Page, accessed Janu­ary 10, 2018, http://www .williambranhamhomepage.org/. that sequence I had in Sparrow #4 [. . .] sans “Cripples” at end, for one thing  Sparrow 4 appeared in Oc­to­ ber 1955 and contained twelve poems by Eigner, which are listed in Leif as “V o i c e , F r e e,” “THE CARICATURE,” “I have felt it as they’ve said,” “A l a s,  A l a s, ​ W h o ’ s  I n j u r e d,” “A n o t h e r  O n e,” “PIECE,” “In the midst of pain I think of you,” “my eyes went where there was a tree,” “not like an animal but as yourself,” “T h e  C r i p p l e s,” “T h e  W a y,” and “HOW THE BLIND DID IT.” I’m appreciating Bob Brown’s panels !* [. . .] “Up and Ahead” abt 5 wks before looking at 1450-­ 195 agn on seeing Lowenfels on Brown un Kulchut 11. If memory is right my style i thogt on a string w.yrs: now too much Brown, yet none trop a d’eec????  Bob Brown’s 1450– 1950 (1959) was published as Jargon 29. Walter Lowenfels contributed an essay called “Bob Brown” to Kulchur 11. Eigner seems to suggest that he had formerly thought his own work to be similar (“on a string w.”) to Williams’s, but upon reading Brown’s visual-­scribal works, he thinks his work is more like Brown’s. braille typist [. . .] L’hopital est pour moi la liberte, dans un sens  At one point, Eigner had thought he would earn a living by writing verse for greeting cards; see “Rambling (in) Life,” in areas / lights / heights, 128. Here, a similar employment appears for consideration. Eigner’s French translates loosely as “The hospital for me is free­dom, in a sense.”

(79) Apr 26 64

Roman Books  A bookseller and publisher located in Florida responsible for at least one of Williams’s own books, Lines about Hills above Lakes (1964). I’m curious abt Zukofsky’s Test of Poetry anyway Louis Zukofsky’s A Test of Poetry, Jargon 11 (in association with Corinth Books, 1964). P o e t ry pd.after all, maybe bcz of the million $ bequeathed to Ameri­ can P.Society  At the time of this letter (April 1964), Eigner had appeared in Poetry twice: Sep­tem­ber 1962 and Janu­ary 1964. And in ORIGIN 13 Corman--who writes #14 will be the last, by the way--states he wants to create more quiet spots than hes already done  Reference is unclear.

Notes to Pages 121–122

273

“Distances to the Friend,” hit home [. . .] The ­ele­gies  Eigner would have known Williams’s “The Distances to the Friend” from Williams’s poems in The New Ameri­can Poetry. Williams’s Elegies and Celebrations (1962) appeared as the sec­ond of three volumes composing Jargon 13. so many wheels [. . .] catch a neighbor by the pan  Eigner’s doggerel here might satirize the singing commercials he notes in the previous paragraph, though no source has been located. like newsweek. Once I turned page and there on page 60 on April 13 was Elrey Jones in a photo looking like hin and his work?room got hung over all night. Also quite some complimentary write-­ up -­ cum interview in which he speaks kindlier of James Baldwin than he does in Kulchur 12 In Kulchur 12, LeRoi Jones criticizes Baldwin for wanting to be “sensitive in peace” (5). Somewhat ironically, the Newsweek review of Jones’s play Dutchman captions the photograph that Eigner mentions above with lines ­spoken not by Jones himself but by the male protagonist of his play: “Let me be.” The review closes with Jones’s comments on Baldwin: Jimmy Baldwin. He’s a friend of mine, I love much of his work. But we’re different persons, we each do what we have to do. I don’t think . . . that any artist can divorce himself from ideas. His work has to have something to do with the world. But a lot of my plays have nothing to do with the Negro problem. I try to make people out of my Negro characters, people on a stage, not causes or social documents. Any man, black or white, has something to say, but a black man these days will seem to have something more profound to say. Othello is profound, but not because he is a Negro. (“Underground Fury,” Newsweek, April 13, 1964) The enclosed “United we sit ... ” is an attempt to dig Kulchur 12  See “Additional Prose” in this volume for the enclosed, and for comments on Kulchur 12, see letter 78. Lita Hornick  Beginning with the third number of Kulchur, Hornick was the editor of the publication. i have the origi­nal which she returned. Che faro? “Che faro” is possibly an allusion to Orfeo ed Euridice; in the third act, having looked again at Euridice, who subsequently dies, Orfeo sings “Che farò senza Euridice?” (“What shall I do without my Euridice?”). Eigner’s looking twice at his essay, along with his resignation to it remaining unpublished (and possibly relegated to the cellar), is perhaps the context for this allusion, as many recordings and broadcasts of Christoph Gluck’s opera were in existence at the time of Eigner’s letter. Buckminster Fuller  Buckminster Fuller’s Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization, Jargon 44 (1962), included an introduction by Russell Davenport. Ken Irby’s throwing Charles Olson at Fuller,xxx in

274

Notes to Pages 122–123

Kulcher 13 seems bull’s-­ eye  In a brief note on Fuller’s Jargon publication, Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization, Jargon 44 (1962), Irby cites Olson’s criticism in Call Me Ishmael of Ameri­can industry: “I think what Charles Olson said . . . applies here, directly: ‘We are still soft about our industries, wonder-­ eyed.’ Wonder-­eyed—and blind. I do not believe that the possession of bathtubs is a measure of the superiority of man.” Irby goes on to note more of Olson’s thoughts on America “as the best review of Fuller’s book, given by themselves,” and quotes ­Olson at length on “size, and how [one] value[s] it” (Kulchur 13 [Spring 1964]: 89–91). the Charles Eliot Norton set-­ up  In 1962, Buckminster Fuller was the visiting Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard University. I wonder how close you can get to Henry Luce ; I remember this patriotic pedestrian cut-­ up prose type poem by Davenport in big print in an issue of Life maybe 25 yrs ago, might have bn just when Davenport was working for Willkie in 1940  Henry Luce (1898–1967) was an influential media magnate who founded Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated. Eig­ner’s notion of “getting close” to Luce seems to be both one of comparison (i.e., ironically comparing Williams as publisher to Luce) as well as in degrees of separation: Russell Davenport (who wrote the introduction to Fuller’s Untitled Epic) was a classmate of Luce’s at Yale and later worked for Fortune, Life, and Time. Davenport and Fuller knew each other from Fuller’s time as a consultant at Fortune. Fuller’s Untitled Epic was produced in two concurrent editions: one from Jargon and one from Simon and Schuster. Williams was unaware of the Simon and Schuster edition at the time of the Jargon publication. Davenport worked for Wendell Wilkie as national campaign manager in 1940. (For further details regarding all of the above, see E. J. Apple­white’s “Annotated Bibliography of Books by R. Buckminster Fuller,” xxv–xxix, which includes information and elaboration on all of the above.) Davenport’s poem “My Country” appeared in Life, No­vem­ber 27, 1944. Finally, it should be noted for context that Fuller was the subject of a Time cover story the same year as this letter: “The Dymaxion American” ( January 10, 1964). My brother [. . .] more memorable things than Fuller does  Richard Eigner. In the Sep­tem­ber 1963 Sierra Club Bulletin, Daniel B. Luten Jr. published his “How Dense Can People Be?” Luten, as noted in 2003 in a UC Berke­ley obituary notice, was a lecturer in geography from 1962 to 1974, worked with Shell Development before entering academe, and “regularly taught a course on ‘Population, Environment, and Development’ as well as lecturing on energy and other topics” (Norgaard, “Obituary: Daniel B. Luten, Jr.”). See “Additional Prose” in this volume for Eigner’s letter to the editor, dated April 25–May 2, 1963, taking up the issue of population growth and birth control; this letter was found among Eigner’s manuscripts in the Jargon Society Collection. Peyton Houston  Houston was both a corporate executive and a poet, and his Sonnet Variations (1962) was Jargon 27. Subsequent references in this paragraph are to poems in this book (Eigner appears to suggest that Bob Dylan would find no.

Notes to Pages 123–125

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33 appealing). See Williams’s interview with Barry Alpert in Vort 4 for further comments on Houston. Arthur McFarland, of Friendship, Maine  McFarland was a frequent correspondent of Eigner’s. in De­ cem­ ber 62 I hauled of and sent an ms of sorts -though “better,” sort of, I imagined, than Gregory Corso (while I havent seen Happy Birthday of Death) -- to Laughlin Corso’s The Happy Birthday of Death was published by New Directions in 1960. The manuscript Eigner discusses here and below appears to be Eigner’s next major collection, another time in fragments, eventually published in 1967 by the Lon­don-­based Fulcrum Press. For additional comments on this developing collection, see letters 73, 77, 81, 83, 84, and 94. maybe i cd be worked into the Annual some time The New Directions in Poetry and Prose anthologies. Jacob’s Ladder, which Denise had already sent me a copy of Levertov’s The Jacob’s Ladder was published by New Directions in 1961. Ronald Caplan’s laundry [. . .] wd still like to do not more’n 100 poems for me  Ron Caplan edited the magazine Mother and occasionally issued chapbooks through Mother Press / Boxwood Press. Eigner appeared in Mother nos. 3 (1963), 8 (1964), 9 (1964), and 12 (1964). For L I put what Ferlenghetti had decided to forego in Oct. on top of what Wesleyan U turned dwn in June James Laughlin; Lawrence Ferlinghetti. On the collection, see the note above beginning “in De­cem­ber 1962.” DUENDE dropped on me and by way of response showes a “play” to Good-­ [. . .]ell, which he likes and will put out  Larry Goodell edited the mimeo magazine Duende. Eigner’s “play” murder talk: the reception (suggestions for a play) appeared in 1964, in Duende 6, along with five poems and the prose piece “Bed Never Self Made.” See letter 18 for Eigner’s first mention to Williams of this play. star chaplain, you’d hve bn  Reference is unclear, though 1st 4-­ perhaps it is an allusion to Williams’s service during World War II: failing to gain conscientious objector status, Williams chose military service over time in jail, but was able to transfer out of a rifle company and into hospital work in Germany, where he subsequently printed his first Jargon volumes (“Jonathan Williams in conversation with Rich Owens, 1 June 2007,” Jacket 38 [2009]).

(80) Nov.3 64

am conscious of not writing you since you sent that copyrt paper on from Doubleday  Among Eigner’s next major publications is his inclusion in Robert Kelly and Paris Leary’s A Controversy of Poets (Doubleday, 1965). For other copyright paperwork passed between Williams and Eigner, see letter 66.

276

Notes to Pages 125–126

as Olson sd to me up in Glstr end of Aout, with Kelly, Ferrini et al present, we’re the luxurious ones, idle; while thngs still cry out for response, and I’m still here  Charles Olson; Robert Kelly; Vincent Ferrini. On “idleness” and “response,” see “Additional Prose” in this volume for Eigner’s essay on Olson. See also Eigner’s 1977 interview in areas / lights / heights (1989) for his continued comments about what forms “response” may take (148–65, esp. 162). St. Louis,whre frere le biochemist now is,last wk was nice, and, s-­ in-­ law free-­ wheeling w.phone, DonFinkel came over, and a John Knoepfle,whos in with bly  “Frere le biochemist” is Joseph Eigner. Don Finkel was a poet and sculptor who, beginning in 1960, was on the faculty at Wash­ing­ton University in St. Louis. John Knoepfle was an occasional collaborator with Robert Bly on poetic translations, as well as a poet. (I’m prexy,& a little boyx to )  Reference is unclear. And, bad luck, my butt is a messagn aftr 3rd,last-­ chnce operation and 2 yrs’ gd hlth  On this, see letter 77. Caplan did some prose,by ee wy  See previous letter, dated April 26, 1964 (letter 79). Two of Eigner’s prose pieces appear in Ron Caplan’s Mother: “PREDICATION” (no. 8) and “Qt.” (no. 12). Duende (my “play” et al) came yesterday  Eigner’s “play” murder talk: the reception (suggestions for a play) appeared in 1964 in Larry Goodell’s Duende 6, along with five poems and the prose piece “Bed Never Self Made.” See letters 18 and 79 for previous mentions of this play. F Dwsons Thread sent me by Andrew Crozier its publisher, now at Buffalo. Collage writing, as frm a plane? ­Fielding Dawson and Andrew Crozier. Dawson’s Thread was the first volume published by Crozier’s Ferry Press. On a Fulbright to SUNY Buffalo, Crozier studied with Olson and published a journal (The Ant’s Forefoot) and broadside series (Sum). Maybe someday will get fstats of OME? [. . .] made availabl at University reprints in Ann Arbor  Here and through­out, Eigner continues to seek ways to extend the reach and circulation of ON MY EYES; see letter 81 for note on how Eigner came to know of University Reprints (publisher of reprints of a variety of genres).

(81) Sundy 20 Dec 64

the Anderson  Sherwood Anderson’s Six Mid-­Ameri­can Chants, Jargon 45 (1964). This volume contains photographs by Art Sinsabaugh, a preface by Edward Dahlberg, and a “postface” by Frederick Eckman. The photographs and postface supply context for Eigner’s comments about “EcEman’s poem” and “1 on those photos” (see notes below). Winesberg  Winesburg, Ohio was Anderson’s 1919 collection of interlinked stories, influential upon later modernist prose writers. An edition from Viking appeared in 1960. brother in S Frisco to send you the loot  Richard Eig­ner;

Notes to Pages 127–129

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see letter 78 for Eigner’s description of a trust established in his interest and managed by Richard. WCW, DHL, Joyce  William Carlos Williams; D. H. Lawrence; James Joyce. different from Sandburg, at least judging by whats in Untermeyer  Louis Untermeyer’s Modern Ameri­can Poetry was published by Harcourt, Brace in 1919; subsequent editions most recent to this letter include editions in 1962 and 1964. In addition to Carl Sandburg, Untermeyer collected dozens of poets arranged chronologically by birth year, beginning with Dickinson. The People, Yes  Carl Sandburg’s 1936 book-­length populist and folk-­ based poem went through multiple editions, in­clud­ing one in this year. “Cheerfulness, is a misleasing emotion,” Ed Dorn says, at one point in “The Land Below”  “The Land Below” appears in Ed Dorn’s Hands Up! (Totem, 1964). EcEman’s poem  Eckman’s postface. Following lines eke from 1 on those photos (incidently its curious how 12x20 can come out 7½x20 ­ in ­reproduction)  Owing to the inclusion of Sinsabaugh’s panoramic photographs, Sherwood Anderson’s Six Mid-­Ameri­can Chants, Jargon 45 (1964), was sized at 7.5″ × 21.75″. The poem “White Church” (the “following lines”) does not appear to be collected or catalogued in Eigner’s Collected Poems or Leif ’s bibliography. Books being read here day-­ to-­ day on the radio (Loweell Institute)--just finished friday a new bk abt pilgrims’ 1st yr in USA, One Small Candle, by Thomas Fleming (WW Norton)  The Lowell Institute is a Boston-­based educational foundation begun in 1839 with funding bequeathed by John Lowell Jr. In the 1950s, the institute began offering content over radio and television. Thomas J. Fleming’s One Small Candle: The Pilgrims’ First Year in America was published in 1964 by W. W. Norton. The SeaAround Us  Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us (Oxford University Press, 1951) won the 1952 National Book Award. A Wk on Conc. & Merr  Henry David Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. foxes stepping [. . .] bright from the moon  The portions of this poem that appear on this sheet correspond almost exactly to this poem as it appears in Eigner’s Collected Poems. However, marginal comments here (“vide intra”) and on the reverse of the leaf (“Dec 10 64 forced on”) suggest that the lines on the reverse in fact continue this poem; those lines contain the quotation “these simple sounds relate us to the stars”—taken nearly verbatim from the “Monday” section of Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Ronald Johnson I saw in Coyote Journal  The first issue of Coyote’s Journal appeared in 1964 and included eleven poems by Ronald John­­son: “Samuel Palmer: The Characters of Fire,” “Wild Apples,” “Landscape with Bears, for Charles Olson,” “Of Circumstance, the Circum Stances,” “Three Paintings by Arthur Dove,” “Still Life,” “Blue-­Green, Grey-­Green, Apple-­Green, Emerald-­Green,” “  ‘We

278

Notes to Pages 129–131

Saw the Cloud in the East, One, Two, Three Summers Ago, & Now It Is Beginning to Come upon Us,’ ” “  ‘ These Are the Signs of Wind,’ ” “The Garden,” and “Emerson, on Goethe.” Jessie McGuffie’s (Mrs Richard Sheeler’s) NYC address With Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jessie McGuffie founded Wild Hawthorne Press in 1961 and the poetry magazine/newsletter Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. in 1962; both were based in Edinburgh, Scotland. a cousin of mine  Possibly Edwin Eigner. Rbt Kelly, when we met in Gloucester  See letter 80 for reference to this meeting. Caplan got through his Zukofsky project  Ron Caplan issued Louis Zukofsky’s After I’s in 1964 under the Boxwood Press / Mother Press imprint. But on a trip to St Louis wk before Halloween, talking with my brother he brought up the idea of University Reprints, at Ann Arbor  See letter 80 for previous mention of this. Goodell’s  Larry Goodell. I’ve still got all them announcement cards!  To promote Eigner’s ON MY EYES, Williams suggested the printing and distribution of several hundred promotional cards. As is detailed above, these cards are not produced or shipped in time to coincide with the book itself, and Eigner consequently has little time to meaningfully distribute them. See Williams’s proposal (letter 55) and Eigner’s response (letter 58). See also letter 70 for when the cards finally arrive. No more message to the world.  An allusion to Emily Dickinson’s “This is my letter to the World” (F519). In ’62, i did put something together, which i ­submitred to Laughlin  Eigner continues to entertain the idea of publishing material through James Laughlin’s New Directions. The yet unpublished manuscript mentioned here is mostly likely another time in fragments (Fulcrum, 1967). For additional comments on this developing collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 83, 84, and 94. rides in Oc­ to­ ber  See letter 80. My 1st plane-­ C’est un question? Velliety, to do something Eigner’s French translates loosely as “Is it a question?” or “It is a question.”

(82) Jan 2, 1965 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

the Chants  Sherwood Anderson’s Six Mid-­Ameri­can Chants, Jargon 45 (1964). This volume contains photographs by Art Sinsabaugh, a preface by Edward Dahlberg, and a “postface” by Frederick Eckman. See previous letter (no. 81, dated De­cem­ber 20, 1964) from Eigner for his comments on Anderson. Re/ Sinsabaugh  In Eigner’s letter to Williams on the Anderson book (letter 81, dated De­cem­ber 20, 1964), Eigner muses on the size of the Sinsabaugh photographs in that volume. I was in St. Louis too, in No­ vem­ ber. Spent an evening chez Finkel  See letters 80 and 81 for Eigner’s comments on his own trip to St. Louis and mention of Don Finkel.

Notes to Pages 131–133

279

Visited Caplan in Pittsburgh  See Eigner’s letters 79, 80, and 81 for Eigner’s mentions of Ron Caplan. Caplan edited the magazine Mother and occasionally issued chapbooks through Mother Press / Boxwood Press. Eigner appeared in Mother nos. 3 (1963), 8 (1964), 9 (1964), and 12 (1964). coming out to Carmel  As Williams notes in closing, he will be in Carmel, for the foreseeable future. Jessie McG’s address. I haven’t heard from her since Edinburgh, 1963  With Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jessie McGuffie founded Wild Hawthorne Press in 1961 and the poetry magazine/newsletter Poor.Old.Tired.Horse. in 1962; both were based in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1963, Williams and Ronald Johnson conducted a walking tour of the UK.

(83) 2 22 65 Monday

Arthur McFarland, of Friendship, Maine  McFarland, a frequent correspondent of Eigner’s, was also a friend of Denise Levertov’s. f’stats of my mss he has  Since 1958, Eigner has been considering vari­ous ways of copying and retaining not only his manuscripts but also his work published in ON MY EYES. Here, Eigner expresses his concern (shared by others) with the fact that his manuscripts circulate without a definitive record in a single location. Jim Lowell, who wanted t’buy mss frm GRANTA, that cam­ bridge u.mag.last yr  Jim Lowell was a Cleveland-­based bookseller. According to Leif ’s bibliography, Eigner first appeared in Granta in 1964. i mentioned the fstat scheme to Jon.Greene--after doing likewise to brothers, both i n St.L ouis and SF, their places possible depositories [. . .] Greene offered ­further ideas, that i might get in tch w Brown U.as well as Lowell as a depository  Brown University does in fact hold a small selection of Eigner’s letters, though the bulk of Eigner’s manuscripts and letters are now held at Stanford University and the University of Kansas. See letter 60 for the beginning of Eigner’s contact with Jonathan Greene. As Greene recalls: “Jim Lowell distributed for me (Gnomon), JW ( Jargon), Cid (Origin), etc. but in a minimal way. I perhaps thought he might help find an archive for Larry’s work?” (email correspondence with author, March 15, 2015). 2 other friends of ours, he of Japan [. . .] Denise Presumably Cid Corman and Denise Levertov, possibly the other of the “2 other friends” suggested to Eigner as possible editors and/or depositories. So last mnth i sent Greene 18 or so mss, fot the heck, since i cant hibernate completely  As Greene recalls, “For A Controversy of Poets edited by Robert Kelly and Paris Leary (Doubleday Anchor anthology, 1965) I gathered up poems by Larry for that” (email correspondence with author, March 15, 2015). Leif notes seven poems of Eigner’s that appear in A Controversy of Poets, none of which correspond to the poems mentioned in this letter. Rago  Henry Rago, editor of Poetry. one radio program, since ’58, which i ve followed regularly the past 2-­ 3 yrs, over Lowell Institute

280

Notes to Pages 133–134

­tation, has a bk rd frm day to day  See letter 81 for earlier s reference to the Lowell Institute. th enclosed “Frederick Douglass”  Eigner’s poem “Frederick Douglass” was sent with this letter, and an origi­nal typescript is in the Jargon Society Collection; in the margin of the poem itself, Eigner has noted: ||Douglass’ story as on the tv, Profiles in Courage series-dont know what other sources there are || || Abt a wk after see-­ ing, and writing this, i read those lines of Wordsworth: ‘Whose mind is but the mind of his own eyes, He is a slave, the meanest that we have.’ See Wordsworth’s poem “Personal Talk” (lines 27–28). A dim possibility i might someday keep enough of some kind of budget in mind to be able to act a little with a reveokable trust brother in s.f.has for me there On the trust set up in Eigner’s interest, see letter 78. End of 62 [. . .] the only resource of my mind Lawrence Ferlinghetti; James Laughlin. On the manuscript in question, Eigner’s next major collection is another time in fragments, eventually published in 1967 by the Lon­don-­ based Fulcrum Press. For additional comments on this developing collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 81, 84, and 94. On “repetitions,” see the correspondence Eigner sends during his preparation of the typescripts of ON MY EYES, especially letters 27, 28, 29, and 31. material Duncan copied off page-­to-­page, ­surprisingly, when i sent him mss during ’60. I held back on many others of these, in­clud­ing civil war poems (in early 60, i guess it was, i read 2 cw bks)  In the Robert Dun­can collection (housed, like that of the Jargon Society, at the University at Buffalo), there are several large bundles of Eigner poems (totaling perhaps several hundred). Among these, there is a collection of cleanly typed poems under the heading “LARRY EIGNER – POEMS.” First in this bundle is Eigner’s poem “LETTER FOR DUNCAN,” which appeared in Eigner’s 1967 another time in fragments. Significantly, the poems in that volume appear in a different order from that in Duncan’s typescript, indicating that at some point they were indeed rearranged. Though the title of the clean copy type­script

Notes to Pages 134–135

281

echoes that under which Williams advertises Eigner’s work in the years and months leading up to the publication of what became Eigner’s ON MY EYES, there is no overlap between what is held by Duncan and what appears in Eigner’s ON MY EYES. amng wht i sent Greene: “foxes step” and “grt m ­ ultiple” that appeared in MOTHER (had 4 copies i guess  For “foxes stepping,” see letter 81; this poem appeared in The Desert Review (Fall 1967) and Desert Review Anthology (1974). The poem “great multiple” appeared in Mother 3 (1963) and later in WATERS / PLACES / A TIME (Black Sparrow, 1983). Eig­ner’s comment about copies indicates the loosely tracked status of his manuscripts (i.e., copies to Greene, to Williams, to publications, and in his own rec­ords). 3 copies here of this fold-­out thing, possible series that i put together in xxxx nov.63  Nothing in the correspondence or additional manuscripts held in the Jargon Society Collection corresponds to what Eigner describes here. Have sent copies of Frederick Douglass to Kelly, for one,--though, so far, by th way, he hasnt let go of [. . .] returned, as mch as 1 ms deliv ered him on bhalf of Trobar or (1964) Doubleday  See note above where Eigner recalls “last mnth i sent Greene 18 or so mss” and Greene’s recollection of gathering poems for A Controversy of Poets (Doubleday, 1965); “Frederick Douglass” does not appear in that collection. In addition to A Controversy, Kelly also edited Trobar. the 1962 ms  This is a reference to a collection Eigner describes here and elsewhere. Eigner’s next major collection is another time in fragments, eventually published in 1967 by the Lon­don-­based Fulcrum Press. Like his ON MY EYES, which contains poems almost a decade old at the time of its publication, another time in fragments contains many poems written several years before their publication in a book. For additional comments on this developing collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 81, 84, and 94. Denise got to Frindship partly through me, was it?  Denise Levertov had been vacationing in Maine since the late 1940s and with her husband had bought a home there in 1960. In her correspondence with Robert Duncan, Levertov notes that McFarland and Eigner have become close through correspondence, and that she herself lives close to McFarland, describing him in a manner quite similar to Eigner’s description here (see letter 129 in The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov). Thingsv on tv like M Sargent conducting Sibelius & just before his remarks on Si squaring amazngly with wcw’s “Tapiola”  Sir Malcolm Sargent was a popu­lar British conductor who made numerous televised appearances. Jean Sibelius was a Finnish composer working in the late 1800s into the mid-­1900s. William Carlos Williams’s “Tapioloa” appears in his Pictures from Breughel and commemorates Sibelius’s 1957 death. Poetry progrm i supplied stf fer, and a reading at Cmbridge workshop  In a letter to Tom Clark held at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, Eigner reports that in February 1965, he contributed twenty min-

282

Notes to Pages 135–136

utes of material for a local radio broadcast. As Eigner notes to Clark that he is waiting for a copy of the material to be sent back to him, and as he has described this same event to Williams above, it seems as though Eigner sent typed poems to be read by someone else (letter from Larry Eigner to Tom Clark, editor of The Paris Review, April 20, 1965). On the “reading at Cmbridge workshop,” this reference seems to predate references to Eigner’s first poetry readings as recorded in the Collected Poems and Eig­ner’s own recollections in areas / lights / heights (Roof, 1989) Though the mention above occurs in 1965, both the Collected Poems and areas / lights / heights note Eig­ner’s first pub­lic reading as occurring in 1973 “at an Artist’s Cooperative in Cambridge, MA, organized by George Grosbeck who taught at the University of Massachusetts, Salem” (Collected Poems, vol. 1, xxiv); see also Eig­ner’s description of this event in “Qs & As (?) Large and Small / Parts of a Collaborate” in areas / lights / heights (151–53).

(84) 1/31/67

maison des vieux  Eig­ner’s French translates loosely as “old folks’ home.” Fulcrum [. . .] Montgomery  This is Eig­ner’s another time in fragments (1967), published by Stuart Montgomery under the Fulcrum imprint. As indicated in many of the preceding letters, this book takes shape over the years following the publication of ON MY EYES yet also contains poems written before that earlier volume was published. For additional comments on this collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 81, 83, and 94. an idea to reprint On My Eyes at COYOTE books BOOKS In keeping with Eig­ner’s wish to see ON MY EYES in print again, this seems to be the most concrete opportunity he shares with Williams. However, a reprint of ON MY EYES was not issued by Coyote Books. Bill Brown [. . .] James Koller [. . .] Edw. van Aelstyn  Brown, Koller, and Edwin van Aelstyn were involved with Coyote’s J­ ournal. ok with Callahan [. . .] at the time of th proposed reprint by Ron Caplan  Harry Callahan’s photographs appeared in ON MY EYES. As Williams details in his letter to Bill Brown (letter 85b), Williams himself does not condone the full-­scale reproduction of the Jargon version of ON MY EYES. On Caplan and a possible volume of Eig­ner’s work (reprinted or otherwise), see letter 81 where Eigner references Caplan’s having “collapsed under the weight” of ongoing projects then; see also letter 82 where Williams reports Caplan’s desire to work with Williams and Williams’s own efforts to “effect some L. Eigner book” through his influence upon and example for Caplan as a publisher. Mss of most of my stuff by the way are now at University of Kansas Library, Lawrence, Kansas  See Eig­ner’s “Qs & As (?) Large and Small / Parts of a Collaborate” in areas / lights / heights (151–53) for his comments on this depository. See also notes in the Collected Poems detailing how ­Larry’s cousin Edwin Eigner (professor of Victorian literature at Kansas) arranged for this depository (vol. 1, “A Note on the Text,” xiv).

Notes to Pages 136–138

283

Terrence Williams, Special Collections. Who also ­pub­lishes: broadsides, et al.--Creeley, Kelly, Irby, Gins­ ­ berg, and soon Ei  Terrence Williams published a broadside series, but Leif lists no publications of Eig­ner’s work attributed to Williams. The Way to The Uncle Sam Hotel  Bill Brown’s The Way to the Uncle Sam Hotel was published in 1966 by Coyote Books; Leif ’s bibliography notes that Eigner published a review of the novel in Ole, no. 7 (May 1967). Burroughs, H Norse, Koller, Duncan, Ginsberg ... Whitman  Eig­ner’s catalog and subsequent commentary (through his reference to Williams’s own The Empire Finals at Verona) seems to collect these poets and others under the same rubric: “a lot of mosaic and collage poetry.” William Burroughs in particular had developed a method of literally cutting up and collaging texts (newspapers, etc.) to produce new readings. Harold Norse was closely associated with the Beats, in­clud­ing Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. See above for James Koller. Robert Duncan’s allusive and bibliographic practice and Whitman’s catalogs seem loosely linked in this context. this biography of Willard Gibbs, by, you know, Muriel Rukeyser.  Williard Gibbs was an Ameri­can physicist (1839–1903); Rukeyser’s biography Willard Gibbs was published in 1942 by Doubleday. EMPIRE FINALS AT VERONA and saw it more, yeh Jonathan Williams, The Empire Finals at Verona, Jargon 30 (1959). A Carl Weissner who edits a mag ­ KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN -­Ch.Pardker bird word  Weissner’s magazine supported Beat and experimental writing in Germany. “KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN” is the title of a ­Charlie Parker composition, sometimes thought to be Parker’s own trans­litera­ tion of a German phrase for “Hold onto your hats.” Eigner appeared twice in ­KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN: no. 4 (No­vem­ber 1966) and no. 23 (Sep­tem­ber 1967); see Leif ’s bibliography for a list of poems.

(85a) March 16, 1967 ( Jonathan Williams to Eigner)

Bill Brown  See the letter enclosed in this one (letter 85b), as well as letter 84, regarding the planned Coyote reprint of ON MY EYES; Brown was affiliated with Coyote’s Journal. Fulcrum is coming through with a large collection. Stuart seems to persevere  The Fulcrum edition mentioned here is Eig­ner’s another time in fragments (1967). For additional comments on this collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, and 94. Ronald Johnson  Ronald Johnson was at one time a romantic and traveling partner of Williams’s. Denise also there, and Dave Ignatow  Denise Levertov; David Ignatow was a poet and literary editor. I’d met Terry Wms before, but hadn’t known of your holdings there until now. Met your cousin there as well  For Terrence Williams, see letter 84. “Holdings” refers to Eig­ner’s manu-

284

Notes to Pages 138–139

script collection at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library (see the same letter for details regarding this collection). Austin, Texas [. . .] Nathalie Sauraute, Roger Shattuck, Christopher Middleton, Basil Bunting  In 1967, ­ Roger Shattuck was teaching literature at the University of Texas at Austin, Nathalie Sarraute (French novelist) was in residence for a month, Christopher Middleton (British poet and translator) had just arrived for what would become more than a thirty-­year span, and Basil Bunting (Objectivist poet) seems to have traveled through Austin on a reading circuit. a little selected poems, out of Milano, so you can read something besides Empire Finals  On Williams’s plea that Eigner “read something besides Empire Finals,” see letter 84, as well as vari­ous remarks among Eig­ner’s correspondence since Eigner first commented on the book on Janu­ary 29, 1960 (letter 48). The book that Williams mentions here appears to be Affilati attrezzi per i giardini di Catullo (selected poems in English and Italian, with translations by Leda Sartini Mussio, drawings by James McGarrell), published in 1967 in Milano, Italy; a subsequent limited edition was produced in the United States as Sharp Tools for Catullan Gardens (1968).

(85b) March 15, 1967 [Enclosed letter from Jonathan Williams to Bill Brown]

Bill Brown  See Williams’s letter enclosing this one (letter 85a), as well as letter 84, for notes on Brown. I’ve been carrying a letter from Larry Eigner around with me  See letters 84 and 85a for the immediate context of this letter. Fulcrum is coming out with a big collection of his The Fulcrum edition mentioned here is Eig­ner’s another time in fragments (1967). For additional comments on this collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 81, 83, 84, and 94. Callahan is almost too prominent nowadays [. . .] Hallmark has even done a 1967 calendar using some of them  Harry Callahan’s work was featured in a spiral-­bound monthly calen­dar titled simply 1967: Photographs by Harry Callahan. LeRoi Jones once reprinted Jargon’s Joel Oppenheimer book, The Dutiful, without permission or asking anything. It came out looking very tired and very ­ stupid  Oppen­heimer’s The Dutiful Son was published by Williams in 1956 as Jargon 16 and later by Jones’s Totem Press in 1961. There are other photographers whose work complements Larry’s. I’d be glad to suggest one or two, if you like: Ron Nameth and Ralph Eugene Meatyard come to mind quickly  Ron Nameth was a photographer and filmmaker who worked with Williams on at least two subsequent Jargon titles—Mason Jordan Mason’s The Selected Poems (proposed as Jargon 54, but never published), and Richard Emil Braun’s Last Man In (Jargon 107, published in 1990)—and was at this time also collaborating with

Notes to Pages 139–141

285

John Cage at the University of Illinois Urbana-­Champagne. Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a photographer whose compositions of­ten included grotesque masks, dolls, and multiple exposures. Williams’s suggestion as to why the work of either would “complement” Eig­ner’s is provocative, to say the least. a novel of yours. I’d like to see it, as well as other things from Coyote. The last thing I got was a y ­ellow opus of Phil Whalen’s, when I was in England  Bill Brown’s The Way to the Uncle Sam Hotel was published in 1966 by Coyote Books; Leif ’s bibliography notes that Eigner published a review of the novel in the Ole, no. 7 (May 1967). Philip Whalen’s Every Day was published in 1965 by Coyote Books bound in yellow papers.

(86) Mnday mr 20 67

I gave COYOTE my bk abt Feb.15th; Koller sd he’d write you if I agreed [. . .] not just reproducing th JARGON For immediate context, see letters 84, 85a, and 85b as Eigner, Williams, and the editors of Coyote Books (in­clud­ing Bill Brown, James Koller, and Edwin van Aelstyn) discuss a reprint of Eig­ner’s ON MY EYES. Montgomery in NYC now and will come to help w.th prf  Stuart Montgomery, of Fulcrum Press, who was producing Eig­ner’s another time in fragments. Olson in Lon­ don [. . .] Duncan will be in Buffalo  Charles Olson was in and out of Lon­don for much of the year (see Tom Clark’s Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life for details on Olson’s travels at this time). In 1967, Duncan participated in Buffalo’s annual Festival of the Arts (see Lisa Jarnot’s Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus for further details on this event). T Wms  See letter 84 for first mention of Terrence Williams. Hope you enjoy Colorado--and th 18 mnths in 1 place As he notes in closing to Bill Brown (see letter 85b), Williams would be in residence for a year and a half at the Aspen Institute beginning in April 1967.

(87) Sat.Apr 8 67

“north­ern & ½-­savage cntree”  From William Carlos Williams’s “Deep Religious Faith” (lines 27–28). 800 pp.ec.txtbk  Reference is unclear. i tht “A little t ..” was worrying abt over­ doing Reference is unclear. Make/ bright// air in/the/ lines  This is presumably a fragment of a poem of Eig­ner’s—possibly its middle or end, owing to how it is punctuated here. This poem does not appear in the Toad edition discussed in this card, and as of yet it remains unlocated. TOAD wanted to do smethng [. . .] Cover, wch Koller wrote last wk he didnt like, awash with a sleazy enogh sunlght, butte scene i gss  Eig­ner’s first significant publication as

286

Notes to Pages 142–144

an adult, the ten-­poem pamphlet From the Sustaining Air, was published in 1953 by Robert Creeley’s Divers Press and then reprinted in 1967 by Toad Press with an additional eight poems. The latter edition, with red lettering and images on a yellow background, seems to have provoked a negative response in both Eigner and James Koller (who was involved with Coyote Books). Looks lik OME be out fall 67. Aha! (Sans Callahan.) A proposed reprint by Coyote Books of Eig­ner’s ON MY EYES. See letters 84, 85a, and 85b as Eigner, Williams, and the editors of Coyote Books (in­clud­ing Bill Brown, James Koller, and Edwin van Aelstyn) discuss a reprint of Eig­ner’s ON MY EYES. Montgokery in nyc  Stuart Montgomery, of Fulcrum Press, who was producing Eig­ner’s another time in fragments. See letter 86 for additional context. chez Rothenbrg  Jerome Rothenberg, poet and editor. POETRY prfs in typwrter  Eigner appeared in the April 1967 issue of Poetry with three poems (“the pipes  how many,” “the feet of Icarus,” and “the birds / risen to a tree”).

(88) Dec.31 67 Sunday

HAROLD [/] HOLT  Harold Holt was prime minister of Australia until he disappeared while swimming in De­cem­ber 1967 (National Archives of Australia). This text seems to be intended as a poem, but it does not appear in Eig­ner’s Collected Poems or Leif ’s bibliography. National Archives of Australia, “Harold Holt,” Australia’s Prime Ministers, accessed February 15, 2018, http://primeministers.naa.gov.au /primeministers/holt/. S. Thomas More  This poem was published in the Aldebaran Review, no. 1 (1968), and later collected in now there’s a morning / hulk of the sky (Elizabeth Press, 1981). the movie turned [/] walls  This poem appeared in the anthology Thunderbolts of Peace and Liberation (BB Bks, 1967) and The South Florida Poetry Journal, no. 4/5 (1970). th’Epiphytes  Jonathan Williams’s 50! Epiphytes,-­taphs,-­tomes,-­grams,-­thets! 50! (Poet & Printer, 1967). cant go thro eyes of too many needles. Rube G kps on daily here  These appear to be comments on Eig­ner’s difficulties in gathering and collecting material—that is, going through the eye of a needle or being cobbled together like a Rube Goldberg contraption. a bklet John Martin in L.A. solicited,edited and is pblishing  John Martin’s Black Sparrow Press issued several volumes of Eig­ner’s work beginning around this time. The limited quantity Eigner describes suggests this particular volume is the presentation issue of THE -­/ TOWARDS / AUTUMN in cloth and boards and printed in an edition of ten (five for commerce and five for sale). COYOTE offer of aid--havent hrd since Kllr sd,in Jne, en­ expectdly in red [. . .] br whn he lrned of reduced format went cold!  The proposed Coyote reprint of Eig­ner’s ON MY EYES was to be without the origi­nal photographs by Harry Callahan and with smaller margins through­out. For context, see letters 85a, 85b, and 87.

Notes to Pages 144–145

287

McC sold BEARD to Grove  Michael McClure’s play The Beard was published by Grove Press in 1967; it had been a controversial play in performance in the months leading up to its publication owing to its explicit sexual themes and acts. th Ruggles  Carl Ruggles (1876–1971) was an Ameri­can composer and associate of Charles Ives. Claudel’s “Magnificat” [. . .] there was th Ives ­before  Paul Claudel (1868–1955) was a French poet; his “Magnificat” was the third in his Cinq Grandes Odes (1907). Charles Ives was an Ameri­can composer (1874–1954). th 17th,a day or 2 bfr yrs came, there was Stokowski et al on tv doin I’s 4th S  Leopold Stokowski (1882–1977) was a conductor of Polish descent born and raised in Lon­don. Stokowski conducted the world premiere of Charles Ives’s Fourth Symphony in 1965. 10 days hence and a wk later on radio here will be P.Zukofsky’s rcordings of th 4 Ives v.sonatas Paul Zukof­sky, son of Louis Zukofsky, recorded Charles Ives: The Sonatas for Violin and Piano in 1964 with the pianist Gilbert Kalish. and rght after I’s nfw told how I lost trck of Ch.E. Hughes  Reference is unclear. Charles Evan Hughes was the Republican candidate for president in 1916. Before and after his candidacy, he served as a justice on the Supreme Court (becoming chief justice in 1930). Gayle Sherwood Magee suggests that Hughes’s campaign strategy of emphasizing hyphenated Ameri­can identity in order to mobilize German Ameri­can voters serves to contextualize Ives’s own emphasis on autochthonous Ameri­can identity in his music (Charles Ives Reconsidered, 124–25, 203n22). Stockowski fumbled on “Rockefeller”  Reference is unclear. Then came on NETV a orrendous nonconfrontation btwn police and nrthern proles  National Educational Television (NET) operated from 1954 to 1970, when it was succeeded by PBS; specific reference, however, is unclear.

(89) Tue. Nov 26 68

Finlay’s Calendar  Ian Hamilton Finlay’s The Blue and the Brown Poems, a large-­format calendar of concrete poems by Finlay, was published as Jargon 68 in 1968. AIR THE TREES, especially during the last 6 wks,and other (?) Black Sparrow items  Eig­ner’s air / the trees was published in 1968 by Black Sparrow. not having hrd from Koller for 6 (?) months James Koller, of Coyote Books; for context on the following paragraph, see previous correspondence between Eigner, Williams, and Brown on the possibility of reprinting Eig­ ner’s ON MY EYES, especially letters 85a, 85b, 87, and 88. Montgy suddenly told me he wanted some day to put OME in 1 vol.with FRAGMENTS  Stuart Montgomery’s Fulcrum Press published Eig­ner’s another time in fragments in 1967.

288

Notes to Pages 145–146

yeh,bien sur,je pense  Eig­ner’s French translates as “of course, I think.” a sf frere, assister de monnaie a Koller. Last yr. Cet an, j’ai mmanager a refuse des payes (inconnu a mes gens). Je sent mieux pour la  Eig­ner’s French translates loosely as “to San Francisco brother [Richard Eigner] to assist Koller with money. Last year, I managed to refuse paychecks (unknown to my family). I feel better because of that.”

(90) Fri.nov 29 68

Blue and Brown Poems  Ian Hamilton Finlay’s The Blue and the Brown Poems, a large-­format calendar of concrete poems by Finlay, was published as Jargon 68 in 1968. See letter 89 for previous mention of this work. the enclosed (1 for finlay?) and inside here (1 for you)  On the reverse of the leaf, Eigner has typed the poem “my god / priceless”; this poem is dedicated to both Finlay and Williams. The letter has been separated from whatever other inclusions there may have been. yr letter to Bill Brown (3 15 67)  See letter 85b. ce matin frm Ian Tyson of Circle Press in Lon­ don that hes doing as i suggested -­beau et bravo, j’en ai oublie  Ian Tyson collaborated with Circle Press (founded by Ron King) and published his own pamphlets and books under Tetrad Press. Tyson provided screen prints for Eig­ner’s pamphlets through Circle. Eig­ner’s French translates loosely as “this morning [. . .] beautiful and congratulations, I had forgotten.” Si vous ecrivez de ceci, perler en francais -­il est un secrete  Eig­ner’s French translates loosely as “If you write about this, speak in French -­it is a secret.” The pamphlets must be the “brosside” of “Yeats/ Blake / D H L ”  In 1965, Circle Press issued a broadside of Eig­ner’s poem “the memory of Yeats  BLAKE / DHL,” with illustrations by Ian Tyson; in 1968, Circle Press also issued A Line That May Be Cut, a pamphlet of twenty-­two poems accompanied by Tyson’s silk-­screen prints. Whether due to its cost or simply because it takes up space, Eigner appears apprehensive about his family’s reaction to the publication and seems to have asked Tyson to send copies to Williams for distribution. J’n’aime pas le prospect de beaucoup d’eux venant ici, [. . .] Les gens ici, xxx de respecte pourx les haut prix, maintenant tiens mes livre ets en regard, mais les exemlpes pile up of crse, and this unexpected item wd be a single poem hanging arnd.  Eig­ner’s French translates loosely as “I do not like the idea of many of them coming here, [. . .] People here, in respect for the high price, now hold my books in regard, but the copies pile up, of course.” Hayden Carruth suggested [. . .] the Harris C ­ ollection at Brown get a copy of every pblication of mine Hayden Carruth was a poet and critic. Today, Brown University does hold approximately three

Notes to Pages 146–149

289

hundred items relating to Eig­ner’s work (in­clud­ing manuscripts, letters, and published works). Ferrini and Olson  Vincent Ferrini; Charles Olson. ANOTHER TIME  Stuart Montgomery’s Fulcrum Press published Eig­ner’s another time in fragments in 1967. the bklet FLAT AND ROUND frm Pierrepont Press In his bibliography of Eig­ner’s work, Leif notes that only twenty to forty copies of this book were actually produced, owing to a dispute between the printer and the publisher, Harvey Tucker. Aber genug  Eig­ner’s German translates as “But enough.” Biafra etc. mostly on my mind  The Repub­lic of Biafra seceded from Nigeria in 1967; war and extreme famine led to the reincorporation of Biafra into Nigeria in 1970. Stuart said he and Duncan were abt to start nrth to visit Finlay  Stuart Montgomery; Robert Duncan; Ian Hamilton Finlay.

(91) Jan. 6 6X9

This “stereo” poem  The poem to which Eigner refers is no. 271, “the icicle the.” However, as Eigner describes it in the letter, and in the form in which he sent it to Williams, the seven-­line poem text is entered twice, nearly verbatim on the same page; the sec­ond entry is beneath the first, and several spaces overall to the left (i.e., “stereo”). Eigner notes that he rejected his first attempt at this; Williams’s copy represents a revision of this orientation. As presented in the Collected Poems, only one of the two “septets” stands in for this experiment; in THE WORLD AND ITS STREETS, PLACES (Black Sparrow, 1977), both septets are in place and appear to follow the arrangement in the version held in the Jargon Society Collection. JARGON JARGON calendar  Ian Hamilton Finlay’s The Blue and the Brown Poems, a large-­format calendar of concrete poems by Finlay, was published as Jargon 68 in 1968. See letters 89 and 90 for previous mention of this work. Though Eig­ner’s repetition of “JARGON” may be accidental, it does seem to allude to Finlay’s typographic play in the calendar itself, as well as (perhaps) the “stereo” poetics Eigner attempts in the included poem. McLuhan  Though Eigner mentions no specific text, it is interesting to speculate which of Marshall McLuhan’s works he would have been reading at this time. Mailing a copy to Stuart M .. , with mention Finlay migh enjoy seeing it  Stuart Montgomery, editor of Fulcrum Press, published Eig­ner’s another time in fragments (1967).

(92) Thursday Feb.18 71 10:30 pm

lawrence welk  The Lawrence Welk Show featured conservative, widely appealing music, in stark contrast to Eig­ner’s preferences (such as Ives, Mahler, and others whom he of­ten mentions to Williams). the Dahlberg Fest  Williams assembled a collection of texts on the occasion of Edward Dahlberg’s seventieth birthday, published first in TriQuarterly

290

Notes to Pages 149–150

20 (Fall 1970) and later as Edward Dahlberg: A Tribute; Essays, Reminiscences, Correspondence, Tributes (David Lewis, 1970). Eigner has one poem in this collection, “What isn’t,” which is later collected in Eig­ner’s 1979 time / details / of a tree. Ch. Newman  Charles Newman, editor of TriQuarterly. Yr letter of fb.7 in re Niedecker came today [. . .] the closest i cd come to an epitaph or Lorine N (I do like yrs and Tom Meyer’s)  Williams’s letter has not been located, but it appears to have notified Eigner of the recent death of Lorine Niedecker (De­cem­ber 31, 1970) and to have solicited work for a collection in her memory, to be published later as Epitaphs for Lorine, Jargon 74, (1973). Eig­ner’s first contribution, which he remarks upon as something of a coincidence, is his poem beginning “common sense / e­ xperience.” Note that Eigner composed the poem before learning of Niedecker’s death. Tom Meyer was Williams’s romantic partner until Jonathan’s death. Something a good deal like this happened when John Tag­ gart asked m e to do something if possible for MAPS #23, [. . .] the same afternoon i did a piece it ­ appeared might fit with saxophone gaieties, which i sent him, with news of the departed r-­ player, and he used it along with one I had sent before abt the SPACE ODYSSEY movie  Saxophone innovator John Coltrane died in 1967; poet and editor John Taggart devoted the third number of his Maps to work on and inspired by Coltrane. Two of Eig­ner’s poems appeared in the third number of Maps: “to see in the green” and “how much sat  hard.” MAPS #4, for Charles, as edited by Butterick, hasnt come yet, while Ferrini wrote me it was due in Dec.. B fig­ured to include the poem I sent you a copy of abt a yr ago - et al.  Maps 4 was dedicated to the work of Charles Olson. George Butterick was a scholar and editor of Olson’s work. According to Leif, Eigner does not appear in Maps 4. Eigner a Bibliography(Oyez) came 6 wks ago and when a letter from the girl who wanted to do it, Andrea Wyatt  Andrea Wyatt’s A Bibliography of Works by Larry Eigner: 1937–1969 was published by Oyez in 1970. In his preface to Irving Leif ’s own Larry Eigner: A Bibliography of His Works (1989), Eigner notes that “in 1970 Eigner: A Bibliography are around fifty errors which somehow or other got past Andrea Wyatt and me, and maybe forty omissions plus seventeen years of writing since then” (v). Because Leif ’s bibliography corrects many of Wyatt’s errors or omissions, and covers nearly twenty years more in Eig­ner’s writing, I have chosen to use that volume almost exclusively, despite the several mistakes and lacunae I have noted in passing. in re MOTHER,as i had thngs frm Ron Caplan  Ron Caplan edited the magazine Mother and occasionally issued chapbooks through Mother Press / Boxwood Press. Eigner appeared in Mother nos. 3 (1963), 8 (1964), 9 (1964), and 12 (1964). chez mon frere in frisco frm Berke­ ley  During her work on

Notes to Pages 151–152

291

Eig­ner’s bibliography, Wyatt spent time on both the East and West Coasts. The Collected Poems notes Eig­ner’s sec­ond visit to his brother Richard’s San Francisco home in summer 1968. David Gitin’s 45-­ minute brdcast of my stuff over KPFA  David Gitin read and broadcast a selection of Eig­ner’s poems, ranging from 1952 to the then most recent work (ca. 1970). The broadcast was made on Oc­to­ ber 19, 1970, and can be heard at PennSound (indexed under both Eig­ner’s and Gitin’s pages): David Gitin, “Gitin Reads Larry Eig­ner’s Poetry for Writers and Writing, KPFA, Oc­to­ber 19, 1970,” PennSound, accessed Janu­ary 10, 2018, http://writing .upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Gitin.php. A Bard College man who lived in Cleveland a while* in Marblehead now for 3 yrs and running THe parnassus book SHOP, a yr old, phoned me last of may 70 and June 6 there was a rding at the shop with Ferrini myself (a kid named Mailshaver reading me, i getting to kibbitz a little) and others and in No­ vem­ ber there was another such reading at the coffeehouse annex to a church.  Like Eig­ner’s report of a “reading at Cmbridge workshop” (see letter 83), this report of a reading in Marble­ head, Massachusetts, with Vincent Ferrini and a proxy for Eigner allowing him to “kibbitz a little,” as well as of “another such reading at the coffeehouse annex,” seem also to predate the record for Eig­ner’s pub­lic readings. As noted in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library materials around Eig­ner’s film Getting It Together, Frank Minelli was the owner of Parnassus Bookshop and Jay Mollishever [“Mailshaver”] was a freelance journalist who attended these sessions. Jim Lowell [. . .] the first bklet in the biblio Jim Lowell was a Cleveland-­based bookseller; Eig­ner’s Poems (1941) can be viewed as facsimile in its entirety in the Collected Poems. As he notes in the following paragraph, the book (which was typeset by fellow students) utilized large ornamental initials for the first word in each poem. tori­ cal J.. Orphan’s Home from the Cleveland His­ ­Society  Edward Dahlberg was sent for five years to the Jewish Orphan Asylum in Cleveland; Eigner refers to a photograph included in Edward Dahlberg: A Tribute; Essays, Reminiscences, Correspondence, Tributes, edited by Jonathan Williams and published by TriQuarterly Books / David Lewis in 1970. See the next note. Cdnt recall Karlen’s rvw of R.. Of The Heart and cant now.! I rd a chpter on th j o asuylum [. . .] read Karlen on the grt Crank. as well as Meyer’s and port’sAwrds.(And Cid’s, e.g.)  This paragraph refers to speDaven­ cific selections in the tribute Williams edited on Edward Dahlberg. Arno Karlen’s review of Dahlberg’s 1965 Reasons of the Heart, “Obsessed with Words,” appeared in the New York Times Book Review, De­cem­ber 19, 1965, and was reprinted in Williams’s edition. In the festschrift, Ronald Johnson selects and introduces several letters from Dahlberg to Williams; these letters include Dahlberg’s comments that “Zukofsky is a dwarf, and Olson a refrigerated verser,” and Dahlberg’s admission that he was “duped

292

Notes to Pages 152–154

by them at one time, but [has] long since realized there [is] no point in drudging for Narcissi” (Edward Dahlberg, 93–115, esp. 113). Guy Davenport and Cid Corman each contribute prose paeans to Dahlberg (Edward Dahlberg, 117, 135). Ebt Vas Dias invited me to tch etc.at a “National Poetry Destival” at “a small college in Michigan” June/ July  Robert Vas Dias edited the 1970 volume Inside Outer Space: New Poems of the Space Age; Eigner contributed five poems to this volume (see Leif ’s bibliography for titles). In 1970, Vas Dias was in residence at Thomas Jefferson College in Allendale, Michigan, where he organized two national poetry festivals, occurring in 1971 and 1973; these events featured many poets of the New Ameri­can generation, as well as several of the Objectivists. U of Kansas Libraries at Lawrence hv tss of mine See letter 84 for further context on Eig­ner’s holdings at the University of Kan­sas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library. 3 more frm that bk of ours anthologized -­H Carruth picked em at the Harris Collection  Eig­ner’s 1960 Jargon publication ON MY EYES. Today, Brown University’s Harris Collection does hold approximately three hundred items relating to Eig­ner’s work (in­clud­ing manuscripts, letters, and published works). Carruth edited The Voice That Is Great Within Us: Ameri­can Poetry of the Twentieth Century (Bantam, 1970). Eig­ner’s poems “F l e c h e . .,” “Élysée,” and “A l l  I n t e n t s” (all from ON MY EYES) appear in that volume. And Niedeckr ibid. 1 enigma: magnetic lines of a A: G D’s remind me of Cummings, and Patchen  Lorine Niedecker, E. E. Cummings, and Kenneth Patchen all appear in Carruth’s The Voice That Is Great Within Us. spinning str [/] far out [/] turning  These are selected lines from Eig­ner’s own “magnetic lines of ”; this poem seems to have been the next poem Eigner wrote after completing his contribution (“common sense”) for Williams’s edited collection Epitaphs for Lorine. Dated in the Collected Poems to February 19, 1971 (the day after this letter), it is possible that these three lines offer an initial draft of what would become the complete poem.

(93) Mrch 22 71

this might do more for L N than the others(s) Forget if i sent one or 2  See letter 92 for Eig­ner’s previous text sent for Williams’s proposed memorial for Lorine Niedecker. POETRY AS SYSTEM by ANthony C Winkler [. . .] concrete poetry, besides Wm Sh.. ... Snodgrass, Plath Anthony Winkler’s poetry textbook Poetry as System included Eig­ner’s poem “T h e ​S h o c k,” which origi­nally appeared in ON MY EYES and later in A Controversy of Poets (1965). Leif does not include Winkler’s textbook in his bibliography of Eig­ner’s work. As to the “framewrk” Eigner mentions, Winkler argues for “a method of classifying poetry into three conceptual models”: “the object poem,” “the abstraction poem,” and “the speaker-­as-­object poem” (“Preface,” n.p.). Eig­ner’s “T h e  S h o c k” appears in

Notes to Pages 154–155

293

Wink­ler’s section on “Modern Poetry for Further Study.” Though his approach to poetry is admirably catholic, many of Winkler’s points of analy­sis are dubious at best (e.g., in his comments on Wordsworth’s “To the Skylark,” Winkler flatly and uncriti­ cally asserts that Wordsworth’s apostrophe “merely means ‘bird,’ but that’s how they addressed birds in poems then” [1–2]). a documentarist was here filming me as he wanted to (Leonard Henny, Films for Social Change  Leonard Henny and Jan Boon produced the film Getting It Together, a Film on Larry Eigner Poet (1973). Henny had come to know Eigner through Larry’s brother Joseph. Though the film is difficult to find, in 1992 Poetry USA, a poetry newspaper based in Oakland, California, published Jack Foley’s useful synopsis of the film, in­clud­ing transcripts of the soundtrack, descriptions of the on-­camera action, and Eig­ner’s own subsequent commentary (in 1989) on the film’s transcript (see Poetry USA, no. 24, pp. 2–5). The film depicts Eigner reading and discussing his poems, as well as Allen Ginsberg reading and discussing some of the same poems. A group session was arranged in his bkshop by the marblehead man thrsday and we’re to get together with Fer­ rini later and mail a tape to st louis  Vincent Ferrini. See “The Stony Hills Interview,” in areas / lights / heights, where Eigner describes this event as follows: “In ’71 a sociologist and documentarist wanted to shoot a film of me here and with sound in a bookshop Frank Minelli had in Marblehead—got up a reading with some of us sitting around a table. It was pretty confusing with my idea of talk not working out too well that time, but to my surprise in two years Leonard Henny . . . had it about completed, was able to edit it, when he was back in the U.S. from a trip the Summer of ’73 we had a showing at Salem State” (154). For further context, see the Kenneth Spencer Research Library’s “Guide to ‘getting it together — a film on larry eigner poet,’ ” which includes the following description: “Handwritten transcriptions of videotaped discussion / poetry reading in The Parnassus Bookshop . . . parts of which were used in the making of the film. . . . Discussion took place among Larry Eigner, Frank Minelli (proprietor of the bookshop), Will Pirone (student, poet, guitarist), Bill Downey (poet), Jay Mollishever (free-­lance journalist), Mrs Roberta Ka­ leckef­sky (author), and Israel Eigner (Larry’s father). Includes Eig­ner’s typed or written corrections and amplifications. The transcriber is unidentified, possibly Eig­ner’s brother Joe” (accessed Janu­ary 10, 2018, http://etext.ku.edu/view?docId=ksrlead /ksrl.sc.eignerlarry.xml;route=ksrlead;brand=ksrlead;query=).

(94) Friday May 21 71

the Penland School  Several of the Jargon books produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s (in­clud­ing, eventually, Epitaphs for Lorine), were produced at the Penland School of Crafts in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. JARGON BILLBOARD #1  Williams began issuing a series of small mailed broadsides or handbills as advertisements for forthcoming and available Jargon books. The first of these, featuring the poem “Davenport Gap,” from Williams’s Elegies and Celebrations ( Jargon 13b, 1962), appeared in Winter 1963/1964.

294

Notes to Pages 155–156

I thought of showing you the above, in re the ­iedecker elegy volumes  See letter 92 for the first poem Eigner thinks N to contribute to Williams’s collection commemorating Niedecker’s death. in Lanesville, Gloucester, at a mag. called THIS As Robert Grenier notes in his introduction to the Collected Poems, vol. 1, at the time of his first meeting with Eigner, Grenier was living in Lanesville (a neighborhood of Gloucester about forty-­five minutes north of Swampscott) and teaching at Tufts University (vii, xxiv); This is now recognized as one of the founding and major magazines for the then-­developing Language school of poetry. See Leif ’s bibliography for a listing of Eig­ner’s poems in This 1. both its editors  Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten. THIS 2  See Leif ’s bibliography for a listing of Eig­ner’s poems in This 2. the help come to Delius -­there was a play abt that frm BBC TV a couple ot yrs ago  Frederick Delius (1862–1934) was an English composer who late in life suffered from the symptoms of syphilis and relied upon amanuensis Eric Fenby to carry out his work. Ken Russell’s Song of Summer, based on Fenby’s memoir of his time with Delius (Delius as I Knew Him), aired in 1968. yr note in the Festschrift where and/or how Tom Meyer is hanyman to the JARGON SOCIETY  In the ­“Festschrifters’ Notes” to Williams’s Edward Dahlberg: A Tribute (David Lewis, 1970), Williams admits that in compiling the notes “in some cases [he] must simply confess grave ignorance; in others [his] information is two years out of date. And since [he is] putting down said information on a Dutch freighter in mid-­Atlantic, there is no access to library or telephone” (181). On Tom Meyer, Williams writes that Meyer, “a recent graduate of Bard College, is amanuensis to the Jargon Society” (189). copies of my Fragments, to use in English classes at Tufts where he’s teaching (taught ON MY EYES in B ­ erke­ ley, at U.. Cal. in ’69)  another time in fragments was published by Ful­ crum in 1967; ON MY EYES was published in 1960 by Williams’s Jargon imprint. the Antioch Review issue of poems honoring Gordon Kearney of Grolier’s  Antioch Review 30 featured “Thirty-­Six Birthday Poems for Gordon Cairnie,” accompanied by Elsa Dorfman’s photographs of the poets. Grenier’s work was in this collection, but Williams’s was not. The Boston Globe of May 12th [. . .] the Lynn Item As of yet, this notice has not been located. The Lynn Item was the local paper from the town immediately southwest of Swampscott, along the Massachusetts coast. they brought THIS #1, with themselves, me, R Kelly, ley, Irby, C Coolidge, Ron Silliman [. . .] and Cree­ Olson photos done and annotated briefly and well by Elsa Dorfman  This 1 included Robert Grenier’s important statement “On Speech,” as well as his notes on the poetry of Robert Creeley. Appearing alongside Robert Kelly, Robert Creeley, Ken Irby, Clark Coolidge, Ron Silliman, and others, Eigner contributed eight poems to This 1(see Leif ’s bibliography for titles and first

Notes to Pages 156–158

295

lines). As Eigner notes, the issue also contained a series of photographs of Olson; prose accompanying the photos detailed events around the funeral gathering on the occasion of Olson’s death. Grenier says E.D. got up the Antioch Review # See above note on the Antioch Review. Laughlin an ms of mine  James Laughlin of New Directions. 60 pp. in the mails now to a tentative solo mag [. . .] BRICOLEUR #2  Bricoleur was edited by David Gitin. Eigner did not publish with this magazine; Bricoleur folded after the first issue. Biblio.. of me out in Janu­ary, with few or many however small or large (? !) boners  Andrea Wyatt’s A Bibliography of Works by Larry Eigner (1970). On errors in the text, see letter 92. SELECTED POEMS due but proofs, mentioned as soon to be gone over by the bibliographer and me (she sd so). Hawley at OOyez  Eig­ner’s Selected Poems (1972) and Andrea Wyatt’s bibliography of his work (1970) both appeared from Oyez. Robert Hawley cofounded Oyez. Stuart M [. . .] COYOTE’s delay with 2nd ed.. of O M E [. . .] Koller  Stuart Montgomery, of Fulcrum Press, publisher of another time in fragments (1967; for more on this collection, see letters 73, 77, 79, 81, 83, and 84); James Koller, of Coyote Books. On the proposed sec­ond edition of ON MY EYES with Koller’s Coyote Books, see letters 84, 85a, 85b, 86, 87, 88, 89, and 90. 2nd page of, Mottram’s essay on Dahlberg. (And ­havent finished Dahlberg to you  Eigner refers to Williams’s Edward Dahlberg: A Tribute (see note above and letter 92). Eric Mottram’s essay “Ishmael in America” opens the volume (10–24); “Dahlberg to you” refers to the selection of letters made by Ronald Johnson for the volume (93–115). And TRIQUAUARTERLY is abt to lose back pages. And pages turn automatically, at least in bed.  Eig­ner’s comment indicates the toll taken upon books by his own reading practices. 1450 pp. of Dos Passos here: U.S.A. A tv p ­roduction of it (2 ½ hrs) sent me bck to it (then to TRI ­ QUARTERLY again, to try and size up) [. . .] Great ms statement (page 8?) of E D’s U.S.A.  PBS’s Hollywood Television Theater produced a musical adaptation of Dos Passos’s U.S.A. trilogy, directed by George Schafer. It is unclear if Eig­ner’s comment that the production “sent [him] back to it” refers to the Tri­Quarterly festschrift on Dahlberg or the Dos Passos tome. The ninth page of the festschrift (one further than Eig­ner’s parenthetical guess) includes a facsimile of Dahlberg’s handwriting in which he questions the exhortation to “Know thyself.” Is this the war [. . .] |Is [/] this elegy?|  This is per­haps a reference to the lines that began the letter and the present immediate purpose of Eig­ner’s recent letters—to contribute elegiac lines for the volume of poems Williams is collecting in memory of Lorine Niedecker.

296

Notes to Pages 158–161

(95) Apr 3 74 wdn night

Happy birthday  On March 8, 1974, Williams turned forty-­five. the Destschrift for E.. D.. came there got here 2 ads for TriQuarterly  Williams assembled a collection of texts on the occasion of Edward Dahlberg’s seventieth birthday, published first in TriQuarterly 20 (Fall 1970) and later as Edward Dahlberg: A Tribute; Essays, Reminiscences, Correspondence, Tributes (David Lewis, 1970). Eigner has one poem in this collection: “What isn’t” (145). Lil Enis accessible (unlike anything by P Huston I ever see!) and a real spiel, a la Paul Bunyan and what­ever  In 1974, Williams released a mailing (in an edition of five hundred) of a single folded card entitled “Who is Little Enis?”; his reading of the poem can be heard at PennSound. Little Enis, born Carlos Toadvine, was a cult fig­ure in Kentucky folk music. all rgose 25 copies of Epitaphs For Lorine  Eigner appeared in Williams’s memorial volume, Epitaphs for Lorine, Jargon 74 (1973), solicited upon Lorine Niedecker’s death on De­cem­ber 31, 1970. Beginning in February 1971, Eigner submitted a series of poems for consideration, finally arriving at “the needle getting stuck  Radio” (March 18, 1971). See letters 92–94 plus the present letter for Eig­ner’s vari­ous poems and comments. and before that VORT #4, which I finished reading yr ½ of yesterday morn (now cd reread, I forget that quickly), finding Mottram’s pages (his quotes abt bluets led me to “blue// berries) a considerable pair of binoculars, and,on rereading,Grier’s to an extent (pp. 100f). Before, there were pp. 76 (Marc 4 poem came in a letter to Alpert)-­ 80, 84-­ 86 wt al.  Vort 4 (Fall 1973), edited by Barry Alpert, was a double feature on Fielding Dawson and Jonathan Williams, in­clud­ing works by Robert Creeley, Tim Reynolds, Larry Eigner, Robert Kelly, Robin Richman, Donald Phelps, Barry Alpert, Alex Gildzen, Guy Mendes, Ronald Johnson, Edward Grier, and Eric Mottram. Eigner contributed “Up and Ahead”; on this poem, see letter 78. As published in Vort, the poem is followed with a prose note by Eigner characterizing Williams’s work. Two photocopied pages from the magazine are held in the Jargon Society Collection; Eigner has signed them in pencil, noted their origin in Vort, and someone has drawn a rectangle in red ink around the poem, excluding the appended note. Neither “blue / berries” nor “straight by / the roadsign” (the “Marc 4 poem”) are listed in Leif ’s bibliography. the interview, with your autobio See Vort 4 (Fall 1973). my 1974 Black Sparrow book  THINGS STIRRING / ­TOGETHER / OR FAR AWAY. brother’s in St. Louis  Joseph Eigner. A beautiful bookmaking job it does seem though and I include ed things written when M L King got killedd, etc., also one as Rbt Kennedy lay dying, et al.  This is a reference

Notes to Pages 161–163

297

to THINGS STIRRING / TOGETHER / OR FAR AWAY (Black Sparrow, 1974), which includes the poems “the world that was, the glass,” obviously referring to King, and “Don’t get / too much,” dedicated by Eigner “for M L King.” Reference to Robert Kennedy is less overt. Eig­ner’s assertion that the Black Sparrow volume is “[a] beautiful bookmaking job” has particular relevance, given his reference to Williams’s Vort interview, where Williams disparages the Black Sparrow aesthetic: “I’m being a little finicky . . . and I’m not going to try to be criti­cal. There’s something about the way the [Black Sparrow] books emerge, the speed with which they’re done, there doesn’t seem to be any editing involved” (see Vort 4 [Fall 1973]: 61–64). beautiful books [. . .] history [/] romance Both poems appear in THINGS STIRRING / TOGETHER / OR FAR AWAY (Black Spar­row, 1974).

(96) Friday nght Jan 31 75

audio/visual prosthesis, welcome fin_llu after trs of not driving anybody’s car, a fast blackboard  Here, Eig­ ner anticipates comments he will make in an interview appearing in four installments in Stony Hills (nos. 3, 4, 5, and 6; 1978–1980). See areas / lights / heights, 148–65, esp. 163. the space for bjs undr it  Eigner seems to have mistyped his occasional abbreviation for “books”: “bks.” M M in Millerton  Reference is unclear; several mid-­1970s Jargon books were published out of Millerton, New York, and Williams himself was at the same time contributing pieces to the photography magazine Aperture, also based in Millerton. Bowering  Eigner appeared several times in TISH, coedited by George Bowering. Olson -­wow! ah! I guess Butterick told you abt his aftenn here  The Maximus Poems, vol. 3, edited by Charles Boer and George Butterick, was published in 1975 by Grossman. “The Cat’s Ears” wth a line addedionKoher’s tape of me  Eig­ner’s poem “T h e  C a t ’ s  E a r s” appeared in ON MY EYES, as well as Sparrow 9 (1958) and the cassette tape around new / sound daily / means: Selected Poems (1975), recorded by Michael Kohler at Eig­ner’s home in two sessions in July 1974 (this recording may be heard at PennSound). Careful listening indicates that Eigner indeed adds a line to this poem, between lines 6 and 7; he also revises the conclusion of the poem.

(97) Thursday July 20 78

Thise xeroxes of my stuff in Jon..W../ F..Dawson # of VORT (#4?) came 2-­ 3 days ago from my new ­ bbliog­ rapher (collector  See letter 96 for comments on Vort 4 (Fall 1973). Two photo­ copied pages from the magazine are held in the Jargon Society Collection; Eig­ner has signed them in pencil, noted their origin in Vort, and someone has drawn a rect-

298

Notes to Pages 163–165

angle in red ink around the poem, excluding the appended note. In addition to these photocopies of the poem, the Jargon Society Collection contains a typescript for the poem (which itself includes the poem “a hole in the clouds moves”). The photo­copy appears to have been included with this letter, while the typescript seems to have been sent with letter 78. these lines of the 20th, on agn glancing into the only bk(llet) of JW’s here now  The poem “Laugh it” was included with this letter; it does not appear listed in Leif ’s bibliography. As detailed below, Eigner seems to think it appropriate for either the Zukofsky collection or the Williams festschrift in Truck. I’ve shown Jon.. W.. this piece, sent it with things for the Zukofsky memorial chpbook doneJune 9-­22 (I hope one is eg. short enough) to Corn Close. Cicular from Jargon Society with NYT obit  “[T]his piece” is “Laugh it.” A late mailing from Williams to Eigner, not included in this volume, is held in the Larry Eigner Papers in Stanford University’s Special Collections. The full text of this mailing appears to have been a photocopy of the New York Times obituary notice (May 15, 1978) on the death of poet Louis Zukofsky together with a mass mailing from Williams calling for contributions to a memorial volume on Zukofsky’s life and work, to be called Postcards & Valentines for L.Z, slated for publication the following Valentine’s Day and to be circulated only among contributors and confidants. When I asked him, Tom Meyer indicated that the proposed Zukofsky festschrift never progressed past this early stage (email correspondence with author, Sep­tem­ber 9, 2015). Corn Close was an old farmhouse in England where, after 1969, Williams annually spent the late summer and fall months. the Trucck circulat frm David W  David Wilk’s Truck magazine, in collaboration with Jonathan Greene’s Gnomon Press, hosted a feature on Jonathan Williams: JW/50, A 50th Birthday Celebration for Jonathan Williams. Leif ’s bibliography does not list the poems Eigner cites in this letter. Marlatt’s TRUCK book  Daphne Marlatt’s Our Lives was published by Truck Press in 1975. My father died March 18, 3 months shy of his 85tj brthday  This differs from the date given in the Collected Poems, where Israel is noted as having died on March 19, 1978. Prop.. 13  Proposition 13, known as “The People’s Initiative to Limit Property Taxation,” was a motion to cap California property taxes; it passed in June 1978 (Cal. Const., art. XIII A, sec. 1–sec. 7, California Legislative Information, accessed February 11, 218, http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml ?lawCode=CONS&division=&title=&part=&chapter=&article=XIII%20A). St Paul and you and Alice are making out in Ky Jonathan Greene’s Gnomon Press is based in Kentucky; Truck was based in St. Paul, Minnesota. P O Strike still tomorrow imminent  A postal strike began on July 21, 1978, and lasted almost a week as several thousand postal workers walked off the job in protest of labor conditions (see Pranay Gupte, “Postal Service Says Its Workers Return,” New York Times, July 26, 1978).

Notes to Pages 168–172

299

Notes to the Additional Prose (1) “Religion in the Big World”

See George Butterick’s A Guide to the Maximus Poems of Charles Olson (University of California Press, 1980) for notes to the poem “Literary Result,” in The Maximus Poems, vol. 3, where Butterick provides fuller context for the first meeting between Olson and Eigner, where (as Olson reports), Eigner “hammer[ed] hell out of [Olson] for leaving it, [Eigner] says, each man must save his own soul” (708). the sick-­ room is safe  Eigner seems to allude to the sec­ond stanza of Olson’s “In Cold Hell, In Thicket”: All things are made bitter, words even are made to taste like paper, wars get tossed up like lead soldiers used to be (in a child’s attic) lined up to be knocked down, as I am, by firings from a spit-­hardened fort, fronted as we are, here, from where we must go (The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Excluding the Maximus Poems, 155) THE MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION of Lloyd Douglas  A 1954 film starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, based on Lloyd Douglas’s 1929 novel of the same name. As Eigner details in the essay above, the story centers around “the unconscious recklessness [. . .] of a playboy” who inadvertently causes the death of a philanthropic surgeon and, later, the blindness of that surgeon’s widow, and as a result of these actions, reevaluates his life and commits to a philanthropy similar to that of the dead surgeon. This is overlaid with a romance, as he also falls in love with the injured widow. Both the novel and the film were quite popu­lar, and Eigner seems to use this narrative as a way to generate questions about what constitutes action and activism; as he explains, the surgeon who dies practices a form of covert altruism: “[T]he services, constructive doings, [are] completely cut off from any idea of reward and hence the corollary of secrecy.” Eig­ner’s continuing comments in this piece on the problem of the ego (or “ego elephantitis,” as he phrases it), chime both with Olson’s proscriptions against “the in­di­vidual as ego” in his essay “Projective Verse” and with Eig­ner’s own thoughts on what it means to be “ego-­altruistic” (see his KPFA-­FM interview with Jack Foley, “Omnipresent to Some Extent”). “man must chatter of his doom”  See William Carlos Williams’s Paterson, book 2, part 3, lines 16–17: “But Spring shall come and flowers will bloom / and man must chatter of his doom.” “otherwise I’d rather do things “  Source is yet to be located. ond”  See Olson’s “around the bend of, . . / the next / sec­ The Maximus Poems, Book 1, lines 6–8: “the thing you’re after / may lie around the bend / of the nest (sec­ond, time slain, the bird! the bird!” ON FIRST LOOKING OUT OF LA COSA’S EYES  Olson’s “On First Looking Out of La Cosa’s Eyes” appeared in the Spring 1954 issue of The Black Moun-

300

Notes to Pages 172–174

tain Review and also appeared as “On first Looking out through Juan de la Coas’s Eyes [Letter 17]” in Book 1 of The Maximus Poems. MAXIMUS 13  Titled “The Song and Dance of ” in Book 1 of Olson’s The Maxi­mus Poems. certainly as much as his reiterations.*  Eig­ner’s note, marked by an asterisk, separated from the essay text by a horizontal line, and running across the bottom of two pages: *While actual odds and ends are nil--or how to say what they are? except in the letters. Not to mention that the punctuation is always sensitive and most flexible, never wholly a spattering. And speaking of the MAYAN LETTERS, quite a comparison is Malraux, say, for instances his forndable and impartial appreciation of Buddhist serenity; bringing the thought that Indian faces may show serenity,--chiefs’ pictures, say--but in any case it’s something muscular, put there by aging and the wind. Hee says in a recent epistle he’s “interested in the problem of ‘covering’ a civilization.... I’m not for the recording only of major moments.” He wants “essentials ... the husk in the yard. And without transformation.” But he does speak of the future, about as much as other people. Unlike D H Lawrence he thinks those Indians “have so much future, & no present,” yet notes they are modern cosmopolitus is driving in. How much is a future, not to say THE future, inevitable? It may follow to a great extent without us. What was Socrates doing, at that? Olson’s The Mayan Letters was published in 1953 by Robert Creeley’s Divers Press. The work constitutes a selection of letters written by Olson to Creeley from Mexico, where Olson was studying Mayan hieroglyphs. André Malraux (1901–1976) was a French novelist, art theorist, and po­liti­cal appointee. APOLLONIUS Olson’s Apollonius of Tyana: A dance, with some words, for two actors was published as a pamphlet in 1951 at Black Mountain College and in Origin 2, no. 6 (Summer 1952): 90–110; the text details an abstract, symbolic dance according to specific geographic coordinates. MAXIMUS 5  In Letter 5 of The Maximus Poems, Olson chides fellow Gloucester poet Vincent Ferrini for inaccuracies in the latter’s poetry regarding the town of Gloucester and inconsistencies in the latter’s editorial practices. A DISCRETE GLOSS  Olson’s poem appeared in Origin 2, no. 6 (Summer 1952): 119–21. See lines 24–26: “When the field of focus / is not as admitted as the

Notes to Pages 174–175

301

point is, / what loss!” (The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Excluding the Maximus Poems, 259–61). AN ODE ON NATIVITY  Olson’s poem appeared in the Montevallo Review 1, no. 3 (Spring 1952), and was reprinted in In Cold Hell, In Thicket (Divers Press, 1953). Robert Duncan [. . .] IMAGINACY WAR ELEGY  Duncan’s “An Imaginary War Elegy” was published in Origin 2, no. 6 (Summer 1952). islands of men and girls  Olson’s Letter 3 in The Maximus Poems, Book 1, concludes with “Isolated person in Gloucester, Massachusetts, I, Maximus, address you / you islands / of men and girls” (The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Excluding the Maximus Poems, 16). how [/] strung, how cold [. . .] confronted [/] thus?  Recalling the opening allusion of this essay, here Eigner quotes from the first stanza of Olson’s “In Cold Hell, In Thicket”: In cold hell, in thicket, how abstract (as high mind, as not lust, as love is) how strong (as strut or wing, as polytope, as things are constellated) how strung, how cold can a man stay (can men) confronted thus? (The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Excluding the Maximus Poems, 155)

(2) “The plea that clothing be put upon cows”

The plea that clothing be put upon cows, houses, asses and their like is howler  Eig­ner’s letter engages with the climax of a national hoax, perpetrated for more than five years by Alan Abel, who founded the farcical Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), whose “mission” it was to improve pub­lic morality by clothing animals. After years of pub­lic appearances, in­ clud­ing radio and television, and vari­ous articles in print media, on March 5, 1963, a small number of representatives from SINA marched on the White House carrying placards demanding that the Kennedys clothe their pets. On March 5, 1963, articles on the march appeared in the Wash­ing­ton Daily News and the Evening Star, and on March 15, 1963, a note appeared in Time—“Animals: Bum Steer”—revealing that SINA was a hoax (see Alan Abel, “The Hoaxes,” Alan Abel: Professional Media Prankster, accessed April 1, 2018, http://abelraisescain.com/alan_abel_media_pranks _hoaxes.htm). If Eig­ner’s dating of his letter is correct, it appears as though its composition occurs during the height of the SINA hoax and before its subsequent national unveiling; his speculation on the last page that SINA may present “some off-­beat hoax from Madison” comes pretty close to the mark. In March 14, 2004, Alan Abel was interviewed on NPR’s Snap Judgment, where Abel discussed the development and motivations of the hoax, as well as its aftermath; origi­nal recordings from television and radio can be heard on that show. Eigner concludes his letter with the parentheti-

302

Notes to Pages 176–180

cal “as crazy as it can be”; attempts have been made to identify several references, but with the understanding that Eigner appears to be working in the same satirical spirit. in the streets of Calcutta (as a documentary on Tv one night showed  Reference has not yet been located. humpty dumpty  centre x flown apart  The sec­ond of these two phrases invokes Yeats’s vision of apocalypse in the third line of “The Second Coming”: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” possibly peace (the “dear nurse of arts”)  See ­Burgundy’s speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V, act 5, scene 2, lines 23–67, specifically lines 31–37. Whitman [. . .] Burns [. . .] Villon [. . .] Yevtushenko [. . .] Or the guy who wrote about going of to clean the Pasture Spring  Walt Whitman, Ameri­can poet, 1819–1892; Robert Burns, Scots poet, 1759–1796; François Villon, French poet, 1431–?; Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Russian poet, 1932–2017; “the guy” is Robert Frost, Ameri­can poet, 1874– 1963. Frost’s “The Pasture” details cleaning the pasture spring and involves a small calf. Back Bay  A neighborhood in Boston. “the anarchy of poverty”  This phrase is from Williams Carlos Williams’s poem “The Poor” (line 1).

(3) “On learning something more, recently, of the population raises”

Originally a note beginning [. . .] the Shrewsbury pill  As Eigner notes, the immediate context for this letter is an article by Dr. John Rock—identified as “A noted Roman Catholic gynecologist”—in the Saturday Evening Post from April 20, 1963. In his letter, Eigner picks up on the global concerns Rock articulates regarding world population numbers, food supplies, and waste disposal. Arguing in favor of oral contraception, Rock emphasizes the “physiologic” nature of oral contraception (the “Shrewsbury pill,” developed at a clinic in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts); as Dr. Rock argues, “the pill prevents reproduction simply by modifying the time sequences in the body’s own functions,” and therefore mimics “the rhythm method, [which is] sanctioned by the church.” “I have felt therefore,” Dr. Rock concludes, “that when properly used for conception control, the pills serve as ­adjuncts to nature.” Just as interesting, and certainly ironic with regard to an article such as this (with its ecological concerns), is the fact that Rock’s piece in the Saturday Evening Post is interspersed with advertisements for GE Washing Machines and Caterpillar earthmovers. The former celebrates a special “mini-­basket” feature for small loads, and the latter masquerades as a two-­page spread on drought in the town of Duncan, Oklahoma, that was only alleviated when the town residents banded together to purchase Caterpillar equipment for the purposes of installing irrigation systems. Both ads, whether through editorial intention or mere accident, pick up on and emphasize the ecological concerns that inform Rock’s—and later Eig­ner’s—­argument. Onan’s action  In Genesis 38:8, Onan refuses to impregnate his widowed sister-­in-­law; though he has intercourse with her, he withdraws before ejaculating. Onan’s punishment (death) by God is of­ten interpreted as a prohibition against nonprocreative sex.

Notes to Pages 183–186

303

(4) “On ‘Rights’ [United we sit divided we race]”

Martin Luther king in his August 28th (62) speech/ preach, [. . .] “curvaceous peaks of California ” and so forth, a pretty cozy world  Eigner refers to King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Wednesday, August 28, during the March on Wash­ing­ton. Eigner has misdated this to 1962; the speech and march occurred on that date in 1963. Example: “You can’t expect other people to like what you like”--if you get annoyed at “The Price is Right, say.  Eigner alludes to his own experience; see letters for reports of his conflicts with his family over listening and viewing preferences, especially letter 78. It struck me, 15 months ago, how up in the wards the orderlies look like midshipmen  This is a reference to late 1962 / ​early 1963, when Eigner was convalescing from cryosurgery performed in order to remedy muscle spasticity (see Faville and Grenier’s chronology in The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner). An ex-­ marine who got court-­ martialed for having an unregistered gun [. . .] and thenx a middle-­ aged stripjoint operator, of “no special po­ ­ liti­ cal opinions” On Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, see Eig­ner’s similar comments in letter 78. one of those people who like to send souvenirs to the White House,*  Eig­ner’s note, marked with an asterisk and inserted at the bottom of the sheet: *Cf.John Nance Garner. or maybe he is senile nowadays. Gardner was FDR’s first vice president. vague fingerprint. Martin Luther King  In a draft of this essay held at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas, Eig­ner has inserted into this paragraph break a two-­line remark about a mail bomb sent to a New England teacher on Black Friday. Though the version held in the Jargon Society Collection at the University of Buffalo is virtually identical to the version at the University of Kansas, the former does not include this sentence. out of Grossinger’s  Grossinger’s Terrace Hill House (later Gross­ ing­er’s Catskill Resort Hotel) was a luxury Borscht Belt resort in the Catskill Mountains, operating from the early 1900s until its closing in 1986, with peak activity in the 1950s and 1960s. no Indian having been so uprooted as an african migrant) so they aren’t so much in quest of our toys. ­ (As I read a couple of years ago.  Reference is unclear. |what Oppenheimer for one is talking about in ­Kulchur 12| [. . .] Spellman and Sorrentino  In the Kulchur 12 (Winter 1963) feature “RIGHTS: Some Personal Reactions,” Joel Oppenheimer discusses in part how the Civil Rights struggle was then cast as a racial issue, when in fact class and economic factors might unite those who believe themselves to be on opposite sides

304

Notes to Pages 187–190

of a conflict; A. B. Spellman writes of the co-­optation of revolutionary intentions by nonviolence and aspirations to extant middle-­class structures of comfort; Gilbert Sorrentino considers the po­liti­cal potential of Black Muslim groups who, in his argument, as unaffiliated with larger Af­ri­can Ameri­can national groups like the NAACP offer the potential to unite Af­ri­can Ameri­can concerns with those of the “more po­ liti­cally efficacious body of disaffiliates and renegades [within] the white populace.” on a TV hearing devoted to minor parties I saw the Beat Candidate for President, and the Vegetarian, among others whose addresses I entirely forget  Symon Gould, founder of the Ameri­can Vegetarian Party, stood as the party’s presidential candidate in 1960; the “Beat Candidate for President” remains unidentified. whatever Malcolm X says or doesn’t say “a singing, praying revolution” [. . .] The tragedy of murdering a snake  Eig­ner’s lines on “a singing, praying revolution” and his allusion to murdering a snake are drawn from Malcolm X quotations in A. B. Spellman’s essay in “RIGHTS” (Kulchur 12 [Winter 1963]: 13). Gilette [. . .] Blue Blades  Gillette’s Blue Blades were a popu­ lar razor advertised since 1952 with a jingle that came to be known as “The Look Sharp March.” on TV were Jimmy Roosevelt, Farley, Tom Corcoran, Henry Morganthau and Henry Wallace reminiscing on F.D.R., with vari­ ous photos and movies interspersed [. . .] the program ending up with Roosevelt’s First Inaugural In 1963, a roundtable on the thirtieth anniversary of FDR’s inaugural was aired on CCNY TV. James Roosevelt was FDR’s oldest son, James Farley was chair of the Democratic National Committee and FDR’s postmaster general, Tom Corcoran advised FDR on New Deal policies, Henry Morgenthau was FDR’s secretary of Treasury, and Henry Wallace was secretary of agriculture and later FDR’s vice presidential running mate. Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech (March 4, 1933) contains the famous line “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” but also aims at credit and moneylending during the nadir of the Great Depression. made me connect the man who reputedly said to turn the other cheek* with the man who just as reputedly drove changers out  Eig­ner’s note, marked with two asterisks and inthe money-­ serted at the bottom of the sheet: *(for a perhaps unlimited period -- it was a piece going side). of advice on the easy-­ But I knew it before. Browning “hated that which hinders loving.”  Robert Browning’s “One Word More,” lines 42–43: “Dante, who loved well because he hated, / Hated wickedness that hinders loving.”

Selected Bibliography

Larry Eig­ner’s letters to Jonathan Williams include a truly staggering array of quotations, allusions, and references to any number of contemporaneous texts, from radio programs, television broadcasts, and popu­lar periodicals to literary texts and—especially—small press periodical and book publications. Every effort has been made both to track down those references and to list them in the notes, bibliography, or both. Inevitably, some have not been uncovered, and others will reveal themselves as people continue to work in this archive. I look forward to those discoveries. In compiling the notes and bibliography, I wanted to make it possible for readers to follow Eig­ner’s allusions and his reading. In many cases, this meant providing a text more recent or less rare than the text Eigner used, and sometimes it has not been possible to determine what edition or text, specifically, Eigner used. Eig­ner’s reading in the little magazine and small press community poses particular issues. Eigner was an exemplary literary citizen in his support of the small presses and little magazines of his time. I tried to note origi­nal publications, such as Eigner would have used, but in many cases, I have had to supply instead bibliographic information for where those texts might be found today. For Eig­ner’s little magazine publications, I relied on Leif ’s bibliography, and I refer readers to that volume (see entry below). For the little magazines discussed in the letters, I added to the bibliography any text quoted or discussed at length; otherwise, I offered abbreviated bibliographical information in the text of my notes. Networking the New Ameri­can Poetry, a small database of little magazines in which the New Ameri­cans frequently published, curated by the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library at Emory University, has been helpful in tracing some sources and references, in­clud­ing those in the Black Mountain Review and Origin.

306

Selected Bibliography

Finally, I would like to note that the Jargon catalog is quite large and was so even by Eig­ner’s time. Eigner and Williams discuss multiple texts from this catalog, of­ten by abbreviation or semiprivate reference. Jargon publications quoted in the text or discussed at length have been entered in the bibliography. But, for passing references, I refer readers to the Jargon checklist compiled by Rich Owens (see entry below). Alighieri, Dante. Dante’s Inferno: The Indiana Critical Edition. Translated and edited by Mark Musa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Allen, Don, ed. The New Ameri­can Poetry: 1945–1960. Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1999. First published 1960 by Grove. Anastas, Peter. “Charles Olson over the Years: A Panel Discussion at the Charles Olson Festival, Honoring the Life and Work of Charles Olson: Poet, Teacher, Scholar & Community Activist, August 12, 1995, Gloucester City Hall.” Transcribed from audiotape by Ralph Maud. Pt. 4. Minutes of the Charles Olson ­Society, no. 10 (No­vem­ber 1995). http://charlesolson.org/Files/festival4.htm. Anderson, Sherwood. Winesburg, Ohio. New York: Viking, 1960. Anken Chemical and Film Corporation. “Portable Photocopy Machine.” Popu­lar Mechanics, Oc­to­ber 1962. Applewhite, E. J. “An Annotated Bibliography of Books by R. Buckminster Fuller.” In Synergetics Dictionary: The Mind of Buckminster Fuller, xxv–xxix. New York: Garland, 1986. http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/SynergeticsDictionary/status .html. Bartlett, Jennifer, and George Hart, eds. “Larry Eigner, Six Letters.” Poetry, De­cem­ ber 2014. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/articles/70180 /larry-­eigner-­six-­letters. Beam, Jeffery. “Blue Darter: A Selected Checklist of Jonathan Williams Publications.” Jacket 38 (2009). http://jacketmagazine.com/38/jw-­checklist-­beam.shtml. Bernstein, Leonard. “What Is Impressionism?” Directed by Roger Englander. Young People’s Concerts. Aired De­cem­ber 1, 1961, on CBS. Bertholf, Robert J. Afterword to Letters: Poems 1953–1956, by Robert Duncan, 53–57. Chicago: Flood Editions, 2003. The Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1984. Blackburn, Paul. Brooklyn-­Manhattan Transit: A Bouquet for Flatbush. New York: Totem Press, 1960. Bongartz, Roy. “The Superswamp. Cypress Gardens: Florida’s Eighteen-­Karat Illusion.” Saturday Evening Post, No­vem­ber 23, 1963. Brown, Bill. The Way to the Uncle Sam Hotel. San Francisco: Coyote Books, 1966. Browning, Robert. “One Word More (To E.B.B.).” In Robert Browning: Selected Writings, edited by Richard Cronin and Dorothy McMillan, 361–66. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

Selected Bibliography

307

Butterick, George. A Guide to the Maximus Poems of Charles Olson. Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1980. Callahan, Harry. 1967: Photographs by Harry Callahan. New York: Hallmark, 1967. Carruth, Hayden, ed. The Voice That Is Great Within Us: Ameri­can Poetry of the Twentieth Century. New York: Bantam, 1970. Carson, Rachel. The Sea Around Us. New York: Oxford University Press, 1951. Cary, Joyce. Mister Johnson. 1939. Lon­don: Michael Joseph, 1959. Cinerama Holiday. Directed by Robert L. Bendick and Philippe De Lacy. Cinerama Productions Corp., 1955. CIV/n. 1953–1955. A Canadian little magazine edited by Aileen Collins and published in Montreal. Clark, Thomas, David Wilk, and Jonathan Greene. JW/50: A 50th Birthday Celebration for Jonathan Williams. Frankfort, KY: Gnomon Press, 1979. Clark, Tom. Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life. New York: Norton, 1991. Contact. 1952–1954. A Canadian little magazine edited by Raymond Souster and published in Toronto. Corman, Cid. “Communication: Poetry for Radio.” Poetry, De­cem­ber 1952. ———. Clocked Stone. Ashland, MA: Origin, 1959. ———. The Descent from Daimonji. Ashland, MA: Origin, 1959. ———. The Gist of Origin, 1951–1971: An Anthology. New York: Grossman, 1975. ———. “Invitation to Primavera.” Combustion 12 (1960): 1–11. ———. The Marches, and Other Poems. Ashland, MA: Origin Press, 1957. ———. Stances and Distances. Ashland, MA: Origin Press, 1957. ———. A Table in Provence. Ashland, MA: Origin Press, 1959. Corso, Gregory. The Happy Birthday of Death. New York: New Directions, 1960. Corso, Gregory, and Walter Höllerer. Junge Amerikanische Lyrik. Munich: Hanser, 1961. Coughlan, Robert. “Grand Vision, a Final Tragedy.” Life, Sep­tem­ber 24, 1956. ———. “Tom Wolfe’s Surge to Greatness.” Life, Sep­tem­ber 17, 1956. Crane, Hart. The Complete Poems of Hart Crane: The Centennial Edition. Edited by Marc Simon. New York: Liveright, 2001. Creeley, Robert. A Form of Women. New York: Jargon/Corinth, 1959. ———. All That Is Lovely in Men. Asheville, NC: Jargon, 1955. ———. Review of Here and Now, by Denise Levertov, The Dutiful Son, by Joel Oppenheimer, and Some Time, by Louis Zukofsky. New Mexico Quarterly (Spring– Summer 1957): 125–27. ———. If You. San Francisco: Peregrine Press, 1956. ———. “Rainer Gerhardt: A Note.” In The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley, 279– 81. Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1989. Davenport, Russell. “My Country.” Life, No­vem­ber 24, 1944. Davidson, Michael. “  ‘By ear, he sd’: Audio-­Tapes and Contemporary Criticism.” Credences, n.s., 1, no. 1 (1981): 105–20. Dawson, Fielding. Krazy Kat and One More. San Francisco: The Print Workshop, 1955.

308

Selected Bibliography

———. Thread. Lon­don: Ferry Press, 1964. Dickinson, Emily. “This is my letter to the World” (F519). In The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition, edited by R. W. Franklin, 235. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. Dorfman, Elsa, ed. “Thirty-­Six Birthday Poems for Gordon Cairnie.” Antioch Review, 30, no. 3–4 (1970): 311–79. Dorn, Ed. Hands Up! New York: Totem Press, 1964. ———. What I See in the Maximus Poems. Ventura, CA: Migrant, 1960. Dos Passos, John. U.S.A. Directed by George Schaefer. Hollywood Television Theater: PBS, 1971. Duncan, Robert. “An Imaginary War Elegy.” Origin 2, no. 6 (Summer 1952): 124–26. ———. Caesar’s Gate: Poems, 1949–1950. Mallorca: Divers Press, 1955. “The Dymaxion Ameri­can.” Time, Janu­ary 10, 1964. Eigner, Larry. A Line That May Be Cut. Lon­don: Circle Press, 1968. ———. air / the trees. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. ———. another time in fragments. Lon­don: Fulcrum Press, 1967. ———. ANYTHING ON ITS SIDE. New Rochelle, NY: Elizabeth Press, 1974. ———. areas / lights / heights: Writings 1954–1989. Edited by Benjamin Friedlander. New York: Roof Books, 1989. ———. around new / sound daily / means: Selected Poems. S Press Tape No. 37, re­ corded by Michael Kohler at Swampscott, Massachusetts, 1 and 11 July 1974. PennSound. Accessed Janu­ary 10, 2015. http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound /x/Eigner.php. ———. The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. ———. The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner. 4 vols. Edited by Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. ———. Country / Harbor / Quiet / Act / Around: Selected Prose. Edited by Barrett Watten, with an introduction by Douglas Woolf. Berke­ley, CA: This Press, 1978. ———. FLAT AND ROUND. Reprint, Berke­ley, CA: Tuumba Press, 1980. First edition published 1969 by Pierrepont Press. ———. From the Sustaining Air. Enlarged ed. Eugene, OR: Toad Press, 1967. First edition published 1953 by Divers Press. ———. Larry Eigner Letters (to Joseph Guglielmi and Claude Royet-­Journoud). Edited by Robert Kocik and Joseph Simas. Paris: Moving Letters Press, 1987. ———. lined up bulk senses. Providence, RI: Burning Deck, 1979. ———. LOOK AT THE PARK. Swampscott, MA: Privately printed, 1958. ———. “Omnipresent to Some Extent: Jack Foley’s Radio Interview with Larry Eigner, Recorded for KPFA-­FM’s Poetry Program, March 9, 1994.” In “Larry Eigner,” in Contemporary Authors Autobiography Series, vol. 23, edited by Shelly Andrews, 19–62. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1996. ———. murder talk: the reception (suggestions for a play). Duende, no. 6 (1964). ———. now there’s / a morning / hulk of the sky. New Rochelle, NY: Elizabeth Press, 1981.

Selected Bibliography

309

———. ON MY EYES. With photographs by Harry Callahan and an introduction by Denise Levertov. Highlands, NC: Jargon, 1960. ———. readiness / enough / depends / on. Edited and with an afterword by Robert Grenier. Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2000. ———. Selected Poems. Edited by Samuel Charters and Andrea Wyatt. Berke­ley, CA: Oyez, 1972. ———. shape / shadow / elements / move. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1973. ———. THE -­/ TOWARDS / AUTUMN. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1967. ———. THINGS STIRRING / TOGETHER / OR FAR AWAY. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1974. ———. time / details / of a tree. New Rochelle, NY: Elizabeth Press, 1979. ———. watching / how or why. New Rochelle, NY: Elizabeth Press, 1977. ———. WATERS / PLACES / A TIME. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow, 1983. ———. WINDOWS / WALLS / YARD / WAYS. Edited by Robert Grenier. Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1994. ———. THE WORLD AND ITS STREETS, PLACES. Santa Barbara, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1977. Electronic Poetry Center. “Larry Eigner.” 1994–2018. http://writing.upenn.edu /epc/authors/eigner/. A list of works by or about Larry Eigner available online. Faas, Ekbert. Robert Creeley: A Biography. Hanover, MA: University Press of New England, 2001. Faulkner, William. Collected Stories of William Faulkner. New York: Random House, 1950. ———. William Faulkner Reading from His Works. New York: Caedmon Records, 1954. Ferrini, Vincent. The House of Time. Lon­don: Fortune Press, 1952. ———. Timeo Hominem Unius Mulieris. Liverpool, UK: Heron Press, 1956. ———. Five Plays. Lon­don: Fortune Press, 1960. ———. I Have the World. Lon­don: Fortune Press, 1967. The Fifties, vols. 2–3 (1959). A magazine edited by Robert Bly and William Duffy and published in Pine Island, MN. Fleming, Thomas J. One Small Candle: The Pilgrims’ First Year in America. New York: Norton, 1964. Foley, Jack. “Transcript of Getting It Together, a Film on Larry Eigner Poet (1973) with commentary by Larry Eigner (1989).” Poetry USA, no. 24 (1992): 2–5. Frankenberg, Lloyd. Pleasure Dome: An Audible Anthology of Modern Poetry Read by Its Creators. New York: Columbia Masterworks, 1948. ———. Pleasure Dome: On Reading Modern Poetry. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1949. Friedlander, Ben. “Ben Friedlander on Larry Eigner.” From Dictionary of Literary Biography: Ameri­can Poets since World War II, Sixth Series, vol. 193, edited by Joseph Mark Conte. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Available at “Larry Eigner,” Electronic Poetry Center, accessed Oc­to­ber 2, 2015, http://writing.upenn.edu /epc/authors/eigner/. Geisler, Martin. How to Set Up and Operate a Paperback Bookshop. New York: Martin Geisler, 1961.

310

Selected Bibliography

Gluck, Christoph W. Orfeo ed Euridice. Vienna, 1762. Goodman, Mitchell. The End of It. New York, Horizon Press, 1961. Grenier, Robert. Introduction to The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner, edited by Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier, vii–xii. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Grenier, Robert, and Curtis Faville. “Larry Eigner Chronology.” In The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner, edited by Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier, xxi–xxvi. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010. Gupte, Pranay. “Postal Service Says Its Workers Return.” New York Times, July 26, 1978. ———. “Postal Workers at Big Facility in Jersey Stage Walkout over Settlement.” New York Times, July 22, 1978. Herbert, Victor. Naughty Marietta. Produced and directed by Max Liebman. Televised live Janu­ary 15, 1955, on NBC. Hevesi, Dennis. “Jonathan Williams, Publisher, Dies at 79.” New York Times, March 30, 2008. Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. Directed by George Schaefer. Broadcast live No­vem­ ber 15, 1959, on NBC. Irby, Ken. Review of Untitled Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization, by ­Buckminster Fuller. Kulchur 13 (Spring 1964): 89–91. Jarnot, Lisa. Robert Duncan: The Ambassador from Venus. Berke­ley: University of California Press, 2012. Jones, LeRoi, ed. Jan 1st 1959: Fidel Castro. New York: Totem Press, 1959. Kalisher, Simpson. Railroad Men. New York: Clarke & Way, 1961. Kazantzakisi, Nikos. The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. Translated by Kimon Friar. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958. Kelly, Robert. “Song? / After Bread: Notes on Zukofsky’s A 1-­12.” Kulchur 12 (Winter 1963): 33–36. Kelly, Robert, and Paris Leary. A Controversy of Poets. New York: Doubleday, 1965. Lawrence, D. H. The Later D. H. Lawrence: The Best Novels, Stories, Essays, 1925– 1930. New York: Knopf, 1952. ———. The Plumed Serpent. New York: Knopf, 1926. Layton, Irving. “A Plausible Story.” Origin 14 (Autumn 1954): 91–104. Leif, Irving. Larry Eigner: A Bibliography of His Works. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989. Levertov, Denise. “A Note on the Poetry of Larry Eigner.” Migrant 3 (1959): 6–8. ———. Here and Now. San Francisco: City Lights, 1957. ———. The Jacob’s Ladder. New York: New Directions, 1961. ———. With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads. New York: New Directions, 1959. Levertov, Denise, and Robert Duncan. Letter 129, July 13–14, 1959, to Robert Duncan. In The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov, edited by Robert J. Bertholf and Albert Gelpi, 183–87. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Loewinsohn, Ron. Watermelons. New York: Totem Press, 1959.

Selected Bibliography

311

Lowenfels, Walter. “Bob Brown.” Kulchur 11 (Autumn 1963): 57–60. Luten, Daniel B. “How Dense Can People Be?” Sierra Club Bulletin 48, no. 9 (Sep­ tem­ber 1963): 80–93. Mac Low, Jackson. 22 Light Poems. Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1968. ———. 23rd Light Poem (7th Poem for Larry Eigner). Lon­don: Tetrad Press, 1969. Magee, Gayle Sherwood. Charles Ives Reconsidered. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Magnificent Obsession. Directed by Douglas Sirk. Universal International Pictures, 1954. Marlatt, Daphne. Our Lives. Carrboro, NC: Truck Press, 1975. McClure, Michael. The Beard. New York: Grove. 1967. ———. Dark Brown. San Francisco: Auerhan Press, 1961. ———. For Artaud. New York: Totem Press, 1959. Miller, Peter. Meditation at Noon. Toronto: Contact Press, 1958. Moby Dick. Directed by Albert McCleery. Season 3, episode 34, of Hallmark Hall of Fame. Aired May 16, 1954, on NBC. Moore, Marianne. “In Distrust of Merits.” In The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore, 136–38. Lon­don: Faber and Faber, 1967. Mumford, Lewis. “Baptized in the Name of the Devil.” New York Times, April 6, 1947. Munro, H. H. Saki: The Improper Stories of H. H. Munro. Produced by Philip Mackie. Granada Network TV Production, 1962. National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. “We Are Facing a Danger Unlike Any Danger That Has Ever Existed . . .” New York Times, No­vem­ber 15, 1957. Networking the New Ameri­can Poetry. Database supported by the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship and the Raymond Danowski Poetry Library of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript Archive and Rare Book Library, Emory University. https:// danowski.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/nnap/journals/. Noe, Charlotte. Holland: Paradise of Flowers / Nederland: Bloemenland. Amsterdam: Lankamp & Brinkman, 1954. Norgaard, Richard B. “Obituary: Daniel B. Luten, Jr.” UC Berke­ley News, March 19, 2003. https://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/03/19_obit.shtml. “Odd Sights at Heights.” Life, May 17, 1963. Olson, Charles. Apollonius of Tyana: A dance, with some words, for two Actors. Black Mountain, NC: Black Mountain College, 1951. ———. “As the Dead Prey upon Us.” Ark II / Moby I, 1957, 12–19. ———. Call Me Ishmael. San Francisco: City Lights Book, 1947. ———. Collected Prose: Charles Olson. Edited by Don Allen and Ben Friedlander. Berke­ley: University of California, 1997. ———. The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Excluding the Maximus Poems. Edited by George Butterick. Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1997. ———. “The Escaped Cock: Notes on Lawrence and the Real.” Origin 2 (Summer 1951): 77–80. ———. In Cold Hell, in Thicket. Mallorca: Divers Press, 1953.

312

Selected Bibliography

———. Maximus, from Dogtown. San Francisco: Auerhan Press, 1961. ———. The Maximus Poems. Edited by George Butterick. Berke­ley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. The Maximus Poems. Vol. 3. Edited by Charles Boer and George Butterick. New York: Grossman, 1975. ———. The Mayan Letters. Mallorca: Divers Press, 1953. ———. “On First Looking Out of La Cosa’s Eyes.” Black Mountain Review 1 (Spring 1954): 3–7. ———. O’Ryan 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. San Francisco: White Rabbit Press, 1958. ———. The Special View of History. Edited by Ann Charters. Berke­ley, CA: Oyez Press, 1970. The Open Mind. Hosted by Alexander Heffner. Episode “March 4th, 1933: An Open Mind Special.” Aired No­vem­ber 12, 2001, on CUNY TV. http://www.cuny.tv /show/openmind/PR1001013. Owens, Richard. “Jargon Society: A Checklist.” Jacket 38 (2009). http://jacketmagazine .com/38/jw-­jargon-­soc-­check.shtml. Patchen, Kenneth. The Journal of Albion Moonlight. New York: New Directions, 1961. ———. Poems of Humor and Protest. San Francisco: City Lights, 1954. Pound, Ezra. “Come My Cantilations.” In Personnae: The Shorter Poems of Ezra Pound, prepared by Lea Baechler and A. Walton Litz, 76. New York: New Directions, 1990. ———. Editorial. Little Review 4, no. 1 (May 1917): 3–6. Rexroth, Kenneth. One Hundred Poems from the Chinese. New York: New Directions, 1956. ———. One Hundred Poems from the Japanese. New York: New Directions, 1955. “RIGHTS: Some Personal Reactions.” With contributions from LeRoi Jones, A. B. Spellman, Robert Williams, Gilbert Sorrentino, Edward Dorn, Joel Oppenheimer, Donald Windham, and Denise Levertov. Kulchur 12 (Winter 1963): 2–31. Rock, John. “It Is Time to End the Birth-­Control Fight.” Saturday Evening Post, April 20, 1963. Rukeyser, Muriel. Willard Gibbs. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1942. Sandburg, Carl. The People, Yes. 1936. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1964. Schlesinger, Kyle. “The Jargon Society.” Jacket 38 (2009). http://jacketmagazine.com /38/jwd02-­schlesinger.shtml. Shakespeare, William. The Norton Shakespeare. Edited by Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katharine Eisaman Maus. New York: Norton, 1997. ———. The Tempest. Directed by George Schaefer. Aired February 3, 1960, on NBC. Shaw, George Bernard. Don Juan in Hell. Directed by Charles Laughton. New York: Columbia Masterworks, 1952. ———. Man and Superman. Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1903. Sigel, Eli. Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems. New York: Definition Press, 1957.

Selected Bibliography

313

Siskind, Aaron. “Eight Photographs.” Black Mountain Review 5 (1955): 79–86. “Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA)” Snap Judgment. March 14, 2012. http://snapjudgment.org/society-­indecency-­naked-­animals-­sina. Song of Summer. Directed by Ken Russell. Aired Sep­tem­ber 15, 1968, on BBC. The Sound and the Fury. Based on the novel by William Faulkner. Adapted by William Durkee. Directed by Vincent J. Donehue. Season 1, episode 6, of Playwrights ’56. Aired De­cem­ber 5, 1955, on NBC. “Stratospheric Cloud.” Science, April 19, 1963, cover. Szilard, Leo. “Are We on the Road to War?” Guest lecture at the Harvard Law School Forum, No­vem­ber 17, 1961. https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/hlsforum /multimedia/. Thoreau, Henry David. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Boston, 1849. ———. Walden and Other Writings of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Brooks Atkinson. Modern Library College Editions. New York: Random House, 1950. “Underground Fury.” Newsweek, April 13, 1964. Untermeyer, Louis. Modern Ameri­can Poetry: A Critical Anthology. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1964. Vas Dias, Robert, ed. Inside Outer Space: New Poems of the Space Age. New York: Anchor Books, 1970. WBAI-­FM Pacifica Radio. WBAI Oc­to­ber Folio 9, no. 10 (Oc­to­ber 1968). Whalen, Philip. Every Day. San Francisco: Coyote Books, 1965. ———. Memoirs of an Interglacial Age. San Francisco: Auerhan, 1960. White, Morton, ed. The Age of Analysis: Twentieth Century Philosophers. New York: New Ameri­can Library, 1955. Williams, Jonathan. 50! Epiphytes,-­taphs,-­tomes,-­grams,-­thets! 50!. Lon­don: Poet & Printer, 1967. ———. “Aaron Siskin / Eight Signs.” Black Mountain Review 5 (1955): 77–78. ———. Affilati attrezzi per i giardini di Catullo. Selected poems in English and Italian, with translations by Leda Sartini Mussio and drawings by James McGarrell. Poesia series 3. Milano, Italy: Roberto Lerici Editori, 1967. ———, ed. Edward Dahlberg: A Tribute; Essays, Reminiscences, Correspondence, Tributes. New York: David Lewis, Inc. 1970. ———. “Further Tired Fried Homilies.” Highlands, NC: Jargon, June 24, 1959. ———. “If Nature Is Not Enthusiastic about Explanation, Why Should Tchaikovsky Be?” Black Mountain Review 5 (1955): 207–9. ———. Interview with Bary Alpert. Vort 4 (Fall 1973): 54–75. ———. “Davenport Gap” (from Elegies and Celebrations). Jargon Billboard #1. Highlands, NC: Jargon, De­cem­ber 1963. ———. “Jonathan Williams in Conversation with Richard Owens, 1 June 2007.” Jacket 38 (2009). http://jacketmagazine.com/38/jwd06-­iv-­jw-­ivb-­owens.shtml. ———. Lines about Hills above Lakes. Ft. Lauderdale, FL: Roman Books, 1964. ———. “Music Is to Make People Happy.” Black Mountain Review 7 (1957): 83–85. ———. “Writers to Readers: New Work Moves Cross-­Country.” Combustion 1 (1957): 5.

314

Selected Bibliography

———. Sharp Tools for Catullan Gardens. Bloomington, IN: Fine Arts Department of Indiana University, 1968. ———. SLEEPERS, A WAKE. Highlands, NC: Jargon, March 1959. ———, ed. Tri­Quarterly 20 (Fall 1970). ———. “Who Is Little Enis?” Jargon 82. Highlands, NC: Jargon, March 8, 1974. ———. “Xmas Mish-­Mosh Message and Winter-­Solstice Jeremiad.” Highlands, NC: Jargon, De­cem­ber 1957. Williams, William Carlos. The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003. ———. “The Cure.” In 1939–1962, edited by Christopher MacGowan, 67. Vol. 2 of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1991. ———. “Deep Religious Faith.” In 1939–1962, edited by Christopher MacGowan, 262–64. Vol. 2 of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1991. ———. The Desert Music and Other Poems. New York: Random House, 1954. ———. In the Ameri­can Grain. New York: New Directions, 1956. ———. Journey to Love. New York: Random House, 1955. ———. Paterson. New York: New Directions, 1995. ———. Pictures from Breughel and Other Poems, Including The Desert Music and Journey to Love. Lon­don: MacGibbon and Kee, 1963. ———. “The Poor (It’s the Anarchy of Poverty).” In 1939–1962, edited by Christopher MacGowan, 452. Vol. 2 of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1991. ———. The Wedge. Cummington, MA: Cummington Press, 1944 Winkler, Anthony. Poetry as System. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1971. Woolf, Douglas. Fade Out. New York: Grove Press, 1959. ———. The Hypocritic Days. Mallorca: Divers Press, 1955. Wordsworth, William. “Personal Talk.” In The Complete Works of William Words­ worth, vol. 5, 1806–1815. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1919. Wyatt, Andrea. A Bibliography of Works by Larry Eigner: 1937–1969. Berke­ley, CA: Oyez, 1970. Yates, Peter. “Jonathan Williams, Maker of Books for Poets.” Arts and Architecture 78, no. 4 (April 1961): 6–8. Yeats, William Butler. “Among School Children.” In The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats., rev. 2nd ed., edited by Richard J. Finneran, 215–17. New York: Scribner, 1996. ———. “The Second Coming.” In The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats., rev. 2nd ed., edited by Richard J. Finneran, 187. New York: Scribner, 1996. Zeami. “Yashima.” Translated by Cid Corman and Will Petersen. Origin, 2nd ser., no. 3 (Oc­to­ber 1961): 15–63. Zukofsky, Louis. After I’s. Pittsburgh, PA: Boxwood / Mother Press, 1964. Zukofsky, Paul, and Gilbert Kalish. Charles Ives: The Sonatas for Violin and Piano. New York: Folkways Records, 1964.

Index

Abel, Alan, 301 “A Bus to Bermuda” (Eigner), 212 Accent, 24, 25, 217 “Act” (Eigner), 212 “A Discrete Gloss” (Olson), 174, 300–301 “A flat-­faced dog” (Eigner), 258 After I’s (Zukofsky), 130, 278 “Afterwards” (Eigner), 258 Age of Analysis, The (White), 117, 271 Ahern, Daniel J., 229 air / the trees (Eigner), 9, 144, 287 Ajax (Dawson), 215, 218 “A l a s,  A l a s,  W h o ’ s  I n j u r e d” (Eigner), 216–17, 272 Aldebaran Review, 286 Aldrich, Nelson W., 229 A Line That May Be Cut (Eigner), 270, 288 Allen, Don, 57, 108, 230; “Black Mountain School” in The New Ameri­can Poetry, 1, 240, 242; The New Ameri­can Poetry, 2, 80–81, 83, 88, 245, 251, 254, 273; and ON MY EYES, 97, 98 “A l l  I n t e n t s” (Eigner), 292 All That Is Lovely in Men (Creeley), 18–20, 23, 30, 216 Alpert, Barry, 3, 159, 248, 256, 296 Ameri­can Poetry Review, 250 Ameri­can Press, 29 “Among School Children” (Yeats), 269 Analytic, 250 Anastas, Peter, 257 Anderson, Sherwood: Six Mid-­Ameri­can Chants, 126, 130, 277, 278; Winesburg, Ohio, 126, 276

Anecdotes of the Late War, 216 “An Ode on Nativity” (Olson), 174, 301 “A n o t h e r  O n e” (Eigner), 272 another time in fragments (Eigner), 9, 145, 155, 264, 275, 280–82; Duncan’s assistance with, 236; Eigner submitting manuscript of, 106, 113, 122–24, 130, 278; poems in, 226; published by Fulcrum Press, 135–36, 138, 139, 157, 269, 286, 287; repetition in, 134; sent to Brown University collection, 146 Antin, David, 257 Antioch Review, 155, 156, 294 Ant’s Forefoot, The, 276 “Anyhow” (Eigner), 87, 92 Aperture, 97, 297 Apollonius of Tyana (Olson), 173, 300 areas / lights / heights (Eigner), 215, 239, 240, 262, 276, 282, 293 Ark II / Moby I (McClure and Harmon), 36, 223 Ark III, 37 “Around” (Eigner), 212 around new / sound daily / means (Eig­ ner), 297 Art in America, 96 Arts and Architecture, 97, 103, 104, 261, 262–63 Asch, Moses, 96 “A  S l e e p” (“air is mild”) (Eigner), 232 “Association” (Eigner), 227 “As the Dead Prey upon Us” (Olson), 67, 245 “A tall cat arches” (Eigner), 44, 230

316

Index

ATILM. See All That Is Lovely in Men (Creeley) Auden, W. H., 212 Baldwin, James, 121–22, 273 Bartlett, Jennifer, “Larry Eigner, Six Letters,” 222 Barzun, Jacques, 253 Basehart, Richard, 223 Bates, Peter, 1 Batt, Melissa Watterworth, 226 Beard, The (McClure), 144, 287 Beat poets, 253, 268, 283 “beautiful books” (Eigner), 161, 297 “Before setting, the sun on my eyes” (Eigner), 232 Belli, Giuseppe Gioachino, The Roman Sonnets, 76, 229 Beloit Poetry Journal, 250 Bern Porter Books, 25, 217, 246 Bernstein, Leonard, 107 “Between us” (Eigner), 44, 230 Between Worlds, 74, 86, 103, 247–48, 252– 53, 264 Bibliography of Works by Larry Eigner, A (Wyatt), 150–51, 156, 290–91 Big Table, 86, 96, 253 Bishop, Elizabeth, 212 Bitely, Jessica, 229 Blackburn, Paul, 24, 32, 60, 77, 104, 264 Black Mountain College, 212 Black Mountain poets, 2, 211, 242 Black Mountain Review, 1, 215, 260; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 253– 54; ad for Olson in, 22, 213; Eigner subscribing to, 46, 53; jazz photos in, 54, 238–39; Olson in, 299–300 Black Sparrow Press, 144, 263, 286, 287, 297 Blue and the Brown Poems, The (Finlay), 144, 146, 148, 287–89 “blue / berries” (Eigner), 160, 296 Blue Yak Bookstore, 106 Bly, Robert, 99, 125, 250, 276 Boer, Charles, 297 Bongartz, Roy, 269 Boon, Jan, 293 “B o r o d i n” (Eigner), 31, 221 Boston Arts Festival, 43, 229

Bowering, George, 297 “BOXES” (Eigner), 227 Boxwood Press, 278, 290 Bradbury, Ray, 223 Branham, William, 272 Braun, Richard Emil, 284 “Break the dogfight” (Eigner), 88, 254 Bricoleur, 295 “BRINK” (Eigner), 48, 209n4, 227, 232, 235, 237 British Book Centre, 258 Broughton, James, 98 Brown, Bill, 13; as editor of Coyote’s Journal, 282, 283; and reprint of ON MY EYES, 136–40, 241, 266, 269, 282; The Way to the Uncle Sam Hotel, 137, 139, 285 Brown, Bob, 68; 1450–1950, 119, 245, 272 Browning, Robert, 190, 304 Brown University, 132, 146, 279, 288–89 Bryan, William Jennings, 33 Bunting, Basil, 138, 284 Burning Deck, 112, 268 Burns, Robert, 178 Burroughs, William, 137, 253, 283 Burton, Richard, 248 Butterick, George, 150, 162, 290, 297, 299; A Guide to the Maximus Poems of Charles Olson, 299 “but the walls are so naked” (Eigner), 227 Caesar’s Gate (Duncan), 214, 218, 286 Cage, John, 285 Cairnie, Gordon, 79, 85, 250 California Quarterly, 52, 238 Callahan, Harry, 105, 236, 263; calendar by, 139, 284; copies of ON MY EYES to, 95, 96; and copyright to ON MY EYES, 98, 116, 136, 270; illustrations of, for ON MY EYES, 91, 235, 255, 282; ON MY EYES without illustrations of, 286 Call Me Ishmael (Olson), 33, 122, 222 Caplan, Ronald: Eigner manuscript to, 131, 282; and Eigner poems in Mother, 150, 276, 279; Eigner sending poems to, 124– 25, 290; and Zukofsky’s After I, 130, 278 “CARN” (Eigner), 47, 232 Carroll, Paul, 96 Carruth, Hayden, 146, 153, 288, 292

Index Carson, Rachel, 128 Cary, Joyce, 67, 245; Mr. Johnson, 64 Cate, Robert, 96, 97 Catullus, 74, 248 Celan, Paul, 250 Celestin, Oscar, 223 “Chameleon, The” ( J. Williams), 74 “Charge of the Light Brigade, The” (Tennyson), 254 Charters, Ann, 226 Chelsea Review, 95, 250, 257 Ciardi, John, 97 Cinerama Holiday, 35, 223 Circle Press, 146, 288 City Lights Books, 25, 66, 80, 244; Eigner manuscript to, 113; Ferlinghetti as publisher of, 217, 232; and Levertov, 235 City Lights Pocket Poets, 246 CIV/n, 211 Clark, Tom, 281–82 Claudel, Paul, 144, 287 Collected Essays (Creeley), 69, 246 Collected Poems of Larry Eigner, The, 2, 41; poems in, 211, 228, 256, 260, 268, 289, 292; Poems in, 291; on poetry readings, 282; themes in, 248; on University of Kansas depository, 282 Coltrane, John, 149, 290 Columbia, 96 Columbia Records, 97 “C o m b a t” (Eigner), 32, 222 Combustion, 37, 48, 224, 232, 233; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 254 “common sense” (Eigner), 290, 292 Contact Press, 240 Controversy of Poets, A (Kelly and Leary), 275, 279 Coolidge, Clark, 155, 294 Copland, Aaron, 22, 215 Corcoran, Tom, 189, 304 Corman, Cid, 45; book of, 61, 242; as editor of Origin Press, 63, 120–21, 243; in Edward Dahlberg, 152, 292; and Eigner family, 110–11; and essay for Olson symposium, 210; Invitation to Primavera, 75, 248; on The Maximus Poems, 18, 92; and missing Eigner manuscripts/poems, 41, 53, 238; Mr. Johnson (Cary) recom-

317

mended by, 64; and ON MY EYES, 85, 94, 97; in Origins, 107, 265; and poetry readings, 28, 219; translating Sanesi, 270 Corman, Mrs. Leonard, 48, 50 Corso, Gregory, 123, 268 Coughlan, Robert, 222 “C o u p l e  o f  Y e a r s” (Eigner), 233 Coyote Books, 136, 269, 282; and reprint of ON MY EYES, 136–40, 142, 144, 145, 157, 241, 269, 270, 282, 286 Coyote’s Journal, 129, 136, 277–78, 282, 283 Crane, Hart, 22, 33, 222, 265 Creeley, Robert, 1, 2, 24; All That Is Lovely in Men, 18–20, 23, 30, 216; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; in Black Mountain Review, 28; in broadside series, 136; in Chelsea Review, 257; Collected Essays, 69, 246; and Divers Press, 2, 210, 212, 214, 218, 225, 242, 286, 300; The Dress, 46; as editor of Black Mountain Review, 222; Eigner sending poems to, 21; A Form of Women, 68, 246; If You, 46, 232; The Immoral Proposition, 15, 48, 210, 234; in Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268; in The New Ameri­can Poetry, 240; and Olson symposium, 16, 210; Olson to, 300; and ON MY EYES, 97; review of, 250, 263; in This, 155, 294; in Vort, 296; The Whip, 46, 232; W. C. Williams to, on Eigner, 242 Crozier, Andrew, 126, 276 “cruel and dark, the city” (Eigner), 67, 232 Cummings, E. E., 158, 212, 229, 292 Cunliffe, David, 286 “Cure, The” (W. C. Williams), 260 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 213 Dahlberg, Edward, 51, 97, 152, 276, 278, 289, 291–92 Dante, 86; Divine Comedy, 95, 254 Dark Brown (McClure), 106 Darkness Surrounds Us, The (Sorrentino), 100, 214, 256 Davenport, Guy, 152, 292 Davenport, Russell, 122, 273, 274 Davidson, Michael, 219 Davis, Miles, 216 Dawson, Fielding: Ajax, 215, 218; Eigner

318

Index

purchasing prose poems by, 22; Krazy Kat and One More, 20, 213, 214; Thread, 126, 276; in Vort, 163, 296 “D a y s” (Eigner), 32, 40, 92, 221, 227 Dean, James, 118 “Deep Religious Faith” (W. C. Williams), 141 Delius, Frederick, 155, 294 Delta, 53, 54, 238, 239; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 254; copy of ON MY EYES to, 97; letter in, on Eigner, 102, 261 Derleth, August, 97 Desert Review, 281 Desert Review Anthology, 281 “D. H. Lawrence and the High Temptation of the Mind” (Olson), 213 Dickey, James, 97, 98 Dickinson, Emily, 277 Di Prima, Diane, 103 Discovery Bookshop, 102, 260 “Distances to the Friend, The” ( J. Williams), 83, 121, 251, 273 Divers Press, 17, 224, 300; and Caesar’s Gate, 214, 218, 286; and From the Sustaining Air, 2, 210, 212, 225, 242, 286 Divine Comedy (Dante), 95, 254 Doll’s House, A (Ibsen), 68 Don Juan in Hell, 221 “Don’t get / too much” (Eigner), 297 Dorfman, Elsa, 156, 294 Dorn, Edward, 223, 240, 257, 269; “The Land Below,” 127, 278; What I See in the Maximus Poems, 89, 254 Dos Passos, John, U.S.A., 157–58, 295 “Do the dogs know why they bark?” (Eigner), 238, 239 Downey, Bill, 293 “D r a g g e d” (Eigner), 237 Drake, Alfred, 222 DuBois, W. E. B., 271 Dudek, Louis: copy of ON MY EYES to, 97; and Delta, 53, 54, 238, 239; on Eigner, 102, 261; review of A Red Carpet for the Sun (Layton) by, 74, 248 Duende, 124–26, 225, 275, 276 Duerden, Richard, 66, 244, 250 Duffy, William, 250

Duncan, Robert, 1, 2, 141, 147, 259, 285; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; assisting Eigner with typescript, 50, 134, 236; in Black Mountain Review, 22; Caesar’s Gate, 214, 218, 260; in Chelsea Review, 257; Eigner on, 137, 283; Eigner poems in collection of, 280–81; Eigner reading, 20; Eigner sending murder-­talk to, 38, 40, 43, 44; in Foot, 250; “Imaginary War Elegy, An,” 174, 301; Letters, 26, 45, 74, 214, 231, 248; Levertov to, 281; in The New Ameri­can Poetry, 81; and Olson symposium, 210; and ON MY EYES, 95–98; open letter on Eigner by, 209n4, 232–33, 237; J. Williams quoting, 252 Dutiful Son, The (Oppenheimer), 31, 139, 246, 284 “D y i n g” (Eigner), 35, 223 Eaton, Burnham, 214 Eaton, Evelyn, 214 Eberman, Willis, 214 Eckman, Frederick, 63, 127, 243, 276, 278 Edens, Walter, 217 Edward Dahlberg ( J. Williams), 152, 157, 290–92, 294, 296 Egan, Charles, 97 Eighth Street Bookshop, 76, 248–49 Eigner, Bessie, 106, 122, 150; and conflicts with Larry, 75–76, 112–13, 115, 133, 160; and Corman, 110–11; and medical issues, 164; and ON MY EYES, 132; tape recorder purchased by, 151; wanting fewer books, 120, 210n7 Eigner, Edwin, 108, 111, 138, 239, 267– 68, 282 Eigner, Israel, 120, 150; and conflicts with Larry, 28, 75, 101, 112; death of, 164, 298; distributing ON MY EYES, 93, 102, 106, 113; and funding of ON MY EYES, 68, 71–72, 91, 110–11; helping with Larry’s works, 53, 115, 132–33; ­letter from, for Larry, 15; and medical issues, 86, 92, 160; at poetry reading, 293 Eigner, Janet, 112 Eigner, Joseph, 112, 126, 276, 293; Larry visiting, 125, 160, 163

Index Eigner, Larry: applying for Guggenheim grant, 73, 247; archives of, at Brown University, 132, 146, 279, 288–89; archives of, at Stanford University, 279; a­ rchives of, at University of Kansas, 136, 153, 279, 282; and Black Mountain p­ oets, 1, 242; broadcast of poems of, 151, 291; on broadside, 29, 219–20; and conflicts with family, 28, 75–76, 101, 112–13, 115, 133, 160; on contraception, 179– 82; on copyright, 125; and difficulty working, 44, 132–33, 143, 231; discouragement of, 2, 70–74; in D ­ uende, 124– 26, 225, 275, 276; exploration of relationship among words by, 220; on family, 57–58, 239; and family’s disapproval of Williams, 30, 220; in Granta, 279; in Harlequin, 221, 222; images of typescripts by, 191–92; in Inside Outer Space, 292; and issue with circulation of works, 239; in Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268; in ­KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN, 283; Levertov visiting, 56; on The Maximus Poems, 14–15, 32, 36, 162, 172–74; in Measure, 49–50, 209n4, 227, 232, 235, 237; and medical issues, 113, 115, 119, 123; in Migrant, 65, 80, 88, 244, 247, 253; on moratorium at Jargon, 60, 241; in Mother, 125–26, 276, 279, 281, 290; in New Orleans Poetry Journal, 99, 258; on newspaper write-­ups, 83, 110, 267; and Olson, 299; in Origin, 17, 212, 227; on overpopulation, 181–82; on photocopy machines, 116; photostatting of works, 115, 270; poems of, in Duncan collection, 280–81; poems of, published by Penny Poems Broadside, 245; in Poetry, 142, 272, 286; and poetry readings, 135, 151, 219, 281–82, 291, 293; purchasing Creeley works, 46; purchasing Dawson works, 22, 215, 218; purchasing Jargon works, 24, 30, 31, 41, 101, 218; purchasing Olson works, 15, 16, 27, 76, 94, 106; purchasing works, 16, 76–77; on repetition, 49, 50, 53, 134; review by, in Ole, 283; on royalties, 83, 109, 117– 18, 120, 132, 145, 251, 288; on script-­

319

based poetry, 28, 218–19; selling rare books, 120; and shared publication costs, 29, 220; on social issues, 185–88, 190; in Sparrow, 23–24, 118, 214–17, 235, 260, 272, 297; style of, 89, 254; subscribing to Black Mountain Review, 46, 53; support of Jargon by, 100, 259; and surgery, 91, 93, 100, 109–10, 266, 269, 303; in This, 155, 294, 295; in Tish, 254, 297; visiting Olson, 56; in Vort, 296; writing in French, 7, 64, 66, 69, 104, 105, 145, 146, 209n7, 216, 238. See also in­di­ vidual works Eigner, Richard, 17, 122–23, 126–27, 132, 145, 150, 164, 291; trust account held by, 117–18, 133, 251, 277 Elegies and Celebrations ( J. Williams), 121, 273, 293 Eliot, T. S., 212, 219 “Élysée” (Eigner), 292 Empire Finals at Verona, The ( J. Williams), 69, 75, 77, 101, 214, 260, 283; Eigner reading, 137–38 End of It, The (Goodman), 56, 240 Enslin, Ted, 41 Epitaphs for Lorine ( J. Williams, ed.), 153, 155, 159, 290, 292, 295, 296 “Escaped Cock, The” (Olson), 213 Evans, Maurice, 75, 248 Evergreen Review, 44, 230 Every Day (Whalen), 139, 285 “every day afterwards I sat at the table with her” (Eigner), 232 Fables & Other Little Tales (Patchen), 14–16 Fade Out (Woolf ), 78, 79 Farley, James, 189, 304 Faulkner, William, 23, 24, 216 Fenby, Eric, 294 Ferlinghetti, Lawrence, 124, 217, 232; another time in fragments manuscript sent to, 134; Eigner’s attempts to have ON MY EYES stocked by, 102, 260; in Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268; and Levertov’s Here and Now, 49, 235; LOOK AT THE PARK manuscript sent to, 66, 79– 80; ON MY EYES manuscript to, 37, 47

320

Index

Ferrini, Vincent, 48, 125, 146; Eigner considering as agent, 91, 255; Eigner sending manuscript to, 60; and Eigner’s uncle as friend of, 55, 57, 59; Eigner visiting, 118; and Fortune Press, 246; Olson on, 200, 231; and Olson symposium, 210; ON MY EYES distributed by, 94, 106, 256; ON MY EYES manuscript sent to, 69, 72; readings by, 151, 291 Ferry Press, 276 Fiddlehead, 88, 254 “field, the only place” (Eigner), 104, 262 Fifties, The, 79, 250 50! Epiphytes,-­taphs,-­tomes,-­grams,-­thets! 50! ( J. Williams), 286 Finkel, Don, 125, 131, 276, 278 Finlay, Ian Hamilton, 147–48, 278, 279; The Blue and the Brown Poems, 144, 146, 148, 287–89 Finnegans Wake ( Joyce), 108 Flame, 25 Flat and Round (Eigner), 146, 230, 289 “F l e c h e . .” (Eigner), 239, 292 Fleming, Thomas J., One Small Candle, 127, 277 Floating Bear, 1, 103, 105 Foley, Jack, 215, 216, 293 Folkways, 96 Foot, 79, 88, 250, 254 For Artaud (McClure), 67 Form of Women, A (Creeley), 68, 246 “F o r  S l e e p” (Eigner), 232, 244 Fortune Press, 69, 72, 77, 78, 246 Forward, 100, 259 14 Poets, 1 Artist, 214 “foxes stepping” (Eigner), 128–29, 134, 277, 281 Frankenberg, Lloyd, Pleasure Dome, 212 “Frederick Douglass” (Eigner), 9, 133, 135, 280 Friedlander, Ben, 212 From the Sustaining Air (Eigner), 2, 73; cover of, 210; influence of Crane on, 216; letter from W. C. Williams on, 39, 63, 225–26, 242; poems in, 211, 223; published by Divers Press, 2, 210, 212, 225, 242, 286; reprint of, 141–42, 266, 286

Frost, Robert, 302 Fry, Barbara, 32 Fulcrum Press, 157; another time in fragments published by, 135, 138, 139, 264, 280, 282, 285–87 Fuller, Buckminster, 123; Untitled Epic Poem, 122, 273, 274 Gallery, 97 Garner, John Nance, 303 Geisler, Martin, 250 Gerhardt, Rainer, 16, 211 Getting It Together, 291, 293 Gildzen, Alex, 296 Gillis, Don, 22, 215 Ginsberg, Allen, 136, 137; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; “At Apollinaire’s Grave,” 245; as Beat poet, 242, 268, 283; in Chelsea Review, 257; in Getting It Together, 293 Gitin, David, 151, 291, 295 “G l a s s” (Eigner), 227 Glenn, John, 266 Gluck, Christoph, Orfeo ed Euridice, 273 Goldberg, Rube, 143, 286 Golden Goose Press, 243 Golden Quill Press, 19–20, 213–14 Goldman, Arnold, 99, 258 Goldowsky, Noah, 251 Goodell, Larry, 124–25, 130, 225, 276 Goodman, Mitchell, 64, 243; The End of It, 56, 240 Gould, Symon, 187–88, 304 Grady, Robert F., 106, 108, 264 Granta, 132, 279 Gray, Cleve, 96 “great multiple” (Eigner), 134, 281 Greene, Jonathan, 112, 259; assisting Eigner, 98, 99, 257–58; on Blue Yak, 264; on depositories for Eigner, 132; and distribution of ON MY EYES, 100, 102, 106, 260; on Eigner archives, 279; and ­Gnomon Press, 298; on Olson and Duncan, 264–65; writings by, 102–3 Greenwich Book Publishers, 29, 30 Grenier, Robert, 155, 156, 219, 294 Grier, Edward, 296 Grolier’s Book Shop, 101, 250; and ON MY EYES, 79, 80, 85, 91, 102, 255

Index Grosbeck, George, 282 Grove Press, 144, 287 Gustafson, Richard, 262 “H” (Eigner), 64, 226 Hall, Donald, 97–99, 257, 258 Hanna, Charles, 94 Harlequin, 31–32, 88, 221, 222, 254 Harmon, James, Ark II / Moby I, 36, 223 Harrison, Lou, 263; Three Choruses from Opera Libretti, 100 Hart, George, “Larry Eigner, Six Letters,” 222 Harvard Bookstore, 91–92, 102 Hawley, Robert, 156, 295 “health / holy” (Eigner), 220 Hemingway, Ernest, 158 “HE MUST HAVE GOT UP EARLY” (Eigner), 258 Henny, Leonard, 154, 293 Herbert, Victor, 35, 222 Here and Now (Levertov), 49, 246 Heritage Printers, 251, 253, 254 “history / romance” (Eigner), 161, 297 Holland, Bud C., 251 Holland-­Goldowsky Gallery, 81, 251 Höllerer, Walter, Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268 “Hollow roar” (Eigner), 64 Holt, Harold, 142, 286 Hornick, Lita, 122, 273 Houston, Peyton, 123, 274–75 “how much sat  hard” (Eigner), 290 “HOW THE BLIND DID IT” (Eig­ ner), 272 Huckleberry Finn (Twain), 86 Hudson, Rock, 168, 299 Hughes, Charles Evan, 144, 287 Hughes, Langston, 257 “Hunters of Kentucky, The” (Woodworth), 35, 222 “H u n t s / J i g” (Eigner), 44, 230 Hurrah for Anything (Patchen), 26, 51 Huston, John, 223 Hypocritic Days, The (Woolf ), 41, 75, 78, 228 “I am a machine for walking” (Eigner), 9, 28–29, 218–19

321

Ibsen, Henrik, A Doll’s House, 68, 246 “Idea of An / Impersonal / Death” (“the earth”) (Eigner), 268 If You (Creeley), 46, 232 “If you weep, I think that” (Eigner), 244 Ignatow, David, 79, 138, 250, 257, 283 “I have felt it as they’ve said” (Eigner), 213, 272 “Imaginary War Elegy, An” (Duncan), 174, 301 Immoral Proposition, The (Creeley), 15, 48, 210, 234 Improved Binoculars, The (Layton), 38, 48, 229, 234 “In Cold Hell, in Thicket” (Olson), 175, 214, 299, 301 “In Distrust of Merits” (Moore), 268–69 In England’s Green & (A Garland & Clyster) ( J. Williams), 109 Inside Outer Space, 292 Institute of Design, 81 International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF), 117, 271 In the Ameri­can Grain (W. C. Williams), 31, 220 “In the midst of pain I think of you” (Eigner), 272 Irby, Ken, 122, 136, 155, 274, 294 “I Return to San Francisco” (Whalen), 85, 252 “Ishmael in America” (Mottram), 157, 295 It Is, 96 “I t ’ s  G e t t i n g  T h e r e” (Eigner), 48, 226, 262 Ives, Charles, 117, 144, 215, 271, 287 Jacob, Max, 215 Jacob’s Ladder, The (Levertov), 124, 275 James, Henry, Wash­ing­ton Square, 81, 251 Jammin’ the Greek Scene (Williams), 214 Jan 1st 1959 ( Jones), 61–62, 242 Jeffrey, Desmond, 264 Johnson, Lamont, 223 Johnson, Ronald, 152, 253, 279, 283; in Coyote’s Journal, 129, 277–78; in Edward Dahlberg, 291; and ON MY EYES, 87; reading by, 138; in Vort, 296 Jones, LeRoi, 60, 81, 242; on Baldwin, 121– 22, 273; “Exaugural Address,” 270; Float-

322

Index

ing Bear, 103; in Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268; and ON MY EYES, 64, 65, 95, 96, 243; reprint of The Dutiful Son by, 139 Jory, Victor, 223 Journal of Albion Moonlight, The (Patchen), 51, 236 Journey to Love (W. C. Williams), 268 Joyce, James, 127, 219; Finnegans Wake, 108; Ulysses, 67, 245 JW/50, A 50th Birthday Celebration for Jonathan Williams, 298 Kaleckefsky, Roberta, 293 Kalisher, Simpson, 262 Karlen, Arno, 152, 291 Kearney, Gordon, 155 Kelly, Robert, 125, 129, 264, 281; in broadside series, 136; A Controversy of Poets, 275, 279; Eigner sending poems to, 135; “Song? / After Bread: Notes on Zukofsky’s A 1-­12,” 117, 271; in This, 155, 294; in Vort, 296 Kennedy, John F., 184–85 Kennedy, Robert, 160 Kenner, Hugh, 97 Kerouac, Jack, 242; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; in Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268; “Old Angel Midnight,” 253 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 160, 297; “I Have a Dream,” 183, 303 King, Ron, 288 Kitasono, Katue, 213 KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN, 283 “KLACTOVEEDSEDSTEEN” (Parker), 137, 283 Kline, Franz, 97 Knaths, Karl, 237 Knoepfle, John, 125, 276 Kohler, Michael, 297 Koller, James, 137, 139, 283, 286; and Coyote Books, 136, 140, 145, 157, 282, 285, 287 Krazy Kat and One More (Dawson), 20, 213, 214 Kulchur, 116–17, 121–22, 167, 270–73, 303–4 Kyger, Joanne, 250

“Land Below, The” (Dorn), 127, 278 L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, 1 Language poets, 1, 294 “Larry Eigner, Six Letters” (Bartlett and Hart), 222 Larsson, Raymond E. F., 106, 264 Last Man In (Braun), 284 Later D. H. Lawrence, The, 18 Laubiès, René, 49, 210, 235, 236 “Laugh it” (Eigner), 163, 298 Laughlin, James, 97; another time in fragments manuscript sent to, 113, 123– 24, 130, 278; manuscript sent to, 134, 156, 157 Lawrence, D. H., 127, 300; The Plumed Serpent, 213 Lawrence Welk Show, 289 Layton, Irving, 2, 23, 26, 36, 224, 263; The Improved Binoculars, 38, 48, 229, 234; and Olson symposium, 210; in Origin, 31, 221; A Red Carpet for the Sun, 69, 72, 74, 75, 77, 92, 248 Leary, Paris, A Controversy of Poets, 275, 279 Leary, Timothy, 271 Leif, Irving, 230; on “CARN,” 232; on “I have felt it,” 213; Larry Eigner, 163, 290, 305; on “OR FEAR ITSELF,” 250; on poems in ON MY EYES, 233 “LETTER FOR DUNCAN” (Eigner), 280–81 Letters (Duncan), 26, 45, 74, 214, 231, 248 Levertov, Denise, 1, 2, 24, 94, 138, 216, 240, 257, 281; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; to Eigner about Guggenheim grant, 73; on Eigner sending work to Blackburn, 60; and Eigner’s poems in Migrant, 65, 80, 88, 244, 247, 253; in The Fifties, 250; Here and Now, 49, 246; The Jacob’s Ladder, 124, 275; in Kulchur, 269–70; in The New Ameri­can Poetry, 240; and ON MY EYES, 65, 97, 115, 244; Overland to the Islands, 39, 41, 43, 55, 63, 243; reading by, 79; visiting Eigner, 56; Williams sharing Eigner’s work with, 221, 230, 231; With Eyes at the Back of Our Heads, 76, 78 Lewis, Wyndham, 219 Liberman, Alexander, 96

Index Life, 222, 223 lined up bulk senses (Eigner), 268 Lines about Hills above Lakes (Williams), 272 Little Enis, 296 Loewinsohn, Ron, 242; Watermelons, 67 Loftin, William, 87, 95, 96, 251, 253 LOOK AT THE PARK (Eigner), 2, 67–68, 239, 240, 245, 246; manuscript of, sent to Ferlinghetti, 66, 79–80; order for, 73, 80; sent to J. Williams, 58 Lorraine, Lilith (Mary Wright), 25, 217 “Love is a movie” (Eigner), 68 Low, Jackson Mac, 105–6, 263–64 Lowell, Jim, 67, 80, 131, 151–52, 246, 251, 279, 291 Lowell, Robert, 250 Lowell Institute, 127, 132, 133, 227 Lowenfels, Walter, 77, 191, 272 Loy, Mina, 2, 242; Lunar Baedeker and Time-­Tables, 70, 74, 229, 247, 248 Luce, Henry, 122, 274 Lunar Baedeker and Time-­Tables (Loy), 70, 74, 229, 247, 248 Luten, Daniel B., Jr., 274 Magee, Gayle Sherwood, 287 “magnetic lines of ” (Eigner), 153, 292 Magnificent Obsession, The (Douglas), 168– 69, 299 Malcolm X, 188, 304 Malraux, André, 300 Man and Superman (Shaw), 31, 220–21 Maps, 149, 290 Marlatt, Daphne, Our Lives, 164, 298 Martin, John, 143, 286 Mason, Mason Jordan, 284 “M a s s” (Eigner), 226 Maximus Poems, The (Olson), 45, 84, 231, 297; ad for, 217; Corman on, 18, 92; on Eigner, 299; Eigner on, 14–15, 32, 36, 162, 172–74; Eigner purchasing, 19, 26, 76, 106, 109; poems in, 300, 301; special edition of, 213; symposium as fundraiser for, 16, 27, 167, 210, 214; J. Williams on success of, 27 Mayan Letters, The (Olson), 300 McCarthy, Joseph, 67, 245 McClure, Michael, 2, 32; The Beard, 144,

323

287; Dark Brown, 106; as editor of Ark II / Moby I, 36, 223; in Foot, 250; For ­Artaud, 67; in Junge Amerikanische Lyrik, 268; Passage, 31 McDowall, Roddy, 248 McFarland, Arthur, 64, 216, 226, 243; Eigner sending manuscript to, 123, 135; and ON MY EYES, 131–32, 244 McGarrell, James, 284 McGrath, Thomas, 52, 238 McGuffie, Jessie, 129, 130, 278, 279 McLuhan, Marshall, 148, 289 Measure, 88, 230, 238; Eigner in, 49–50, 209n4, 227, 232, 235, 237 Meatyard, Ralph Eugene, 139, 285 Meditation at Noon (Miller), 240, 596 Meltzer, Dave, 102, 260 “M e m o r i a l  D a y” (Eigner), 87, 253 Mendes, Guy, 296 Merrill, James, 97 Metcalf, Paul C., 31, 36 Meyer, Tom, 152, 155, 290, 294, 298 Middleton, Christopher, 138, 284 Migrant, 1, 228, 251; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 254; Eigner in, 65, 80, 88, 244, 247, 253 Migrant Press, 243 Miller, Henry, 2; The Red Notebook, 61 Miller, Peter, Meditation at Noon, 59, 240 Miller, Vassar, 258 “M i l l i o n e n” (Eigner), 227, 232, 235 Minelli, Frank, 291, 293 “Mirror” (Eigner), 234 Moby Dick (movie), 35, 223 “MODERN’S WET” (Eigner), 44, 230 Mollishever, Jay, 151, 291, 293 Montevallo Review, 301 Montgomery, Stuart, 136, 147, 148; and ­another time in fragments, 141, 142, 156–57, 282, 285–87, 289; and ON MY EYES, 145, 158 Moore, Marianne, 212, 219, 242; “In Distrust of Merits,” 268–69 Morganthau, Henry, 189, 304 Morris, Tina, Thunderbolts of Peace and Liberation, 286 Mother, 264, 275; Eigner in, 125–26, 276, 279, 281, 290

324

Index

Mother Press, 278, 290 “M o t h e r s” (Eigner), 32, 221 Mottram, Eric, 296; “Ishmael in America,” 157, 295 Mr. Johnson (Cary), 64 Mumford, Lewis, 18, 32, 213, 222 Munsel, Patrice, 222 murder-­talk (Eigner): in Duende, 126, 225, 275, 276; to Duncan, 38, 40, 43, 44 Museum of Modern Art, 96 Mussio, Leda Sartini, 284 “my eyes went where there was a tree” (Eig­ ner), 272 “my god / priceless” (Eigner), 147, 288 Naked Ear, 47, 232; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 254 Nameth, Ron, 139, 284–84 Nantahala Foundation, 111, 266 Nash, Ogden, 212 Nation, The, 40, 54, 97, 250 National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 55, 239 National Educational Television (NET), 144, 287 National Review, 97 Naughty Marietta (Herbert), 222 Navaretta, Emanuel, 96 “Near the Beginning” (Eigner), 258 Neiman, Gilbert, 247–48 New Ameri­can Poetry, The (Allen), 2, 80– 81, 83, 88, 245, 251, 254, 273; “Black Mountain School” section of, 1, 240, 242; and Eigner, 57, 117–18, 230, 236, 240 New Ameri­can poets, 292 New Athenaeum, 88, 254 New Directions, 60, 236, 278 Newman, Charles, 74, 150, 248, 290 New Orleans Poetry Journal, 88, 99, 254, 258 New Republic, 40 New York Times, 78, 97 Niedecker, Lorine, 149, 155, 236, 290, 292, 295, 296 Nigeria, 146–47 Norse, Harold, 137, 283 “not like an animal but as yourself ” (Eig­ ner), 272

now there’s a morning / hulk of the sky (Eig­ ner), 286 Objectivist poets, 284, 292 “O c c a s i o n a l l y” (Eigner), 16, 211 Odyssey, The (Kazantzakis), 64, 67, 243, 245 “Off the house  back” (Eigner), 44, 230 O’Hara, Frank, 268 “Old Angel Midnight” (Kerouac), 253 “O l d  M a n” (Eigner), 234 Olson, Charles, 1, 2, 18–19, 146, 209n5; “A Discrete Gloss,” 174, 300–301; in ­Anecdotes of the Late War, 22, 216; “An Ode on Nativity,” 174, 301; Apollonius of Tyana, 173, 300; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; “As the Dead Prey upon Us,” 67, 245; Call Me Ishmael, 33, 122, 222; and Crozier, 276; Dahlberg on, 152, 291; and Eigner, 125, 299; Eigner on writing style of, 170–75; Eigner to, on broadside, 219–20; Eigner visiting, 56, 259; history lectures of, 39, 43, 99, 226; “In Cold Hell, in Thicket,” 175, 214, 299, 301; introducing Eigner to Cairnie, 79, 250; in Lon­don, 141, 285; Maps dedicated to, 150, 290; The Mayan Letters, 300; in The New Ameri­can Poetry, 80–81, 240; note of, shared between Eigner and Williams, 17, 21, 211; “On First Looking Out of La Cosa’s Eyes,” 171, 299–300; and ON MY EYES, 64, 65, 94, 96; O’Ryan poems of, 41, 228; photos of, in This, 155, 294; “Projective Verse,” 299; “Religion in the Big World” essay on, 17, 212; ­ oreau, 95, 257; and use of typeon Th writer by poets, 28, 218; Williams sharing Eigner manuscript with, 61, 221, 224, 241; Williams sharing Eigner’s work with, 40, 46–47, 227, 230, 231, 235. See also Maximus Poems, The ­(Olson) One Small Candle (Fleming), 127, 277 “On First Looking Out of La Cosa’s Eyes” (Olson), 171, 299–300 ON MY EYES (Eigner), 2, 9, 155, 281, 292; copyright of, 96, 98; cost of, 64, 68, 77– 78, 102, 209n5, 261; Coyote reprint of, 136–40, 142, 144, 145, 157, 241, 269,

Index 270, 282, 286; delivery of, 90; design of, 48, 234; distribution of, 95, 96–97, 100, 102, 126, 256, 258, 260, 276; dwindling supply of, 115; editing of, 48, 49, 51–54, 64, 235, 237, 243; Eigner considering other publishers for, 66, 69, 79, 244; Eigner on order of, 82, 92–93; Eigner’s additions to, 41, 220, 221, 224, 227–28; Eigner’s approval of, 86–87; and family financing, 55, 57–60, 62, 75– 76, 78, 110–11, 223, 240, 248, 250, 267; financing of, 65, 68, 83–84, 218; illustrations in, 49, 57, 66, 91, 94–95, 235, 255; Levertov selecting poems for, 231; making copies of, 131–32, 279; marketing of, 84, 88–89, 91, 96, 100, 130, 255, 259, 278; poems in, 221, 226, 227, 232, 233, 239, 244, 253; preface to, 251; printer of, 254; repetition in, 49, 50, 53; reprint of, 99, 101, 108, 113; reviews of, 103, 104, 261, 262–63; royalties from, 100, 259; sales of, 91–93, 95, 102; schedule for, 81–82; sending to reviewers, 96– 97; table of contents of, 234; title of, 67, 245; W. C. Williams letter in, 225, 242 “O p e n” (Eigner), 226 “O  p o s s i b l e” (Eigner), 42, 227, 228 Oppenheimer, Joel, 2, 242; The Dutiful Son, 31, 139, 246, 284; in Kulchur, 186, 269, 303–4; in The New Ameri­can Poetry, 240; in Origin, 31, 221 “OR FEAR ITSELF” (Eigner), 55, 239, 250 Orfeo ed Euridice (Gluck), 273 Origin, 1, 25, 31, 217–18, 221; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 253; Corman as editor of, 63, 120–21, 243; ­Corman in, 107, 265; Eigner in, 17, 107, 212, 227, 265; Olson in, 300; J. Williams in, 217–18 Origin Press, 243 Oswald, Lee Harvey, 118, 184–85 Our Lives (Marlatt), 164, 298 Overland to the Islands (Levertov), 39, 41, 43, 55, 63, 243 Oyez, 150, 156, 290, 295 Paperbook Gallery, 80, 250 Paper Editions Corporation, 69, 78, 246, 249

325

Parker, Charlie, 216; “KLACTOVEEDS­ ED­STEEN,” 137, 283 Parnassus Bookshop, 151, 291 Passage (McClure), 31 “P a s s a g e s” (Eigner), 67, 245 Patchen, Kenneth, 2, 98, 100; Fables & Other Little Tales, 14–16; Hurrah for Anything, 26, 51; Jargon publications of, 39, 46, 226, 231; and ON MY EYES, 97; Poem-­Scapes, 26; Poems of Humor and Protest, 45; in The Voice That Is Great Within Us, 292 Paterson (W. C. Williams), 43, 154, 299 Paul, Sherman, 210 “Peabody Sq.” (Eigner), 56, 237, 240 Peake, Maeve, 269 Peake, Mervyn, 269 Peck, Gregory, 223 Penland School of Crafts, 154, 293 Penny Poems, 67, 104, 245, 262 Perkoff, Stuart Z., 214 “Personal Talk” (Wordsworth), 280 Petersen, Will, 265 Phelps, Donald, 296 Phoenix Bookshop, 100, 102 “PIECE” (Eigner), 272 Pierrepont Press, 146 Pirone, Will, 293 “Place just right” (Eigner), 44, 230 “P L E I N” (Eigner), 227 Plumed Serpent, The (Lawrence), 19, 213 Poems (Eigner), 151–52 Poems ( J. Williams), 30, 99–101, 220, 259 Poem-­Scapes (Patchen), 26 Poems of Humor and Protest (Patchen), 45 Poet and Critic, 104, 262 Poetry, 78, 97, 106; Eigner in, 272, 286; Eigner royalties from, 110, 117 Poetry as System (Winkler), 154, 292–93 Poetry Review, 230 Poetry USA, 293 “Poor, The” (W. C. Williams), 178, 302 Poor.Old.Tired.Horse., 278, 279 Pope, Dick, 269 Porpoise Bookshop / Peregrine Press, 232 Postcards & Valentines for L.Z., 13, 163, 298 Pound, Ezra, 28, 170, 219, 267

326

Index

“PREDICATION” (Eigner), 276 “Pure” (Eigner), 44, 227, 230 “Qt.” (Eigner), 276 “Quiet” (Eigner), 212 “Quiet Limbs” (Eigner), 64 Rago, Henry, 117, 132, 279 Railroad Men, 103, 261–62 “Rambling (in) Life” (Eigner), 239, 240, 272 readiness / enough / depends / on (Eig­ner), 215 Red Carpet for the Sun, A (Layton), 69, 72, 74, 75, 77, 92, 248 Red Notebook, The (Miller), 61 Reich, Wilhelm, 54, 239 “Religion in the Big World” (Eigner), 8, 17, 167, 168–75, 212, 214 Remick, Lee, 248 Reporter, 63 Repub­lic of Biafra, 146–47, 289 Rexroth, Kenneth, 17, 66–67, 97, 210, 245, 250 Reynolds, Tim, 296 Rice, Dan, 23 Richman, Robin, 296 Rock, John, 179, 180, 302 Roman Books, 120, 272 Roman Sonnets, The (Belli), 76, 229 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 189, 304 Roosevelt, James, 189, 304 Rosenthal, M. L., 97 Roskolenko, Harry, 257 Rosset, Barney, 97 Rothenberg, Jerome, 142, 250, 257 Ruby, Jack, 118, 184–85 Ruggles, Carl, 144, 287 Rukeyser, Muriel, Willard Gibbs, 137, 283 “RURALS” (Eigner), 44, 230 “RURALS  2” (Eigner), 44, 230 Russell, Ken, 294 Russell, William, 239 Saki, 117, 271 Sandburg, Carl, 127, 277 Sanesi, Roberto, 116, 270 Sargent, Malcolm, 135, 281 Saturday Evening Post, 63, 114, 269

Saturday Review, 97 Sauer, Carl, 210 Sauraute, Nathalie, 138, 284 Schafer, George, 295 Schiller, Robert, 245 Schlesigner, Kyle, 2 “Second Coming, The” (Yeats), 302 Selected Poems (Eigner), 156, 295 Sewanee Review, 97 Shattuck, Roger, 138, 284 Shavzin, Alan, 104, 262 Shaw, George Bernard, Man and Superman, 31, 220–21 Sibelius, Jean, 135, 281 Siegel, Eli, 44, 230 Silliman, Ron, 155, 294 Sinsabaugh, Art, 130–31, 276, 278 Siskind, Aaron, 96, 215 Six Mid-­Ameri­can Chants (Anderson), 126, 130, 277, 278 Smit, Wilfred, 104, 262 Snyder, Gary, 223, 268 Society for Indecency to Naked Animals (SINA), 301 “Something I won’t see” (Eigner), 227 “Something that really happened” (Eig­ ner), 239 Some Time (Zukofsky), 26, 41, 44, 228, 230, 236, 246 “Song? / After Bread: Notes on Zukofsky’s A 1-­12” (Kelly), 117, 271 Sorrentino, Gilbert, 186, 187, 242, 304; The Darkness Surrounds Us, 100, 214, 256; in Kulchur, 269; review of, 263 Souster, Raymond, 47, 59–60, 240; and Combustion, 37, 224, 232; and ON MY EYES, 95, 96 South Florida Poetry Journal, 286 “Space” (“the space of the corner”) (Eig­ ner), 268 Sparrow, 1; acknowledged in ON MY EYES, 88, 254; Eigner in, 23–24, 118, 214–17, 235, 260, 272, 297 “sparrows a good time” (Eigner), 262 Spellman, A. B., 186, 269, 304 Spicer, Jack, 17, 250 Stanford University, 279

Index Stefanile, Felix, 20, 49, 214, 216, 235 Stein, Charles, 106, 265 Stein, Gertrude, 22, 215 “S t e p -­w i s e” (Eigner), 87, 253 “S. Thomas More” (Eigner), 142, 286 Stokowski, Leopold, 144, 287 Stony Hills, 297 “straight by / the roadsign” (Eigner), 159, 296 “Sunflower Sutra” (Ginsberg), 268 Sward, Robert, 257 Szilard, Leo, 108–9 Taggart, John, 149, 290 “Tapioloa” (W. C. Williams), 135, 281 Tempest, The, 75, 248 Tennyson, Alfred, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” 254 Test of Poetry, A (Zukofsky), 120 Tetrad Press, 264, 288 “T h e --” (Eigner), 32, 221 “T h e  A i r” (Eigner), 239 “the birds / risen to a tree” (Eigner), 286 The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe (Eigner), 9 “The breath of once Live Things / In the field with Poe” (Eigner), 9, 33–35, 223, 244 “THE CARICATURE” (Eigner), 272 “T h e  C a t ’ s  E a r s” (Eigner), 101, 163, 260, 297 “THE CONCRETE GLASS” (Eigner), 239 “T h e  C r i p p l e s” (Eigner), 272 “T h e  D e a d  D o g” (Eigner), 239 “T h e  E l e m e n t s” (Eigner), 44, 230 “The Eye Doctor” (Eigner), 212 “the feet of Icarus” (Eigner), 286 “THE FINE LIFE” (Eigner), 239 “the first to get it” (Eigner), 44, 230 “THE HEBREW BURIAL-­GROUND NEAR ALCOTT’S” (Eigner), 237 “the icicle the” (Eigner), 148, 289 “the memory of Yeats  BLAKE / DHL” (Eigner), 146, 288 “T h e  M o v i e  o f  i t” (Eigner), 232 “the movie turned [/] walls” (Eigner), 142, 286

327

“the needle getting stuck  Radio” (Eig­ ner), 296 “T h e  P a r t y  o n  t h e  F i e l d s” (Eigner), 42, 227, 228 “the pipes  how many” (Eigner), 286 “The plea that clothing be put upon cows” (Eigner), 175–79 “the ragged lines of ” (Eigner), 233 “T h e  S h o c k” (Eigner), 154, 292 “T H E  S T.   B E R N A R D  L O O K I N G  A T  T H E  T O Y” (Eigner), 227 “T h e  S t u d i o” (Eigner), 233 “The Sweep of Dark” (Eigner), 237 THE -­/ TOWARDS / AUTUMN (Eigner), 221, 286 “T h e  W a y” (Eigner), 272 “The Weather” (Eigner), 87 “T h e  W e t  S n o w” (Eigner), 25, 94, 217, 239, 256 THE WORLD AND ITS STREETS, PLACES (Eigner), 289 “the world that was, the glass” (Eigner), 297 THINGS STIRRING / TOGETHER / OR FAR AWAY (Eigner), 160, 297 This, 1, 155–56, 294–95 Thomas, Dylan, 212 Thomson, Virgil, 22, 215 Thoreau, Henry David, 95, 257; A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, 128, 277 “Those Troubling Disguises” ( J. Williams), 83, 251 Thread (Dawson), 126, 276 Three Choruses from Opera Libretti (Harri­ son), 100 “Through, Plain” (Eigner), 212 “Tiger Rag,” 35, 222–23 Tillson, William, 104, 262 “Time runs on, they say” (Eigner), 227, 228 Tish, 254, 297 Toad Press, 286 “Todesfuge” (Celan), 250 Tom Sawyer (Twain), 86 Tone, Franchot, 23 “to see in the green” (Eigner), 290 Totem Press, 242

328

Index

“To the Skylark” (Wordsworth), 293 Tottel’s, 1 TriQuarterly, 157–59, 289–90, 296 Trobar, 135, 281 Truck, 163, 298 Truck Press, 298 Tucker, Harvey, 289 Turnbull, Gael, 63, 71, 80, 95; and Migrant, 251; and Migrant Press, 228, 243; and ON MY EYES, 91, 92; in Origin, 25, 218 Tuumba, 1 Twain, Mark, 86 Twelfth Night, 110, 267 Tyler, Parker, 242 Tyson, Ian, 146, 264, 288 Ulysses ( Joyce), 67, 245 University of Kansas, 136, 138, 153, 167, 279, 282, 283–84 “un peu de / t o u r s  /  d e  l a  m e r  /  (my old pal )” (Eigner), 107, 265 Untermeyer, Louis, Modern Ameri­can ­Poetry, 127 Untitled Epic Poem (Fuller), 122, 273, 274 “Up and Ahead” (Eigner), 119, 269, 296, 297–98 U.S.A. (Dos Passos), 157–58, 295 van Aelstyn, Edwin, 136, 139, 282 Van Sickle, John B., 261 Vas Dias, Robert, 152–53, 292 Village Voice, 97 Villon, François, 178 Vogue, 96 “V o i c e ,  F r e e” (Eigner), 272 Vort, 159, 163, 296, 297 Wakowski, Diane, 258 Waldrop, Keith, 268 Waldrop, Rosmarie, 268 Wallace, Henry, 189, 304 Wallrich, Larry, 102, 260 Walsh, Chad, 257 Wash­ing­ton Square ( James), 81, 251 Watermelons (Loewinsohn), 67 Waters, Ethel, 23

WATERS / PLACES / A TIME (Eigner), 254, 281 Watten, Barrett, 155 Way to the Uncle Sam Hotel, The (Brown), 137, 139, 283, 285 Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, A (Thoreau), 128, 277 Weil, James, 262 Weissner, Carl, 137, 283 Welch, Lew, 104, 250, 262 Welk, Lawrence, 149 Wesleyan University Press, 106, 113, 124, 134 Whalen, Philip, 250; Every Day, 139, 285; “I Return to San Francisco,” 85, 252 What I See in the Maximus Poems (Dorn), 89, 254 “What isn’t” (Eigner), 290, 296 Whip, The (Creeley), 46, 232 White, Miner, 97 White, Morton, The Age of Analysis, 117, 271 “White Church” (Eigner), 127, 277 White Rabbit Press, 228 Whitman, Walt, 137, 158, 178, 283 “Who is Little Enis?” ( J. Williams), 159, 296 “WHO KNOWS JUST WHEN THIS WILL END” (Eigner), 258 Wieners, John, 41, 47, 52, 209n4, 226, 227, 232 Wild Hawthorne Press, 278, 279 Wilentz, Eli, 249 Wilk, David, 163, 298 Wilkie, Wendell, 122, 274 Willard Gibbs (Rukeyser), 137, 283 Williams, Jonathan, 1, 2, 222; in Aperture, 297; in Ark II / Moby I, 223; at Aspen Institute, 285; and avant-­garde presses, 43, 229; in Black Mountain Review, 54; booklist of, 236; “The Chameleon,” 74; design work by, 23, 212–13, 216, 245; “The Distances to the Friend,” 83, 121, 251, 273; and Eighth Street Bookshop, 248; on Eigner adding to ON MY EYES, 221, 224, 235; Eigner poem dedicated to, 147–48, 288; Elegies and Celebra­ inals tions, 121, 273, 293; The Empire F at ­Verona, 69, 75, 77, 101, 137, 138, 214, 260, 283; In England’s Green & (A Garland & Clyster), 109; essay on Ives by,

Index 215; 50! Epiphytes,-­taphs,-­tomes,-­grams, -­thets! 50!, 286; fundraising by, for Jargon, 71, 210; influenced by Catallus, 248; interview with Peake by, 269; Jammin’ the Greek Scene, 214; on Jargon, 26– 27, 241, 256; Lines about Hills above Lakes, 272; in military, 17, 275; open letter by, on Eigner, 62, 73, 242, 247; in Origin no. 18, 217–18; Poems, 30, 99–101, 220, 259; promoting books, 106, 264; in Railroad Men, 262; on reprint of ON MY EYES, 137–38, 282; on Rexroth, 245; in San Francisco, 211; sharing Eigner’s works, 40, 46–47, 61, 227, 231, 241; “Those Troubling Disguises,” 83, 251; touring with books, 37, 224, 252; visiting Layton, 36, 224; in Vort, 163, 296, 297; walking tour of UK by, 279; “Who is Little Enis?,” 159, 296; and Wolpe, 212–13 Williams, Robert, 269 Williams, Terrence, 136–38, 141, 282 Williams, William Carlos, 44; “Deep Religious Faith,” 141; Eigner on style of, 127; on From the Sustaining Air, 39, 63, 225– 26, 242; honored at Brandeis University, 44, 230; In the Ameri­can Grain, 31, 220; introductions by, to Jargon books, 228– 29; Journey to Love, 268; and Olson symposium, 210, 213; and ON MY EYES, 97; Paterson, 43, 299; in Pleasure Dome, 212; “The Poor,” 178, 302; “Tapioloa,” 135, 281; on writing, 101 Wilson, Robert A., 260 Windham, Donald, 269 Windhover Press, 232

329

Winesburg, Ohio (Anderson), 126–27, 276 Winkler, Anthony, Poetry as System, 154, 292–93 “With the world a chameleon, I come” (Eig­ ner), 87, 89, 92, 244, 254 Wolfe, Thomas, 33, 35, 222, 223 Wolpe, Hilda, 213 Wolpe, Stefan, 18, 212–13 Woodworth, Samuel, 222 Woolf, Douglas, 76, 77, 248; Fade Out, 78, 79; The Hypocritic Days, 41, 75, 78, 228 Wordsworth, William: “Personal Talk,” 280; “To the Skylark,” 293 Wyatt, Andrea, A Bibliography of Works by Larry Eigner, 150–51, 156, 290–91 Wyman, Jane, 299 “X” (Eigner), 237 Yashima (Zeami), 107, 265 Yates, Peter, 97, 261, 263 Yeats, W. B.: “Among School Children,” 269; “The Second Coming,” 302 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 178 Yugen, 1, 61 Yugen/Totem, 60, 241 Zeami Motokiyo, Yashima, 107, 265 Zukofsky, Louis, 2, 13, 24, 230, 242, 248; After I’s, 130, 278; in Black Mountain Review, 28; Dahlberg on, 152, 291; death of, 163, 298; and Jargon, 2; and ON MY EYES, 91, 97, 255; Some Time, 26, 41, 44, 74, 228, 230, 236, 246, 248; A Test of Poetry, 120; W. C. Williams to, 230 Zukofsky, Paul, 144; Charles Ives, 287