53

After Charles Sedley

Not, Celia, that I look for rest
In what I do or am;
In its own time this song addressed
To you is not for them:

The hurrying world, our hastes have
No part in you like me;
Faces stop showing what they crave
In my attempt to see.

"All that in woman is adored"
Crows my phrase, and your mind
Sings some hundreds of years to afford
My cadence in kind.

And if your ears hear me I store
It in our book *Anew*
Where we last who make Sedley - more
Than he was perhaps - true.

You three:- my wife,
And the one, whom like Dante,
I call the chief of my friends,

And the one who still writes to me -
This morning we are in the mess of history,
That low crime, and like the devil in the
book of Job

Having come back from going to and fro in the earth
I will give the world all my hushed sources
In this poem, (maybe the world wanted them)

I will be so frank everyone
Will be sure I am hiding - a maniac -
And no one will speak to me.

In any case, if it happens,
I will not regret it one day
That I am plain to the simplest.

But you three: my friend, my wife, and you,
On whom my face and words weigh
For whom pavement becomes too vague

To walk on because of me
For whom the cracks in our plastered walls
Cry out for me "I die! die!"

So that you want to shut your ears,
Who begin to judge that something like my stars
Weep on us the falls of black luck,

Who must be like myself and not pity me
(I am, after all, of the people whose wisdom
May die with them)

(cont.)

Who on top of the years cannot stand the thought
That my tears too can be wet -
I will ape a dead poet for you

And tell you of the little spirits of sight
And the eyes, the beginning of love,
And of the mouth which is its goal,

And of the appetite, he called heart
And the reason, 'I call soul'.
These words are better than I

And if I do die before you, as I have always wished, -
Why, that's nothing new, I have always wished it, -
They may speak to you, the equal

Of your own great anxiety
As when I should have slept
This morning and you were awake:

"He walks into door-jambs
Never sees
Where he goes

"He must do so many things
In the morning, shower, brush,
Clean his glasses a half dozen times,

"Pare his toe nails and out his toes
Remove the dirt from his finger nails
After washing (for a clean person!)

"Shave with a dull blade, bolt breakfast,
That after all night
Reaching for his pocket flashlight,

"The kind they use in this war,
To light up the face of his wrist watch
'Two-thirty' - after going

"To bed at two -
'Two-fifteen'!
'Three-fifteen, four o'clock,

"It is almost time to get up
I haven't slept, I don't
Think I will' - out loud!

"Please" - "Okay! poet
Did you ever get up
Without aching

Without looking grouchy?
You're not like your old father,
Everyone looking at you would rather suffer
instead of you."

I was thinking, shaving at the mirror,
Will she write the music I cannot,
Will he paint, probe, what I cannot

Will the other say the words that escape me?
Will I, who must, write of my world's battle
In which I have asked, and which I am not allowed,

To fight? Let your words be my testament.
For I cannot believe we will not grow from them,
When not needing even to conceive an aversion
for anything

Despite the sage I will be dead
And my thought in you for yet a while
 Wrapped in your words with a question -

Like that of Job's scourge -
Do you know you are warmed in the earth
By the south wind?

A beam of light, then, that you may still question.
You three not divided, nor from me,
In silence.

Notes

1

"che di lor suona su nella tua vita"

Continuing with Dante (limbo, The Inferno, IV, 77)

The comma in line 1 of this poem is meant as a pause
in the expectancy of the dream. Perhaps the capital B
of "Break, after the opening quotes of line 2, gives
the feeling of some unexpected person taking part in
one's expected activity: I was aware in the dream that
I was writing a poem and also aware of verses by others.

The word "bay" is what I could reconstruct later
from the feeling of the action in the dream, as I moved
from place to place, and should convey something of all
the meanings of the word "bay": red-brown, the laurel,
the laurel wreath, a bay horse, a deep bark or cry, a
window-bay, a large space in a barn for storage as of
hay or fodder, the state of being kept at a standstill,
but more specifically two meanings that seemed to include
all the others, they are, an arm of the sea and a recess
of low land between hills.

The "glasses of preserves" were sealed with white wax.

The waters teemed like flood waters, but perhaps this
is an after thought. They were certainly *falls*, tons of
them off the side, on a curve, and nearly on the level,
of the ramp, and the ramp seemed to be running away at
the curve.

When I awoke the exact words of the poem I dreamt were
lost, but those I wrote down still seemed to follow on the
events of the dream. Later, that morning, Dante's "which
sounds of them, up in that life of thine" seemed an appro-
priate explanation.

2

"Glad they were there"

...e quelle anime liete
si fero spere sopra fissi poli,
fiammando forte a guisa di comete.

così quelle carole differentemente danzando, della sua ricchezza
mi si facean stinar, veloci e lente.

Paradiso, XXIV, 10-12, 16-18.

...it is a contradiction to say that a body is continually falling towards another and is at the same time continually flying away from it. The ellipse is a trajectory which, while allowing this contradiction to persist, at the same time solves it.

...the bodily substances of the gold counts only as the embodiment of value, ...In its reality, therefore, it is exchange-value. Its use-value manifests itself solely in the ideal form, in the series of expressions of relative value, in which it enters into relation with the contra-posing commodities as the complex of its real use forms. These antagonistic forms of commodities are the real forms in which the process of their exchange has its movement and its being.

Das Kapital, Metamorphosis of Commodities

...general theory of electromagnetic field, and in which we constantly have in view the state of matter or the medium by which the field is occupied. While speaking of this state, I must immediately call your attention to the curious fact that, although we never lose sight of it, we need by no means go far in attempting to form an image of it and, in fact, we cannot say much about it.

...The second assumption relates to a magnetic field. Without thinking of those hidden rotations of which I have just spoken, we can define this by the so called *magnetic force*, i.e. the force acting on a pole of unit strength.

...It is not the motion of a single electron, nor the field produced by it, that can make itself felt in our experiments, in which we are always concerned with immense numbers of particles; only the resultant effects produced by them are perceptible to our senses.

Henrik Anton Lorentz
*Theory of Electrons*, pp. 1, 2, 133

...luce e sta verde

Guido Cavalcanti, *Madrigale*

From
Louis Zukofsky
202 Columbia Heights
Brooklyn, N.Y. 10007

First Class

10

William Carlos Williams
9 Ridge Road
Rutherford,
N.J.

Louis Zukofsky
30 Willow St.

B'klyn 2, N.Y.

PAMPHYLIAN

Whole night in form the whorl on earth
Of Er Pamphylian by birth
Whom Plato broad forehead and throat
Held as eight sirens hymned one note.

Chains of heaven let down their waves
Three voices sound here one tone craves.
These? The daughters', of necessity.
But this thing then that has plenty

Understands together fails not
Of future nor frees its past thought
And so mighty that all be right
To touch in the middle of light

Pleasance and presence of trace
A feathering moving a face
Who are mine having nothing to save
For your grace such it cannot but have.

Louis Zukofsky
135 Willow Street
Brooklyn 1, New York

Gaius Valerius Catullus

I

Whom do I give my neat little volume
slicked dry and made fashionable with pumice?
Cornelius, to you: remindful that you
used to dwell on my scantlings as something great,
in that time when one solitary Italian
you dared ransack all the ages in three -
Jupiter! - learned and laborious papers.
Care, as you did, somewhat for this little book,
whatever quality, patroness virgin,
may outlast a perennial cycle.

II

Sparrow, my girl's pleasure, delight of my girl,
a thing to delude her, her secret darling
whom she offers her fingernail to peck at,
teasing unremittingly your sharp bite,
when desire overcomes her, shining with love
my dear, I do not know what longing takes her,
I think, it is the crest of passion quieted
gives way to this small solace against sorrow,
could I but lose myself with you as she does,
breathe with a light heart, be rid of these cares!

IIa

And for this I am grateful, as rumor had
it the quick girl was to the golden apple
that swiftly lowered her girdle long tied.

Oct. 15, 1960

Dear Bill,

The University of Texas Press has asked me to edit a volume of letters whose contents, from various correspondents, is covered by the following preface.

## Letters to Louis Zukofsky 1923 - 1955

### Preface

Hamlet's _Let be_ might speak for omissions from the originals of these letters, and also for what is here in the order it was received over nearly forty years. A man's life's no more _than to say "One" while the various perception - of a time perhaps - remains.

L.Z.

March 21, 1953 - May 1, 1954

There will be no other editorial comment.

May I have your permission to select and print from whatever of your letters I have - at the latest by Nov. 15, so I can give the Press a list of the names of correspondents.

Regards and thanks.

"A" - 9

An impulse to action sings of a semblance
Of things related as equated values,
The measure all use is time congealed labor
In which abstraction things keep no resemblance
To goods created; integrated all hues
Hide their natural use to one or one's neighbor.
So that were the things words they could say: Light is
Like night is like us when we meet our mentors
Use hardly enters into their exchanges,
Bought to be sold things, our value arranges;
We flee people who made us as a right is
Whose sight is quick to choose us, as frequenters,
But see our centers do not show the changes
Of human labor our value estranges.

Values in series taking on as real
We affect ready gold a steady token
Flows in unbroken circuit and induces
Our being, wearies of us as ideal
Equates that heady crises eddy. Broken
Mentors, unspoken wealth labor produces,
Now loom as causes disposing our loci,
The foci of production: things reflected
As wills subjected; formed in the division
Of labor, labor takes on our imprecision -
Bought, induced by gold at no gain, the close eye
And gross sigh fixed upon gain have effected
Value erected on labor, provision
Of surplus value, disparate decision.

(over)

(Begin here :)]
(Cont. there)

William
Carlos
Williams
alive!

thinking of
Billy

The kid
shoots
to
kill,

But to
the expanse
of his
imagination,
who heard
that word
before,

[spues] >

scape
of a
letter

soars
with the
rest of
the letter

gulled by
the kid's
self-sacrifice:

reach
C
a cove -
call it

Carlos:

(cont. next column)

smell W
double U
two W's
ravine and
runnel:

These
Sink
high
in
high
fog

which
as
it
lifts,

the other
world
is
there:

the sight
moves -

open -
soothes

smoothes
over

the
same word

that
may have
to touch,

two faces -
the heart
sees into -
of one

Sound:

the
kid
's torn,
shot

So quickly
it pounds

water:

purls

(cont. over)

(cont. next column)

2

To conclude historically with my own character: I am, or rather was, (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which imboldens me the more to speak my sentiments;) I was, I say, a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men, anywise eminent, have found reason to complain of Calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked by her .. and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends (the italics mine, not Hume's) never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.

April 18, 1776

Let anyone who wishes guess at the relevance to my life and yours that prompted *that* quote. [Its import is in the words and their order which is the only Hume we know. And knowing that about sums up what we did.]

Lives declare their same differences some hundred or some hundreds of years later on the other side of that or this Pond.

3

As for the invariant Bill Williams:

Blue at the prow of my desire.

An early line - and for that reason I suppose uppermost in
my mind, there is a difference of only twenty years between
our ages - its character owns all the phases of your later
work, the catastrophic and gentle in its characters, in their
signing hieroglyphics.

The good memories are never recollected. It's as
Hamlet says: _If it be now, 'tis not to come_. They are here not
to be written about and not in a hurry: but as the years have
it, the earliest with the latest - if it be not to come, it will be now.

Ezra, early in March (your month you have said) 1928 -
Re / private life: Do go down an' stir up Bill Willyums, still
the best human value on my murk visiting list.

Your Easter letter of that year asks me, Was the
Matthäus Passion well sung? I had begun "A" for which, 30 years
later, having as you say an idea, you have just presented me
with a foreword - when I thought you were working on Paterson V.
There were projects then about which you were "less volatile
I have gotten older after 70 perhaps .. perhaps it will
crystalize soon." Not a bad prophecy. But my satisfaction is
that I seem then to have been "ubiquitous" (you say - how could
I have been?) and with a few friends we did get things done:
The Descent of Winter issue (Exile 4); A Novelette and Other
Prose (To" Publishers); your first Collected Poems (The Object-
ivist Press).

4

The names of the presses were my ideas: *To* - as we might say, a health to - *To*. I have this that you said about it: "I never knew *To* was a noun gosh all hemlock. I'll have to look that up. Anyway it's not a bad name for publicity - nobody can understand it or keep from thinking about it once they see it." And as for the *Objectivists* (who I suspect any century now are to make the exegetical anthologies) Charles Reznikoff ingenuously condensed my longish prospectus into "writers publishing their own work."

It involved an unremitting exchange of letters, your blanket orders to shorten, emend and correct anything in your manuscripts that would clean them up and save pennies - a conceptive impatience on your part some times that offered the editor the poor consolation of thinking. Not that your talk is not always rich with some concept - tho you have often refused to believe it. But like Puck, whose pointed ears you've inherited, after yielding to the human and worse humane maze you must also fly from it, putting a girdle round about the earth, as he says, in forty minutes: to the attic under the gable, the car, the roses in your back yard, the oak dining room or the typewriter in your doctor's office.

The visits to your home entailed crossing the Hudson by either of two ways: taking the old bus in an alley behind the Hotel Astor, or the ferry to the Erie Railroad - somehow always with your "Wanderer" in mind. I preferred the Erie route: perhaps for the historical associations - and the change after

5

the direct breeze of the ferry - the iron girders and vaulting of the station, the scene of C.F. Adams' chapter of An Erie Raid; perhaps for the fact that the same journey afforded a contrast of finance, as murky as when Aristotle first wrote about the unnatural evil, and the American robin's egg blue covers of your *Spring and All*. I had earned it as a bonus and sometimes carried it with me. The colored paper covers have crackled; it has been my favorite of all your books - dated April 11, 1928.

I suppose a citation ought to carry gifts with it. They happen to be yours - three extracts I once jotted down from your letters:

> Floss going back to plant 30 new plants and expecting miracles of bloom in the spring.

(That would be after the four of us had walked in the rose garden in Bronx Park during the worst of the war in 1941. The next is about Paul, playing his quarter-size violin just about ten years ago.)

Dear Louis & Celia:

I told mother this afternoon of Paul's playing of the violin. She was highly amused and interested, could hardly believe it true. I had to show her the size of the fiddle and show her how he stood and bowed. She was very much taken by the story. Finally she said, My compliments to the father and mother. So that's what I'm sending you.

Best,
Bill

(The next is dated Oct. 22/35.)

I can't stand the full restraint that even in his wildest ravings is willing to acknowledge. Maybe that makes him a better man than I am. My only answer to that is

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
TO LOUIS ZUKOFSKY

March 23, 1928

My dear Zukofsky:

By "human value" I suppose Ezrie means that in his
opinion I can't write. Dammit, who can write isolated as we
all find ourselves and robbed of the natural friendly stim-
ulae on which we rest, at least, in our lesser moments? But
undoubtedly the old ant-eater didn't mean anything at all
other than that he'd like me to make your acquaintance, and
you mine.

So you are responsible for Exile now. Is that so?
Come over to this suburb some Tuesday, Friday or Saturday
evening for a country meal and a talk and explain to me what
all has taken place in "the center" while I have been rusti-
cating. I'd like greatly to see you since you come with an
introduction from my old friend. But do call up since I am
a laborer and my time must be arranged to fit the advent of
a guest. I have a good cook. "What do you like especially to
eat?

March 28, 1928

Dear Zukofsky:

Neither am I of "the center". Lucy just likes to
know what people especially fancy when she cooks for them so

2.

as to be sure, if possible, to please them. Nothing elaborate
here.

Unfortunately I will not be at home this Saturday evening. What about Sunday? I am coming in to the Philharmonic Concert. Perhaps I could meet you between half past five and six somewhere in the city and you will have supper with me there.

It is funny that I am being interviewed--at five o'clock by some stranger at the Park Central Hotel--I didn't exactly catch his name over the phone. Could you not rescue me there at 5:30? Drop me a note here or just arrive there and ask for me at the time stated above.

Yours,

W. C. Williams

April 2, '28

Dear Zukofsky:

Yes, yes. You have the rare gift. As with everything else there are plans--the tripping rhythm--but not always the tripping rhythm--just sometimes. It spoils the adagio effect. It is notable that the lines have such an excellent internal necessity that they must be read slowly. It is thoughtful poetry, but actual word stuff, not thoughts for thoughts. It escapes me in its analysis (thank God) and strikes against me a thing (thank God). There are not so many things in the world as we commonly imagine. Plenty of debris, plenty of smudges.

3.

This has been a pleasure, i.e. the reading of your poem. You make me want to carry out deferred designs. Don't take my theories too seriously. They are not for you--or for you, of course, or anybody.

I'd give my shirt to hear the Matthaus Passion this week but I doubt if it can be done. If I do get there in spite of everything, I'll cast an eye around for you.

But your work's the thing. It encourages me in my designs. Makes me anxious to get at my notes and the things (thank God) which I did not tell the gentleman. Thanks for the supper. As soon as work lightens a bit for me here in the suburbs, I want you to come out.--- I congratulate Pound on his luck in finding you. You are another nail in the----- coffin. Damn fools.

Easter 1928

Dear Zukofsky:

"Was the Matthaus' Passion well sung? I wish I could have been there.

"What meeting you meant to me was at first just that Found had admired your work. I was amazed to see you, nothing like what I had imagined. Then just reticence.

I did not wish to be twenty years younger and surely I did not wish to be twenty years older. I was happy to find a link between myself and another wave of it. Sometimes one

4.

thinks the thing has died down. I believe that somehow you
have benefitted by my work. Not that you have even seen it
fully but it proves to me (Christ, God damn this machine)
that the thing moves by a direct relationship between men
from generation to generation. And that no matter how we may
be ignored, maligned, left unnoticed, yet by doing straight-
forward work we do somehow reach the right people.

There must be an American magazine. As I have got-
ten older I am less volatile over projects such as this (a
magazine) less willing to say much but more determined to make
a go of it finally--after I am 70 perhaps------Perhaps it will
crystalize soon.

Williams

April 27, 1928.

Dear Louis:

Your Cummings is good, brief criticism---Is that
your own about philosophy, the "dreampistol"? Wonderful if
it is, and fine anyway. I hope it is yours.

Copy

The poems are nowhere up to the poem "The". I
like a line here and there but they do not get going. But
I'll read them again.

---Just now I have the novel again in my hands go-
ing over it finally before it will be sent to the printer. I
am just dolling it up, --- etc.

Williams

5.

May 19, 1928

Dear Louis:

Did I mail you the right letter or did I put my
wife's letter into your envelope? I had a queer feeling
after the things had dropped into the box.

williams

May 12, 1928

Dear Louis:

I must confess that I wrote to Cummings inviting
him to spend a day with me. He came, a week ago. I told
him no one else would be here. It's just as well. I left
him alone most of the time: a real New Englander, not I
but he.

Saw "Strange Interlude" last night---He is so god
damned rotten that he is good. ----- And he knows the things
that save him from realism. I wonder if he does. He will
some day if he doesn't now.

williams

May 17, 1928

-------The novel------Oh well, I can't quite bring
myself to throw the thing away though I wanted to do so af-
ter you had left.

6.

June 25, 1928

------the book looks about as presentable as I
can make it. I cut out a lot about the Rhine! which should
give you a special pleasure.

So long

Bill

July 5, 1928

Poems are inventions richer in thought as image.
Your early poems even when the thought has enough force or
freshness have not been objectivized in new or fresh observa-
tions. But if it is the music even that is not inventive
enough to make up for images which give an overwhelming effect
of triteness--as it has been said. The language is stilted
"poetic" except in the piece I marked.

Eyes have always stood first in the poet's equipment.
If you are mostly ear--a newer rhythm must come in more strong-
ly than has been the case so far.

Yet I am willing to grant--to listen.

Bill

July 12

Dear Louis:

I finished the "Henry Adams" yesterday before break-
fast. It interested me greatly both as an introduction to the

7.

life of an American of extraordinary significance to my way
of thinking--which is not putting it half firmly enough--
and as the work of another American--Oh hell, my mind is
thick this morning. I enjoyed your work. All through the
reading I came upon lines of real distinction--without at-
tempting to analyse them just now. To me your thesis shows
a grain and selective power of thought which is unusual--
Christ! what in hell am I saying? And it is true besides.
Anyhow I liked your work. It impressed me. You seemed to
hold the damned subject up from the table as a whole with
clean hands. That's the gist of your power to me. I don't
feel any--smell, would be better. You have power that is
real, penetrant and (so far) flexible enough not to crack
irritably the way the thing usually does in the people I have
to do with most often.

Anyhow I read the thesis.

Drop me a line.

Yours

Bill

July 22, 1928

Dear Louis:

God knows where one meets in N. Y., a stupid place.

Let's start a sidewalk cafe. Is it the dirt or the weather
or what that would make it a failure?

8.

Marianne is willing but she suffers from the terrific weight
of indifference under which all labor in these here United
States just as we do. I am glad she has accepted your poems.
All the good that comes from such a success is, however, the
cash you will pocket. The Dial to me is about as dead as a
last year's birds' nest. One must believe in spiders--

July 18, 1928

Dear Louis:

Certainly the "Lenin" outdistances anything in the
earlier book of poems as the effect of a "thing" surpasses
all thought about it. It is the second poem of yours that I
like, the first being the long one. In some ways this poem
is your best work (that I have seen). It has the surging
rhythms that in itself embodies all that is necessary to say
but it carries the words nevertheless and the theme helpless-
ly with it. The word "continual" at the end is fine.

It is this, the thing that this poem is, that makes
you what you are today--I hope you're satisfied! No doubt it
is the underlying theme to me of whatever feeling we have for
each other--It seems to me surely the contra-bass for every-
thing else we may do. If there is not that under our feel
(though I realize that you are speaking of a star) then we
cannot go on elaborating our stuff.

Sometimes though I don't like your language. It
probably is me and not you who should be blamed for this.

9.

You are wrestling with the antagonist under newer rules.
But I can't see "all live processes", "orbit-trembling",
"our consciousness" "the sources of being"--what the hell?
I'm not finding fault. I'm just trying to nail what
troubles me. It may be that I am too literal in my search
for objective clarities of image. It may be that you are
completely right in forcing abstract conceptions into the
sound pattern. I dunno. Anyhow, there you are.

I will say that in this case the abstract, phil-
osophic-jargonist language is not an obstruction. It may
be that when the force of the conception is sufficiently
strong it can carry this sort of thing. If the force were
weaker the whole poem would fall apart. Good, perhaps.
Perhaps by my picayune imagistic mannerisms I hold together
superficially what should by all means fall apart.

Yours

Bill

October 18

---virtue exists like a small flower on a loose piece of
earth above a precipice. And isn't it a fine day.

Yours

Bill

May 17, 1928

Dear Louis :

I have marked among your poems when I like .
I cannot do more. . I think you have gone past these things
the images seem# clouded with words , the authenticity
of the reeling struggles with the expression , the inversions
check my pleasure. And yet, even when the rhythm# is
completely choked up with words , I do find something good.
Yet I'm sure you have left all this behind .

Hell, it makes me reel rotten .

What you had to say about the novel did me much
good . I felt that you had hit on some very raw spots .
Oh well, I can't quite bring myself to throw the thing
away though I wanted to do so after you had left .

I've not yet had time to read the Henry Adams .

There's Mother calling me to supper .

So long . I'm anxious to see what you're
doing now .

And your suggestions concerning the novel have
been invaluable . More another time . See you in the
city some day soon .

August 22, 1928

Dear Zukolsky :

I won't change that to "Louis" - too much labor,
by which you may see that my vacation is agreeing with me.

How is your job holding out ? I'm sorry for you
in there in the city roasting to death. Yet it's heat that
hatches the eggs, maybe you're getting your new poem into
snape. We found our turtle eggs on a small island in a lake
yesterday, the first I had ever seen.

My typewriter has not been idel. (again I refuse
to correct) Just this morning I succeeded in elucidating a
certain passage of thought in the opening chapter of my
new book on the Humanization of Knowledge. I'm determined
to go through with it before next April and to submit it
in the forum contest.

For the most part, however, I have done very little
during the past few weeks but to eat, sleep, visit friends
here and there and receive letters. Today it is raining hard.
Yesterday I swam with my boys and a little girl across a
lake to the island mentioned above, about a quarter of a
mile.

Any news from Covici, Found's last letter seemed
anything but encouraging? Drop me a line, I'll be glad
to hear from you.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, M. D.

9 RIDGE ROAD
RUTHERFORD, N. J.

January 25, 1929

Dear Louis :

While tearing around tending the sick I've composed a Novelette in praise of my wife whom I have gotten to know again because of being thrown violently into her arms and she into mine by the recent epidemic - though not by the illness of either of us, quite the contrary. Anyhow I'm giving the thing - just fifty pages# that I scribbled at night after hours in# order to relax my faculties before sleep - to The Saravan. It is as it is.

My proposal was to pay for one more Exile, or rather to be responsible for any deficit - in order to have your new thing in it, etc. But if Covici is off the whole thing so am I.

Eke the Philadelphia proposal. It will be, as you say, just another place for us to fire at. Like Blues.

Life is growing less violently tremulous again - just beginning to quiet down - a little - today. Cummings did not answer my letter. I heard from McAlmon that T.S. Eliot has turned definitely to Anglo-Catholicism of late. Djuna Barnes is in N.Y. Perhaps I'll have a chance to see her before she returns to Paris.

Must go out and deliver a new truck driver now.

Sunday

Dear Louis :

Fine . I like your thesis . It calls for a magazine
in which to publish it . It should in fact set the critical
tone for the magazine which seems never to be born in this
bum pump a dum !

But that isn't the half of it . You really have a
style . The last american one is in Alcove 23, Case 9 . And
what you have to say is original work , nicely maintained .

Now . You are sometimes too light in your touch .
You make a splendid point at the beginning in calling attention
to Pound's moral quality , beauty and order and of course you
do show how Pound's complexity ( in the Cantos ) can never
### properly be less than it is , that it is inherent in
the age as contrasted, let us say , with Dante's . But I do
not find the original A of the A B A scheme which seems to be
invoked strongly enough returned to , with the addition of
the complexity, which would force the thing home with a
greater force .

Oh well, it's nothing . I like the work and I am
sure Pound will also .

Best luck to you . It was a pleasure having you
here . See you again soon .

Yours

Oct. 24, 1929

Dear Louis :

Thanks for returning the Stein thing. I haven't looked at your pencilings yet but I'll get to that later.

For Jesus sake do get Liveright to do your book if you can, my editorship may prove a flop. But I will not pass anything I do not like, they'll take what I will have or out I goes. I may have given you the idea that I was to be handed McMillan# or Doubleday on a silver platter. Not, it's not that good but I may be able to get something over for all that.

Just finished reading "Paper". It is excellent. *Pagany* will publish it I know. Send it on to Johns if you will.

Enclosed is a letter from a Phila. venture which I carelessly took to be The Staes. How about sending this new crowd my "Flower". Do it for me, will you? Or send it back or - if you want the thing for Pound's new toy - it's yours. Or as you please.

Did you once ask me for a letter relative to the Gug Fellowship? I have a dim recollection of your mentioning some such wild idea. Tell me again, if I can be of us, use me.

What's the money needed for, if not a curettage it must be a gift to the Lying Inn.

Where will you be on Sunday? I may want to call you up in the afternoon. I'll do so, or course, if things work out for a tree evening - if you have other plans pay no attention to what I have just said. Tuesday, then, if all goes well.

Yours

What price some broken down old printer, some old guy who
would be willing to do it in his spare time and glad to get the
cash . Ad. in the N.Y. World ?

Jan. 14, 1930

Dear Louis :

Time is the element Ezra has not figured into
his calculations . It is the thing which excludes me absolutely
from all thought of such a proposal as he advances . But if
there is anyone who has the time to fool with the business
I'll give whatever script I have.以其计谋
Naturally, if you get the Gug'Ship it's all off anyway .

In short I'm interested but not able to help, what's more I don't think much of the scheme. The Miss Bitch, or Sylvia Beach, Ezra speaks of would certainly not pay for unbound sheets . She is sold on Joyce and has no time to bother with other matters - besides she's been ill .

As for Bob, he's spent ten years having his own and
other people's work printed privately and now finds himself
in a position where he must either sell or quit. He certainly
is the last one to approach re. the scheme
just now.

Maybe it's the weather or something else that has
be headlocked but I can't see light in hand-press editions
today. Nancy Cunard may be playing with the game but what else
has she to do ? not a damned thing. Then there's The Black
Sun Press. But all those people have at least a million
dollars behind them - and time to burn.

To me the privately printed route can only be
travelled by someone who loves the game for itself and has an
income which makes him independant. Then he will sit down to
it and wait for time to bring slow rewards. It is not an
outlet for us.

Maybe we could put the press in a window on Fifth
Ave and have ezra work it from 9 to 5 in billiard-cloth green
overalls. I'd pay to see that too.

's a dark day.

9 RIDGE ROAD

RUTHERFORD, N. J.

Jan. 27, 1930

Dear Louis :

Next Saturday will be all right, come toward the end of the afternoon as a cousin with his wife and baby will be here earlier in the day.

That's good news from Pound and a much better scheme for publishing our works than the-hand-press-in-New York route. I wonder if this is the Press that Nancy Cunard is financing. She is said to have purcahsed Bill Bird's outfit.

Decidedly do I want to have them do a book of mine. The one that would give me greatest pleasure to see between covers is the novelette. But TRANSITION may have it in the next issue. Would that debar it from consideration by "Hours"?

A new book of poems would be my next choice but here too enters the question of previous publication for nearly all the poems will have appeared in some magazine or other by this fall. Nevertheless as a book the collection of new verse would be an original volume.

The Collect Definitive would be all right but it would contain much old stuff, rewritten it is true, but old for all that. And a complete collection of my verse with the new stuff added would be by far too bulky for the present purpose.

The novelette seems the best bet, provided previous publication (?) in TRANSITION is not a disqualifying factor. It is also the choice nearest my heart.

Scribner's has accepted and paid ($65.) for a poem of mine if The Miscellany, 26 W. 9th. St. is a new sheet worth looking into. Well printed. Send them some work.

My Mother fell on the ice a week ago and broke her left hip and elbow. She will be in the hospital for a month and a half. As far as we can tell her condition is satisfactory. A most unfortunate accident.

Well, see you Sunday.

Yrs.

Jan. 31, 1930

Dear Louis :

Saturday is the day.

Bring anything of mine which you have and may be
looking over as somehow or other I lose track of my work
sometimes and then - what t'ell, it's gone.

It was my impression that Pound wanted new work
or rather work that had never appeared elsewhere for his
HOURS venture . The Primavera thing will appear in part at
least in the new Imagist Anthology . BUT the poem in a
complete form will still be available .

As TRANSITION is to publish parts of the novelette
in a coming issue -

Let's get both the poem and the novelette ready
and send them both to Pound . In many ways I should NOW
prefer to see the poem under or between covers .

Well, bring anything of mine that you have . and
I'll be glad to see THE published .

Yours

April 3

Dear Louis :

Congratulations on the appearance of your
"Henry Adams" in H & H. I haven't read it yet - in fact
do not possess a copy of the mag. but - congratulations
just the same. Pound, Burke, Sheeler - splendid. But
I felt keenly disappointed that they did not use my
"Sea Elephant" in the same issue. It seems to be my
time for a sensing of dregs.

Floss' father accidently, as far as we know,
killed himself with a shot-gun last Thursday. Floss
has been torn apart by it all. She has been away
for some days.

The "last imagists anth." will be out on
the 10th. They have a partial, early lot of my
"Primavera" in it. I hope "Hours Press" comes through
and saves me later, though I expect nothing.

I'd like to see you but I don't want to
just now. For one thing I am sick with work. It's that
more than anything else that has crushed. Don't
even write me, unless you have something of your
own plans or accomplishments you want to tell.

It was a real delight to see your work in
the H & H - that was my reason for scribbling tonight.

Best of luck

Yours

Friday 7 A.M. ( by the
whistle )

Dear Luvis :

I've never been so hellishly distraught in my
life as during the recent past - I can't even tell you
precisely why this has been so - I mean to say, I do not
myself exactly understand it - but it has been so.

Meanwhile I have taken ten and twenty minute-
stabs at writing - just the same. But it has been only
that with a result of loose ends, waiting letters, etc.
which you can imagine for yourself.

Importuned for prose or verse by this or that
small publication or individual I have been on the point,
several times of asking you to let one of them have
the birth-of-the-baby thing. But each time I have
squirmed away.

I have sent a poem to This Quarter, which What's
His Name has accepted. I'm sending three #, no four poems
to Caravan - on shortest notice - one of the poems had been
scribbled on prescription blanks the day before, another
I round in a drawer - I had completely forgotten it and
two, others I had done last summer and never looked at after
first flinging them on paper. This is foolish practice
- but then I'm a foolish person - at times - and not half
fool enough at others. Pagany has two poems. What else,?

Ezra speaks well of your services to him re. the
Variété. I'm very curious to see the result. I tried to
buy the sheet at Brentanos ( I mean an earlier copy ) but

the woman at the desk said, No, we don't handle it. - One should, I think ( I might have said ) For they must, after all ( to look at most of them )

Just now the front door bell rang by weight of the enclosed - Shall I say, in reply, what ? Born, died, resurrected in Rutheford, N.J. Collector of Infant's Cook Cheese

This letter has degenerated - it's what happens when one relaxes - sometimes, often with me. But I have been extremely ragged.

No direct news about the Primavera thing from Hours Press. Hope that too doesn't fail.

And the hot weather.

All I started to do was to communicate - and this is what it has come to.

Yours

Friday

Dear Louis :

Your work in H. & H. is delightful - delightful
prose - and in Pagany your poetry, your poems, or poem -
equally so. And I mean precisely delightful. Your give
pleasure #####, give it ######. It is the generosity of
excellence. Good and thanks. I have a weak feeling, in
seeing "1924" beside your poem, that I may have missed
much that you put plainly on the page for me in that lot
of verse which you gave me to read.

However, I do not think so. I think this, in
Pagany, is the best short poem of yours that I have seen
- perhaps it too was in that lot.

See you soon, I hope. You'll hear from me
again. If possible go to see the "Paul Klee" show at the
Neumann Gallery, 9 w. 57th. Call up #6 first to see
when it will be on.

The Anthology is even worse than I imagined it
would be. Errors ! - " - and Spring
is yeomen in ! &%# Jesus@*!
What a cocksucking mistake THAT is !

FORTNIGHTLY FORUM

under the auspices of
MOSS & KAMIN, Booksellers

† William Carlos Williams, one of the most brilliant stylists of America, and author of several volumes of prose and verse, will speak at the Fortnightly Forum in the Lounge of the George Washington Hotel, 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue, Friday, March 20th, at 8.30 p. m.

Mr. Leonard Gaynor will act as Chairman

† The subject of the evening will be: The LOGIC of MODERN LITERATURE

† Dr. Williams has kindly consented to autograph copies of his books after the lecture.

† There will be no admission charge.

Telephone Gramercy 5-0419.

After 5 days, return to
WM. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.,
9 Ridge Road,
RUTHERFORD, N. J.

MISSENT TO LONG BEACH, CALIF.

Louis Zubofsky
1110 Miller Ave
Berkeley - Cal.

LONG BEACH
SEP 12
9 PM
1930
CALIF

WAVES

Feb. 23, 1931

Dear Louis :

ere it is - good or bad - I'm through with
#
it - come what may. I don't want to see it again. Read
it - chuck it away - keep it. Or send it on to
Pound if you care too. I won't.

Symposium has the original. I wrote making
it easy for them to reject the script if they want to.

The goddam thing almost tore my heart out - first
reading the ## text and then scribbling what I had
to say on street corners # - the backs of letters -
prescription banks - and transcribing at 1 A.M. holding
my eyes open ( one at a time ) with my right hand while
I typed with my left .

It says in places much that I want to say
but who in Christ's world will take the trouble etc.
etc.

Now Pound wants me to, select poems ( of my
own ) for an anthology - and type them out clean I
suppose for him . And me with more ideas in my head
than a garbage can has slops -

Well, here's how .

Yours

March 9, 1931

Dear Louis:

After battling back and forth with Wheelwright I have
been allowed to make use of eight pages, on which to present an
excerpt from my "Sketch" - no, ten pages. It's the same old game.
But it was either that or let the thing rot so I pulled a few
bits out here and there and let it go at that. It may possibly do
Pound some good - but there is no flair to the thing now at all.

I'm glad you liked it though, your praise enlivened
me for - still does. Should the thing as a whole appear I'll
incorporate your suggestions.

Why not make whatever notes you have to make on the
script—you have and send that on to Ezra? But if you really still
want to keep the thing say so as I have an extra copy here which
Ezra may have. Speak up.

White Mule goes on, I have a long installment for the
next Pagany - if Johns uses it all.

On March 20th. I am to talk on, The Logic of Modern
Letters, at a book shop in N.Y.: Moss & Kamin, Hotel Leo. Wash.
Lexington & 23d. It's a nice room ( full of big wooden columns )
But anyhow, it helps me to formulate my thoughts to have to do things
like this occasionally. Hope I feel able on that day. I'm not
preparing a paper, just thinking it out. I'll probably read
some verse - Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens - etc. talk about
Stein, Joyce, etc. Finish by reading a few of my own -

Bob McA. is in Paris getting a new quarterly started
- these same book shop people - he wants a couple of my short
stories.

Nothing else much save that it is March and wasn't
that a son of a bitch of a storm we had yesterday - you had it a
day or teo previously I think. Our rose trellis blew down.

April 2?, 1934

Dear Louis:

Nearly sent you a telegram yesterday but after
paying $2.50 for the April Criterion decided not to. Your
criticism of Pound's Cantos was the cause. It is excellent.
Tired as I was I felt the old blood mounting to my head as
now play that could ever be written could make it mount. It
is a true divertissement of the intelligence writing such
as that - of which there aint much. In the center of the
writing there is true fervor, it leaps ahead with power -
complex power that is only simple in its movement. Fine.
I like it. It is convincing, enheartening. It is remarkable
too that you have come where you are through study and
reading ( tho' that ain't quite true). I mean that study
has not hurt you. Most it simply castrates. That's a fine
augury.

You start clumsily ( as you have a tendency to
do - thank you! ) You try to cram in too much. It probably
comes from cutting too heavily; your starts are your worst
feature. But when you hit the pace and get the sense of
distance - distance to go - well in mind the thing moves with
authority.

It is curious to note the resemblances and
dissimilarities between your treatment of the theme and mine.
On the whole we agree with a sureness which indicates
something solid and new underneath our observations.

Would it not be possible for us to assemble a book
touching Pound's Cantos? It says that your essay is a long
one; shall we take what Eliot wrote in The Dial, your essay
and mine ( touched up and straightened out ), and shall we
invite Dudley Fitts to come in? Mind you, I have not read the
Fitts thing. I am asking you, simply, shall we? But it
might be wise to have him in even tho' we disagree or even
think him bad for if he is bad some will agree with him and
buy while those who really matter will see better than ever
that he is bad. Meanwhile it will give the book a comple-
mentary balance within itself. Anyhow, what do you think?

Went to the Met. Museum yesterday to see the new
French paintings. Instead I chiefly admired a portrait head
by El Greco and his View of Toledo . After that most things
look dull. The American work in the museum is pretty poor .
Six or eight living men whom we know paint much better .
Isn't it a shitting crime that a big stone heap like that
should sit on life and keep it under. God damn them to hell,
the lousy cancerous bastards with their stolen fortunes and
dust bins of heads. The French work is fine, no doubt, but
very uneven and by no means as powerful as we used to
imagine.

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.
657 MAIN AVENUE
PASSAIC, N. J.

BOSTON, MASS.
JULY 6, 1931
7-AM

Wednesday

Dear Louis:

Would you accept my acceptance of all your
suggestions save one? That one being the inclusion of
(Democratic) in the title in parentheses. To remove
that word entirely removes much of the immediate
attractiveness of the printed book as it lies on the stand
for sale. Or am I wrong? But putting parentheses around
gives the meaning which you suggest and which I accept.
And it is definitely a Democratic Party poem.

Yes, you are right again, no doubt, the
major fault of the thing ###### stands, a tardy belief
in the practicability of the old myth. But the writing
occured and has so become objective to me. I, after
all, remain objectified to myself by the poem. Certainly
I should never write that way again - And so perhaps
it may step up a reader to impossibilities of thought.
In fact I at one time had a new ending to the thing in
mind, to make it definitely ironic. But I rejected
that. I wanted to say: If this is all impossible, as
you may see at once that it is, what then? -

I understand that you want the script so I am
enclosing it. See you soon.

Friday A.M.

Yes, you're right. I'll tell them, at once to return the script to me for further consideration. I should be careful though I detect being so. The thing was written loosely but, as you suggest, I have no way of commanding the sort of attention it requires - and the vulnerability of my position needs no bush.

Many thanks. I'm glad Taupin

Yes, no doubt Pound and I are wrong. But that isn't quite the point in this "document" or relative to this document, which has to say - Here's this? You do not even take it seriously when you pretend to. For what it is here is what might be done with it.

Well. One should be reasonably alert, you're right, in his own defense.

Loris Zukofsky
50 Morton, 85
new york ny 10045
n.y.

July 18, 1931

Dear Louis:

Yes, I can come in Wednesday evening but I doubt if I can make it much before nine. And yet why not? Send me another note saying you want me at a certain time and I'll be there.

Chatto & Windus sent me the enclosed. I sent the blue ball ( sounds like a disease ) poem to H. & H.

I'm going over all the verse I have lying about with a view to submitting it to someone possibly toward the end of this month. Don't you think it would be best to give the script into the hands of some agent - some established name? Anyhow the work goes on - and, for your satisfaction, the suggestions you scribbled on some of my papers a year ago and which were not too acceptable to me then seem cogent now and very much to the point. Not that you would expect me precisely to adopt your wordings -

Floss will not be with me on Wednesday, but she thanks you for your thought of her.

Saturday

Dear Louis:

This last week before my vacation is going to be
so hectic that I doubt if I shall be able to do anything at
all about my poems. But if I find it possible to whip them
into any kind of shape before then ( I've been working on
them for weeks now ) I'll see you next Friday afternoon in
N.Y. But if Friday is included in your week end span say
so# frankly and we'll forget the matter for the present.

You see, I don't want to begin working on selection
and order until I have the individual poems in the precise
shape I want for them. Just drop me a line.

Don't be silly, I couldn't have expected you to
pay for my supper. Besides I have plenty of money for such
things, I never expect you to pay. What the hell's the sense
of pretence in these things. You haven't the money and I
have, so I pay.# Later on you can give me a
banquet or send me a wreath or something - when you are rich
- or something.

Yes, the anthology - that, I'll tend to. And the
letters to Bob and Marianne Moore. Preface? Why not use
Eliot's - No. That goes into the body of the book. Don't
let's have a preface, just start in and say what we have to
say and let it go at that. I have some new poems which I
sent to ( over )

July 29, 1931

Dear Louis:

Nothing doing for Friday, I can't make it. Thus the
thing will have to wait until the Fall - and much better so .
Meanwhile, I'm having the poems typed. Maybe it will be
possible to send you a full script of them before I leave. In
that case, look them over, make any notes that you care to
and put them aside for me .

Address me here during August should you feel
impelled to write - the letter will be forwarded. And so, fare
thee well. I'm writing to Bob and the others about the Pound
book today.

Yours as ever

Bob's address is - as always - 12 rue de l'Odeon. I asked
him to write you about new poems.

I'll try to remember to mark unpublished poems in the batch
I'm sending you - for the anthology.

If I get the things
typed in time . My typist has the shits.

Tuesday

Dear Louis:

Nothing doing Friday. I may come in to the
city, I'll tell you why, but my time will be all sewed up
while I am there. Kamin wants to start a jew ( ya, ha! a
slip of the ringer!) new quarterly and he wants me to be
Editor with Nathanael West as my first assistant to do all
the work. And I says yes, damn fool that I am. So on
Friday ( after three postponements ) I am to meet the men
( I've never met West ) and talk the thing over.

Anyhow I've had the lazy good for nothin' sit
and start away the hours blues of late so nothing's been done
about the Homage to Pound. Besides I've had not a word
from Putnam that he really wants the thing. I don't know
where he is or anything about him save that we talked
together that night. Perhaps that's at the back of my in-
difference.

Meanwhile Marianne Moore's review is a beauty -
in the next Poetry : but better in the galley proofs, so
excellently fitted to her continuous style : not a bad name
for a literary paper, by the way : Galleys. Or do you want
to have supper with me Friday just for an hour? I could
call for you about six, leave the pomes and then go up to
see Kamin. In the afternoon I'll be busy out here.

Yours

Oct. 8, 1931

Dear Louis:

I corrected "trubid" in the script which is still at sea. Thanks tho'. And I do like your selections and the arrangement. Nathanael West is a tall chap whom I saw only for a moment that night - as I had to rush away to deliver a cheeild as usual. But I liked him, he's no Centile! A strange thing, he looked like an uncle, or half uncle of mine whom I admired in some ways - tho' he died of cerebral syphilis contracted in the West Indies from a nigger when he was fourteen or so; It made a difference. Tho' I didn't tell West. He really is a very curious type, straight ( I think ) and capable of discriminating enthusiasm. Gord knows what else. He even seems to want to work. He'll have to for I won't. We are to do the quarterly.

And in the first issue as a feature about which I am most enthusiastic, we plan to print a complete bibliography of the "small magazine" ( american ) since 1900. It's a whale or a job but West wants to do it and I'm helping as I can. It's his idea. I think that's the kind of stuff comes of a real interest. More later when I know more. And I'm the editor! Yasuz. But I am just the same as you'll see. Please do not as yet communicate this information to Ezrie. Plenty of time for that.

Don't tear the script apart - the book of scripts that is, keep it for your amusement. I'll send copies of the poems - also the thing of Bob's you want - and by the 12th. surely. You can count on it. ( May not arrive till 13th. ) I'll look over "opalescent sahadows" et al. We'll see.

Meanwhile, it finally rained. I was beginning to curse the skies.

Best luck ( if any )

Oct. 25, 1931

Dear Luois:

Nothing much to say except that the new mag. is
slowly shaping up. And that I have had no word from either
Putnam or my script of poems.

The chief reason for this letter, tho', is to tell
you that I regret having told you to let that stuff of
Roskolnikoff's ( can't think of the correct spelling just
now ) go to the H. & H. without my taking what I wanted first.
Don't let them have it too long . Hurry them a little. Thus
maybe they'll miss the point. I doubt it tho'.

The mag. is to be very plain, no stunts or decorations.
Naturally this will cut down the run but I can't see clearer
than that for the moment . Wish we could compete with the
sur-realistes but we can't unless we do it for one issue, one
issue - the last! For God's sake tho' we aint goin' in for the
"marble halls" stuff either, don't get me wrong - just what
we take to be CONTACT - a contact as exemplified in the words.
And that ain't journalism either which never did contact with
anything between the tear ducts and the nerts and not even
with them - just tickled them a little . I can see no function
for myself outside of selection and to keep down a tendency
to prettification with an eye to "business".

But I wish I had that legal chronicle stuff and
that the H. & H. would go take a crap for themselves.

Dear Louis:

I just obtained the script last evening. I'm sending it to you by express, insured. I can't see you this week - I have to have a talk with West over the first issue of Contact which is coming on fairly well. Perhaps when we are fairly launched it will all be easier, I hope so at any rate.

No further word from Bob. Wish I had the Resnikoff thing at hand but I'll have wait till I can get to Brookly for that I suppose. I'd say come out Sunday and send you a ten trip ticket ( may do that yet ) but we shan't be home Sunday. Paul playing football has us on edge I fear - Saturdays that is. Well, time is long ( enough ) if one has the ability to absorb the punishment.

Anyhow, look for the script which I have not even read over - aside from the first page - which interested me all over again.

Yrs.

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.
9 RIDGE ROAD
RUTHERFORD, N. J.

Dear Louis:

The script of the Human Body thing is very faulty having been compiled from my first loose notes when the article was written. I tried to get hold of the finished review but was told that there were no more on file. However you can, I am sure, get the original at the N.Y. Public Library or the Brookly Library. In fact you would do me a great favor if you would # have a public stenog do it at my expense. Do it at once, please. And one carbon for me to keep.

It appeared in Canby's : Saturday Review of Literature
Dec. 10, 1927.

I'd suggest that you leave 5 or 6 pages blank in the script you send to Europe, saying that the script will follow for I believe I'd want to see the thing again before letting it go on.

I can't send you the Stein thing either as it came
out in the first issue of Pagany and I only have one copy of
that. But I'll have that typed out too for you in a day or so.

Now please get the other for me.

And perhaps after all I am going on with Contact - I
dunno for sure yet. It's bike the weather.

yes, I'm going on.

## Corrections :

### A Novelette - VIII -

The work that is being done by many writers is so much of one - The sound of her book etc. etc.

*(incomplete sentence)*

### Miss Moore -

Poe in his most read first essay quotes Nathaniel Willis' poem, *The Two Women*, admiringly and in full and one senses at once the reason: there is a quality # feeling there that affected Poe tremendously. This mystical quality that endeared Poe to Father Tabb, the poet-preiest, still seems to many the sense of poetry itself. It would etc. etc.

### Thickcake -

*(I can't make it out myself - but we're not going to use this one so it doesn't matter)*

### The Venus -

p. 66 ( near bottom ) and top of p. 67 -

When I saw you I saw something unusual, I am never mis-
taken. I saw something different from what I see every day, nei-
ther throwing away nor taking hold to the old horrible handle,
all filthy - Is it America? I asked, but you tell me nothing.

### The Human Body -

p. 89 -

It is wonderful to read in these pages of the intestinal
flora, the bacillus etc. etc.

Dec. 6, 1931

Dear Louis:

Hectic days these, but Contact is going
ahead. I must ask you, however, to tell Reznikoff that
I cannot use all of his first section in the first
issue. I have cut it in half and shall use the first
half only. If it is well received I'll use the second
half in the next issue and then go on and finish the
book in subsequent issues. To have given well nigh
half the present issue to him would have thrown every-
thing else out of balance. I stuck to my point until
last night but deemed it wise finally to give in. I
intend to open with R. though unless we put Cummings
first, in which case R. will come second - after C.'s
poems. I hope this will be satisfactory.

You'll hear from me very soon again.

Feb. 3, 1932

Dear Louis:

Unpalatable as it is for me to have to admit it, I
am forced to admit for all that I cannot find your manu-
script. I have looked in all likely places for it but to no
avail. I may yet find it but I don't think that likely. Have
you no way of recreating it from notes? This is all very
annoying but I can't do more just now than tell you the fact.
Damn it. I hope you can forgive me.

There's no news other than that Contact will be out
this week.

Feb. 17

Dear Louis:

Shit and double shit for Putnam. I enclose your script herewith. As soon as the book arrives let me know so that I may drive over there or have you out here or as it may happen.

I'd like to have seen Taupin, wanted to very much, may-
be we can have an afternoon together later. I feel he is not
really friendly to American writing but perhaps I'm wrong. But
friendly or not he is valuable. Only how shall we use him ? I
wish I knew more of the past.

Get hold of the recent Fifth Floor Window, a small
mag. There's a readable article on Surrealism in it.

Contact should be out today. There are two good photo
shows going on : at Steiglitz's, An American Place and at the
Julien Levy Gallery.

Yours

Aug. 1/30

Dear Louis:

All right, I'll watch my Fs.

By the way, didn't I lend you the small volume of Pound's Cantos? Or was it the new edition or Personae? Look it up.

Yes, we'll run over to Staten Island some day.

Contact #2 goes forward tomorrow morning. I await eagerly the arrival of the Anthology. And I'll have a copy of C. sent to Ezra instanter - in fact have also tended to that.

The current issue of Eng. Review contains my letter on Anglo-American literary relations. I have only the one copy, should I receive others I'll forward one.

I shall not waste the thirty five since you want me to have it. Thanks.

No news otherwise.

But there will be at least one more issue of Pagany. And so one more chapter of White Mule. Maybe many more chapters, who snows?

I am salting away all new projects that come # to the extensive surface of my well surfaced brain for I will not give myself up to the new now, too much depends on digging in. For a year at least, maybe two I have promised myself to do nothing but clean up the shop. I have gently told Kamin that after this year there will be no Contact ( in all probability ) for little Willie.

Sept. 10 /32

Dear Louis : If you can make out what I was driving at in the enclosed
go to it. I can't work over it now. But feeling inclined to put
the thing down I did so.

Mark it up, chisel it apart - do what you please with
it. And maybe send it to Lesitscistohsky for his New Broom if
you want to - or back to me for final labor ( and labor it will
be for me if I have to work over it )

Anyhow - that's what you set going by your damned
Anthology /

Contact 3 is made up . Out in a month or whenever -
I'm busy as hell trying to get going and cleared of letters - etc

Yrs.

Oct. 17, 1982

Dear Louis:

- and did you see the roasting I got in The New English
Review by someone signing himself Professor Austin Warren. Do
you know or any such person? I answered his attack at once but
they may not give me space. It's of no importance, however.

Yes, to hell with the Vagabonds and the School and all
that sort of crap. I've decided not to talk.

I hear nothing from Contact. It may come out and it may
have been buried, I dunno.

Never mind about Winters, he surely is insane.

But what do you mean, the Dep't of Taxes has assessed your
personal estate at $5000. ? And do you mean you really want me
to come quick to see you? I'll be there on Wednesday for at least
an hour if you really mean it.

March 24, 1933

Dear Louis,

Poem I couldn't enclose in last letter ( no time to
type it ) enclosed in this.

Please return enclosure. And please, by return mail,
let me have some information about your white hope : his name,
age, present position and condition. I must be prepared to
give a few details to Moe - not too many. I'm going in on the
afternoon or Tuesday next. Here's hoping.

Letters from Ezra in nearly every mail, you too in
all probability. His english publisher "seems serious". E.P.
now wants 28 additional pages of verse from me.

The volume of verse together with the first 15 chap-
ters of White Mule go to Lieber also on Tuesday.

Best luck

Yours

April 2, 1933

Dear Louis:

I know you're more or less waiting for this letter, perhaps more than less, I dunno. Perhaps not. Anyway, I saw Moe (as I told you) last week. We had a long talk the upshot of which is that to his knowledge (?) Antheil is working on the opera. The only evidence, real evidence, I have of this is that he, Moe, walked out of the room during our conference "to look up the information", coming back after a moment to say, "Yes, he is working on the opera." What he did while out of the room I cannot say as he did not tell me. Perhaps he took a piss.

The real information is that the Gug People want the opera and they want Antheil to do it. I have reason to believe that if he has done nothing about it they want him now to commence inasmuch as they have just extended his endowment. Moe says that he himself is going abroad in June and that he will see Antheil. I'm not completely satisfied that the matter will go forward but it would be foolhardy for me to make a right just now; I intend to leave the next step up to Moe and to Antheil.

About Serly Moe had much more to say. He listened to my account of the man, a very brier statement of the essentials which you supplied me with after which he, Moe, asked me for Serly's address saying, "He has all the preliminary requirements and we are looking for another qualified musician." Apparently, while he wants Antheil to go on with my opera he at the same time seems willing to give Serly serious consideration for whatever other project may be in the wind. And this is as accurate as account of my hour with Moe as I can give you. Please let me have Serly's home address at once if you have not already smiled it.

Yours

April 28, 1933

Dear Louis:

What the hell can I say about Writers Extant? I don't
see how it can be done. I think your prospectus is too complex.
Where in hell is one to begin?

It's all very well to name off twenty or more names of
those you'd like to see members of such an organization but can
you get them and can you keep them and can you manage them when
you have them? I doubt it very much.

Personally I could at a pinch give up a couple of
hundered dollars, but why? For two hundred dollars I could in all
probability get my poems published and although that is almost
selfish viewpoint yet at one which must have weight with me since
a sum of that sort is not easy for me to detach from my ordinary
expenses. And unless I gave it I wouldn't take a thing from
the organization.

It is possible that we might get a book that would
sell and so bring us in a profit. But don't imagine for one
minute that if some book were profitable it wouldn't be taken
away from us damned quick by the author or the firm to which he
would sell out his rights.

Without names, though, there can't be any thought of
beginning : Who are they?

The enclosed letter may interest Serly. As soon as I
receive the papers from the foundation I'll forward them to you.
My thought is that S. should offer something, not the opera, as
his thesis # - so to speak - after which - should he get the
award - we can do as we please, as Moe indirectly suggests.

Very dull days for me.

Yours

THE WRITERS PUBLISHERS, Inc.

1. Membership in the group is limited to those writers who have in actual possession an available and complete book manuscript of high quality which is unacceptable to the usual publisher.

2. Manuscripts to be published by the group are to be selected ( with advice ) by a Director who shall be elected by a majority of the group members for the term of one year.

3. The business end of the group activities will be under the direction of a paid Secretary-Treasurer, under bond, who shall occupy the office indefinitely - or until removed by a two thirds vote of the existing membership at any time.

4. Initial funds are to be contributed by the charter members as may be agreed upon, to be added to later as the business of the group may prove profitable.

5. The first membership will be made up of a selected, voluntary group who by a majority vote, after the first requisite is satisfied, will add to their numbers from time to time.

6. Resignation from the group may take place at the discretion of the member by which he is absolved from further financial responsibility at the same time relinquishing any claim he has had upon the group's resources.

7. Dissolution of the group as an organization will be conditional upon an equal distribution among the members of all funds and other rights enjoyed by the group under its incorporation.

8. Further additions to these rules will be made from time to time

Synopsis of suggestions discussed and general agreements arrived at at meeting Sept. 24th. Writers-Publishers to be incorporated:

1. A possible list of subscribers to 1 book of poems to be circularized and approached by whatever means possible. The book to sell at $2. and to be the most saleable we can find.

2. This book to be published on the basis of whatever advance subscriptions are obtained.

3. The proceeds, if any, from this sale to be divided, 60% to the author, 40% to the group which 40% is to be used to publish book #2 and to pay the Executive Secretary who will be the sole officer of the group.

4. On this basis books are to be continued to be printed and sold as often and for as long a time as practicable.

Notes: When the first book is advertised it will be put forward as one of a series of four which will all be published and offered, separately, for subscription during the first year.

The original suggestion of E.P. to be rewritten to conform to this plan.

As a feature of the plan distinguished (?) modernists or the day will write introductory pages to these books - their names (with consent) to be given out when the first notices appear : such names as Marion Moore, T.S.Eliot, Wallace Stevens, etc etc. This in effect will be a sponsoring Committee without putting too much of a burden on *names*.

Harriet Monroe and *Poetry* to be approached from the first with intent to get as much backing from that source as being the *official* (?) poetry organization in U.S.

Mr. Zukolsky be named to Executive-Secretary etc. etc. with power to keep records, see individuals, arrange for publishing, correct proofs ? ? ? select format, wrote letters, devise lists, compose advertising matter, push sales, etc. etc. - God help him!

Thursday

Dear Louis:

Come out this Thursday afternoon if you can manage it. Plan to arrive at about three o'clock. We shall then have plenty of time for talk. It's been impossible to see you earlier, rushing about, one thing and another. By the way, Katherine Sheeler, one of our best friends is on the verge of death from a growth in the abdomen.

Nothing to report. I've written nothing, planned nothing - save as one plans in a semi-conscious way while he dashes from point to point of his daily routine.

Started to read a book two days ago : Pity it Is Not Enough - by Josephine Herbst. The first pages reveal some good writing - how flat that sounds! One feels at least that the prose has been made out of SOMETHING. Out of words, presumably.

The opera is constantly in my head. Serly was of considerable help to me in clarifying what I must do. I will take up the next step in a few days.

Drop me a card if you're coming.

May 24, 1933

Dear Louis:

I've tormented my soul long enough over our Writer-Publisher proposal: I think it's no go and we should give it up. As far as you personally are concerned I think it would be an excellent thing for you to get to see Pound this summer. I'll be glad to contribute my bit to assist you as agreed with Serly. I believe we'd all derive some benefit from it by clarifying our present more than a little muddled thinking. Go and take a look. In the tall we can appraise the situation again if we want to.

And don't forget that with every advantage in their favor large publishing houses are going broke. While even such a venture as Angel Flores' Dragon Press has cost its sponsor two or three thousand dollars which he'll never see again. It can't be done today. Pound said it over and over again in his letter. We've got to heed such evidence.

The only possible way out of our difficulties, aside from hoping against hope, would be to print a series of six books at our own expense and then give someone like Harcourt, Brace 15% to market them - as others have done before us. But could we find six saleable new books? I doubt it. And even if we could find them, where would the next six come from? No, I can't see it.

Tuesday is impossible for me. But I think I
can make it Wednesday. I won't have much
time but I'm fairly sure of being there
between three and four. I'll have to leave
by five thirty at the latest. It would save
me an additional trip to the city if you
can have someone buy me, at some second hand
bookshop, three or four copies of my V.to P.
I'll pay you for them if you can have them
there. If not convenient though, forget it.
Do you want the Appolinaire now? If so mail
a card to that effect so I shall get it Wed.
A.M. Maybe the opera egg is hatching, hope so.
It may be china though, or merely rotten.

Nov. 1, 1933

Dear Louis:

Next week then, I'll let you know.

It's fine news that Reznikorr is willing to play ball
with Burke. A good policy, I think, this of having rorewords
by someone not directly on our team.

I'd like to have the enclosed poem included in the
first section of my book if you can find a place for it. That's
up to you but, on short notice, I feel that the thing belongs and
belongs there - even adds something there which is needed,
reinforces something I want to say.

Glad you find something in the script.

See you later,

Nov. 29, 1933

Dear Louis:

The reason I mentioned the 15% was that you yourself had spoken of it in a letter this fall. Let it rest. As for the copyright, take it out in the name of the press as you please. No need to make further inquiry relative to the terms for my book. The type had better be redistributed. I brought these matters up solely for my own information.

The long this I sent you several weeks ago has been taken by The Magazine, California. I have received a check for twenty five dollars for it. Take notice! Every little bit helps.

If you are out here Saturday drop in. Bill is home from college but there is nothing special on the programme, we'll be glad to see you. It is not likely that you'll have the galleys in your hands by then but if you do we may be able to go over them Saturday evening.

Now for the first act of that libretto. I want to devote the spare time in the month of December to that.

Yours

Friday

Dear Louis:

Did I, some time ago, lend you Hemingway's, Death in the
Afternoon? If so, keep it, only, I want to know where it is. And
I didn't, did I, let you have the script or White Mule? I'm fairly
certain that you haven't had that.

Not having heard from you today I presume that the blurbs
and the biography arrived. Even at some cost I hope you did finally
fix up The Descent of Winter, damn it.

Not having heard from Serly but having heard that he is
having troubles of his own I have not been able to do a thing with
the opera. That is something which needs undivided attention
whereas my attention is in the bowl and the chopper has been on it
for 10 months. I have solved the problem of the scenes but I have not
attacked the words. Impossible to get going without some more
diminutive objective than I have now.

I'm selling my book to the town, one at a time - by
promises.

DR. W. C. WILLIAMS

Feb. 13, 1934

Dear Louis:

Not as many sales as I expected out
here, it'll be slow work. Poetry goes down
hard with most. Here's a check though for two
more. Send one direct to Estelle Hegel,
Nurses Home, Passaic General Hospital, Passaic,
N.J. and the other to me - for Mrs. Carnevali,
by the way.

The rush of medical work keeps me
from reading anything so I'm not sending you
the Harvard Advocate just yet, want to go over
it a little more carefully first.

What is the use of Ezra sending us
those assinine "reviews" from the English
papers. They should be buried at his desk and
a monument raised over them just there to
warn away the unwary. The best reading to be
found among them is on the reverse.

You've noticed the winter I suppose.
But what is this about factories near Newark
being requisitioned for the manufacture of
munitions. Good God what next.

DR. W. C. WILLIAMS

Feb. 26, 1934

Dear Louis:

Sorry to bother you with this but I have not received the two copies of my book for which I sent you the last check - the books for Mr. Hiler. Or didn't you receive a check last week, with a note mentioning the Hilers?

I think I said that I wanted the books sent to me so that I could autograph them. In order to check on the matter I called Mr. H, a moment or two ago. He said that neither had he received the books. Please check all around and if the books have not been sent please send them. etc. etc. Thanks.

Serly, over the phone, sounds madder
than ever. I hope he doesn't pass out before
he does his job with me.

Pee Pee S.

It is the Publisher of the book who must make the application.
Write to The Committee on the Pulitzer Awards, Columbia University,
and say: We beg to call your attention, the Dr. Williams book
of poems, which we published Jan. etc. etc. and which has received
such favorable comments in the daily press. We believe the book
is of importance and because of its high quality merits your
consideration for the Pulitzer Poetry Award. We enclose a clipping
from The Lit Section of the N.Y. Times as evidence of what we say
and should be glad to forward you a copy of the book or to take
whatever other steps are necessary to place this publication
before you.

My information and the approximate draught of the letter come from
Nick McKnight.

So get busy.

And --

Yours Sell

June 11, 1934

Dear Louis:

We enjoyed your visit and wonder why you do not come oftener. The answer no doubt is "time and money".

Poetry is using my review of Oppen's book in the next issue, the full text. I'm pleased and know Oppen will be also. At the same time that I sent that review I enclosed a poem, An Elegy for D. H. Lawrence. They accepted that also - to be published in the fall. A bum (uncorrected) copy of it is enclosed. Please return it. The final work isn't much better.

You've kindled my interest in the libretto once more. I haven't had time for a dig at the thing yet since I've been rushed all day with work but the time is coming soon when I can throw myself into it.

It was a pleasure to see you looking so well.

Tuesday afternoon

Dear Louis:

The carbon of the script I gave Serly has finally
turned up - under my nose. It's virtually the same as the messy
original I sent you ( original in point of contents ).

In this letter I'm enclosing a new version of the
"lyric" I ended the first scene with in Serly's copy. My idea
was not a lullaby but a bit of personal remembrance between the
husband and wife "to give him something pleasant to think about
while he is going to sleep". It would be somewhat silly to sing
W. to sleep with a child's lullaby. If it must be a lullaby it
should have at least some vague adult quality - unless it's some
conventional sleeping song of the time none of which do I know
or have I been able to find.

Why not send this letter to Ted with my enclosure
telling him at the same time that we're working on a true lullaby
such as he has asked for.

The thing is that the woman has asked the man to think
back over his life. To think of something pleasant. She then
tries to supply a pleasant personal memory. But he ( as the
whole opera is about to demonstrate ) thinks of anything but
pleasures. That is my point.

I feel better this afternoon than I did when I last
wrote. From now on for as long as I can stand it with the vague
aim we're trying to clarify I shall plug at this one point and
the synopses of the two succeeding acts - developing them as
fully as possible as I go along.

Get this off to Serly, to Ted, give me his address and
let us, you and me, arrange some sort of conference - perhaps
with John Klenner participating - soon.

Your comment on the verse I sent you will do.

Tuesday (I guess)

Dear Louis:

Here is the detailed synopsis of the 2nd Act which Ted wants. Look it over. If you have any important changes to make write them in and send the thing on to him. Let me have a copy of your suggestions. Or send the whole back to me for me to retype it. As you please. Only get it off as quickly as possible.

The 3d Act will follow within a week or so. I am at it in my head and have made important progress. It should be a wonder if properly digested.

I'm not doing much else, just farting around using a pick and shovel, reading a very little and running to town for mail and the necessary supplies. I enjoy it.

Well, let's hear from you. I'm curious to know what your reaction to the plan of the ballet will be. Let the others in on it too if they are around. We are doing this as a group, I have nothing to sell -

Good, says Floss. You're getting to be a real something or other. Now if somebody can only do it. Real theatrics.

At last we're getting the idea, I think, blocking the stuff off in chunks so that the guy may be able to pick it up in convenient pieces and smear his stuff around them. At least I hope he'll agree that this is what we've done.

Best of luck, something may happen yet.

c/o Mrs. P. Herman
Monroe, N.Y.

Aug. 7, 1934

Dear Louis:

Arrived home Sunday evening. This is the first chance I've had to write. Come out when you get ready. Any time. Let us know and we'll make a place at table. Bring Jerry if you want to or the lady or as you please.

There's no finished synopsis of the third act as I had it at first. The thing was mostly in my mind and I just put it aside. But now I'll get at it again and do the thing as I wanted to with, perhaps, new slants which may or may not succeed.

I'm not satisfied with Jerry's scheme this time. It would come as too terrific a shock if my original third act stands. The problem remains a problem with my vote for my own original idea of making the thing a purely "period" composition. Ted may want to incorporate his new ideas and the backers, if any, may want to force my hand - but I still believe the thing as planned is the correct scheme.

This is an idea which has occured to me: let the scene stay as I first planned it but let the music enter it doubt. There can come a time when the music breaks, tentatively starys a new mood and falters again just at the close of the third act or just before the final "coronation" scene. I'd like Ted's slant on what he could do along that line.

But I agree with you the "Senator" stuff is no good. You raised my hopes when you came out so strongly against it for I never wanted the damned mess that way.

No more now. Have you see the criticism of my book and the Objectivist attitude in Dynamo, a mag of revolutionary poetry. It was written by a man named Newman. It isn't bad, not ill natured but has a ring of fairness about it that at least allows it to stand.

The general depression, the unseen depression, is on me pretty strongly but in writing this, at least, I begin to pick up and wish to proceed. Repetition surely must stop. Some new step has to be taken and it can be taken, I at least can take part in it. Maybe it's Andre Gide. I want to look around. War may end everything and me. I hope not.

Sept. 17, 1934

Dear Louis:

It's all right for Friday. Come in the afternoon some
time whenever you're ready. No. Let me know what time to pick
you up at Ted's. That was the arrangement. Say at 4 o'clock?

Ted is absolutely right about that third act. We haven't
hit the dynamic intensity requisite as yet. I feel it there, now,
very clearly but the facts haven't been born yet. They will be,
then everything will come out. I hope only that he knows that
anything that is necessary can be done and will be done with the
precision and power he wants. But he must give us the encourage-
ment of believing in the theme. Without that we're sunk.

At the moment I'm inclined to agree, too, with Ted in
his desire to limit the 2nd Act to two scenes, the first and
the second, making the ballet the climax of the act. We could
then use the final scene in the act as now written the first
scene of the third act. It is something I have in mind. I'm not
sure that this is what I want but it is worth thinking about at
any rate.

No progress as yet on the weeping song. No time. The
boys leave today and tomorrow. Floss is getting stronger.

Yours

Just received Bunting's criticism of my book, not
bad. In fact he has done me a service that is of great value.
Why not a world with a few more Bunting's in it? Damn 'f I know.

Nov. 26, 1934

Dear Louis:

It was impossible for me to come in last night, I was too
worn out to move. Two thirty the night before with the fatigue of a
days work piled on top of it doesn't go down as readily as it used to.
I'm sorry, too, as I should have liked to meet the gang.

Ted wrote me saying the first act as I had cut and rearranged
it was more as he wanted it and that he had given it to John Kleinner.
It may be that after John has reworked it it will do. If you hear any
word of this shoot it on to me. I don't expect to hear about it from
the others.

Ted wants me to go down to Phila before the first of the year
and I'm going to try to do it. When I do I'll take the new version
of the second act with me; if possible I'll send you a draught of it
at the same time.

Nothing much else of new. Rather a dull drill most days. At
the moment writing nothing at all. As soon as I hear finally from
Ted though that the first act will do things will pick up again.

Wish I wuz in the West Indies taking it easy on one of the
small islands pictured in the recent Geographic Magazine. No wonder the
ordinary run of Macy employees and college girls loved that long book
- I've forgotten it's name - that was a best seller recently. To let
the mind wander on what old time mariners knew and had witnessed is
close to delirium these days. We are closed in, choked, beshitted as
we have never been in the past. In those days at least, if one did not
live long, he had a chance for a wild death after one beautiful "ride".
There are adventurers today but the mind can't go along with them, it
can't, it's just so much syphilis which is too easy to get close to
home anyway. Still, I have wished for almost anything rather than the
monotony of some of these days. Monotony and to have to live in the
stench of those who need no theory of government to brand them as
blackguards. Writing itself seems a cage to me at such moments.

I'll get over it ( never ).

Yours

Dec. 10, 1934

Dear Louis:

Ted's letter enclosed. It's impossible for me to get into the city this week. Certainly not before Friday, if then. The only thing I can suggest is that you send me the script of the first act, at once, special delivery together with any comments you have to make. I'll then have it typed clean and returned to Ted by Thursday evening at the latest. He seems to think it is important.

The only other possible mode of procedure would be for you or John to have the thing typed at my expense. Let Ted have the original and send me the carbon - with whatever comments you or John have to make. Final corrections and alterations could be made later.

Drop me a line telling me what the decision has been. But in view of Ted's difficult position re. Stokowsky I don't want to disappoint him now.

For me the days are becoming hectic in the extreme. It looks as though I had started on the 14 hours a day, 7 days a week routine with which winter has made me familiar before this. I despise it but it's my living during some months in the year when I don't pay expenses. I don't know how long it will keep up.

Yours

Dec. 14, 1934

Dear Louis:

Here it is, please send the copy, this copy, on to Ted as I want to keep the carbon for a record. One of these days the whole damned business is going to be lost. I haven't the least idea, for instance, where the final copy of the first scene is at the present moment. I suppose Ted has it but he's just as likely to leave it in a taxi or elsewhere as not. Not that I'm picking on Ted - I'm sympathizing with him.

The end of the last scene in the act stinks - but let it. If we ever get going, really, that will straighten itself out. That aside you have improved the lay-out in many places.

It Occurs to me that perhaps I haven't copied all that you intended should be copied in that last scene, it was impossibly confused what with the two pages, some of the material on one page, some on the other. In particular I couldn't make out whether or not you wanted the young officers and servants to come out of the house at the cries of Mrs. Arnold. If there are mistakes in the typing send the last two pages back with whatever notes you care to make.

For myself I'd like to see the bed-room scene returned. I don't care much though, so long as the transition from the preceding scene ( The Figure of W. ) is made in a convincing manner - which is not now the case. That going back and picking up an unannounced baby is ridiculous.

I tell you what I'll do: I'll write it to suit myself - though without the bed-room - and send that along with the rest as 6a and 7a.

Mrs. Spence is playing a Bach Piano Concerto, arranged for two pianos by Busoni. I think it's the D minor. Sunday at 4.30. I have given the Hechts tickets. If you are around I can get you one or more for friends.

Oh hell, let the last scene stay as it is - till a change is or is not forced on us later.

Jan 29, 1936

Dear Louis:

Keep the Poetry notice. Some day I'll show you the
books or pamphlets, as many of them as I have - two, I think.

I thought the questions were asked in good faith.
So I answered them that way. If they don't care to publish my
replies it makes no difference to me. Please don't try to
protect me.

Inasmuch as Latimer has already sent my script to
the printer, the book may be out before any magazine can use
whatever of the items in it have not already appeared. I am
having a copy made of the script for you. It should be ready
within the week. I'll indicate the poems that have not been
printed.

The snow does not seem to melt.

Jan. 31, 1936

Dear Louis:

Your diagnosis is correct. Chuck the answers. Or, if you think it's worth it, blue pencil them and send them through that way. But I'll give no other answers.

I'm sending the script of my new book under separate cover. I've checked the as yet unpublished poems. If you care to use any one of them please subjoin a note : this poem to appear in a new book etc etc mentioning the Alcestis Press. And, since I'm sending another script of the same to Poetry, let me know what you can use. If I could sell one or two of the poems it would help me in buying a few copies of my own books for distribution to my friends, etc. etc.

Many thanks for your patience and thoughtfulness. I appreciate both along with your valuable criticisms - Latimer, for some amazing reason, has asked me to get to work preparing a third book! What in hell is this? It does something strange to me, makes me alive again in a peculiar way. We do not know how vilely we have been starved - and are starved still. There is a quality in us that is only roused to the full by - the word escapes me - it is not success - but rather the belief of another in our abilities effectively expressed in action to our favor. I don't understand Latimer. I wish my books could be taken by a regular publisher. But it may be that my books must appear in just this way. If it has been the wrong way for a book to appear in the past, then it shall now become the right way since I'll make it so - perhaps leading to something very definite in Latimer's success as a publisher. He wants to go on and expand indefinitely. If I can write well enough it may help his reputation. He at least is going straight for what he at the moment sees. He may go on.

The practice of medicine has me pinned to the mat for the present. Write again. Hope you like the new book.

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

Feb. 27, 1936

Dear Louis:

So far it has been impossible for me to get at the article or chapter or whatever it may be called that you want of me. I'm beginning to worry about it. Practice has been heavy, twelve hours of it every day with night work added on occasion. I'll do my best but what if I'm not able to finish the thing? I'll do something but it may have to be done hurriedly without the proper amount of preliminary reading. If practice continues through March as it has been going this month - and the roads slow to improve - I don't know, I don't know.

Enclosed is - whatever it is. I tore it off under greatest pressure to read at a meeting of a Barnard College literary society which took place last Tuesday evening. I didn't want anyone present, but Mimi came and brought Rene. I read them poems for an hour which they swallowed like so many pills. Not much satisfaction in it, but I save the experience to me. They are not ready for what I have to offer - unless I am at fault in the presentation.

Heard from Ted Serly who is giving a concert in Phily March 4. I can't go.

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

April 21, 1936

Dear Louis:

If you have the time look up a certain Mary Barnard, one of Ezra's string of ponies ( he seems to like 'em long ) now in New York from Portland, Oregon. She won the Levinson Prize this year - tho' I didn't know it when she told me ( Jesus!) But she's all right if a trifle suppressed. Has a brain no doubt. We've got to make her welcome.

She lives at 148 W. 11th St. Drop in some time. She has a script for a book but isn't over confident - which is a virtue. At that she may go ahead of many because of the more or less conventional surface of her work and it's maidenly purity. Not as bad as that.

May 5, 1936

Dear Louis:

Our ill luck in not getting together seems to continue. Ted Hecht whom I met on the street Saturday said you were coming out that night but I was all but on my way at that moment to see a friend in North Jersey with whom we stayed till near midnight.

A card enclosed explains itself. If you can help Larson to the addresses, help him.

I journeyed to Dartmouth last week to read to them as I had read to the Barnard girls. The idea contained in the first part of my essay went over no bigger than it did at Barnard. The proof there, at Dartmouth, disagreed with me on the use to which the sohnnet form should be put. He thought I overstressed the necessity for a new and significant form. What the help That's that. But it all helps to clarify the mind of Whoever Che Wis. I agree, that if one wishes to cross the ocean there is no need to design a new sort of boat at each crossing, especially one with three ends to it. But does that hold good in crossing a continent with a 200 inch mirror on board? New ways must be found, sez I. Not necessary, sez he. Not of any great importance, adds he. Og the greatest importance, sez I. You're a good guy, sez he, but I differ with you. You're a good guy, sez I, you'll grow up in time. Or words to that effect. Dante wrote punk sonnets too, sez he. Villon used a form more suitable to his age, sez I. Villon dignified a popular form, sez he - and besides Villon is the one eternal contemporary. There ain't nobody else on earth like him. Which is beside the point, sez I but I agree wid you.

Can you help me locate a guy named Leippert who once wanted to edit a mag at Columbia. This is important. Did you know him? What has become of him? Any information will be greatly appreciated. I want to find some old scripts I sent him and which he never returned.

I've virtually stopped writing. It was the only thing to do. I want to read and I want to think. How long it will last I do not know but it will last until something has accumulated back of the damn face sufficient to break through of its own power.

Best luck.

DR. W. C. WILLIAMS

Feb. 22, 1937

Dear Louis:

Just to enclose Ezra's letter of which
I have spoken. Nothing else to speak of save
that I have made a certain amount of progress
with the translation. Due to the mild winter
there are a number of green snoots showing in the
garden. The same to you.

My hospital service ends March 1st.

July 18, 1937

Dear Louis:

Nothing much to report except that I don't get into
New York - once in a month, to be exact - on more or less of an
errand. Practice has been active and exacting, hard cases with
much close watching necessary. I do hope to have a few consecutive
days in there during the summer sometime. I want to follow
up some work in translating, at the Library.

The inside of my head's been active. Lord knows what
will come of it. Two books, at least, have taken final form and
the Paterson thing isn't far off the last alignment. All in my
noodle. May they be born without the dismemberment of "father".
And Laughlin, as perhaps I told you, wants to do a "collected
shorter prose pieces", "If White Mule pays for itself", such a
book to be issued this fall. I have a lady friend typing the
stuff now - irregularly - but I think she'll go through. But I've
written# scarcely a word all summer.

White Mule is selling slowly, so I've heard. They're
printing up - no, binding another 300, but that only makes 800
in all so far. That ain't many! But if it pays for itself I'll
get another book and so it has always gone with me. It wouldn't
be healthy at my age to burst suddenly into blatant bloom.

The enclosed letter from the inevitable and inimitable
Ted came a few days ago. So he's going to be "in the moneym" again
He's funny the way he uses my life as an excuse for accepting a
pay check. You might think he was blaming me for a seduction.
What a pity it is that they don't ask Toscanini to kiss his foot
in addition and promise him twenty years in a silken prison thereafter for his better ease and comfort. Don't misunderstand me.
Ted's all right only he's "funny". If he doesn't watch out somebody is going to catch him and FORCE him to be a composer. I even think he may do my ballet some day if he doesn't watch himself carefully. And then what a world of success he's going to have dumped on him. It's a crime. But I'm going through with him or no one. It's fate.

So what about yourself? Any more auditions? Give us
a tumble when you have time. Mother goes up to my brother's
farm Aug. 1st. After that we may sneak off for a week or two. I
wish it might be Nova Scotia - or the moon.

December 2, 1938

Dear Louis :

Just a word. I dropped in at your place the other evening on the chance I might see you but you weren't in - as I more or less expected. Just wanted to say I'm going to "read" at Gorham Munson's this Sunday afternoon at 4 P.M. or so. The whole business is a mess. Seventy five cents admission! Don't go. They sort of put it over on me - without conscious intention of doing so, to course; I thought I was just going to read to a few dumb guys just for the fun of it. Perhaps no one will come anyhow. Forget it.

The Gug papers came day before yesterday. There were four seeking my sponsorship. I put you at the top. Here's hoping but, as I have said in the past, not one of those I have signed for during the past ten years or more has succeeded in landing the job.

The Oxford Anthology, which is out, is an awsome spectacle but a fine job and a very interesting book. It is even good reading.

Anyhow there it is. Hope you make the Gug. You deserve it if anybody does - which nobody does, of course. Nobody deserves anything, is what I mean. The tragedy of youth is that it still keeps some comparative sliding scale of worth in its mind and finds, too often, that there's another scale being used under the table. What is a Gug for anyone to deserve it. You're just lucky if you get it. So say your prayers like a good boy and read Silone's "Bread and Wine" as I am doing two years late. Not too hot as writing but with something like good black bread and good cheap Dago red wine too.

The Gotham Book Mart and New Directions

invite you to meet

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

on the publication day of his new novel

"In The Money"

The date: Tuesday, October 29th

The Place: The Gotham Book Mart, 51 West 47, N. Y. C.

The Time: 4 to 6 P. M.

As soon as I have received and read the poem
I'll write you whatever I have to say,
impromptu, about it. Then I'll let it soak in
awhile and if anything important follows I'll
write it out and send it to Poetry. I'm very
curious to see how you have completed the
work. You're right it's a tough assignment for
any reader, I know that already- my objective
in writing of the poem, among other things, will
be to making such a reading assignment less
severe for the next guy - if possible! So I go
and sell two short ones to New Yorker (Maybe
it's senility - maybe just spittin').

Yrs
Bice

August 26, 1941

Houghton Mifflin Co.
432 Fourth Ave.
New York, N.Y.

Dear Sirs:

This letter is in support of Louis Zukofsky's candidacy for a Literary Fellowship as offered by you toward the writing of a novel which he has planned and will submit to you in outline shortly. One has to be somewhat formal in a letter such as this.

Zukofsky has been one of my closest friends in the undertaking which we have faced with several others of our respective generations to write merely as well as we can and face the hazards on that basis. I don't know anyone who has progressed more in his prose, as shown by the synopsis of this novel he has shown me, than Zukofsky. It has an exceptional quality of excellence to my mind which you will not find duplicated anywhere. I am speaking now of the sheer writing. In addition to this I already sense the creation of a character, in his hero, full of appeal to the emotions and the intelligence. I like him.

Rather than to go any further I will close here by adding that Louis Zukofsky is a person of the rarest integrity in whom implicit trust can be placed that he will carry out his promises and stated intentions to the letter. I don't believe you will find in New York a man more suited for a fellowship such as you offer than he.

9 Ridge Road
Rutherford, N.J.

THIS SIDE OF CARD IS FOR ADDRESS

Louis 2 ulsop slay
1088 E 180 St
N. Y. C.

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

Oct. 20, 1941

Dear Louis:

I read your book of poems through last
night at one sitting, fairly carefully. Some are
very beautiful, some did not affect me, did not
seem to come alive. I made some notes which I
will send you presently. If there is anything
among them you care to use for the dust jacket,
do so. If you want me to try to place the review
somewhere ( with added detail or otherwise ) I'll
do so. Do you know of any review you'd prefer
to have them in. What about Poetry?

I'm glad Stalin has decided to defend
Moscow. Rumor persists that London is not backing
Russia as it should and that products our
manufacturers are not permitted to export they
are having made in England for Eastern and South
American trade. They say Dunlop auto tires are
a drug on the market in many South American cities.
Hard not to believe such tales - but the "sinister
figure of Montague Norman" continues to appear
at major conferences.

P.S. The poems are much more impressive to me
today than they were when I glanced at them in
manuscript several years ago which is all to
the good. As I remember some of them I couldn't
make head nor tail of them. They are clear now
and effective - not all though. Sometimes they
do not work. I still find the notes to the
Mantis poem more interesting and important than
the poem, which is bad ( not the poem, the
situation).

What I wanted to say, though, was that the
poems have improved by keeping - in my eyes. In
fact (as I said at the beginning ) some of
them, especially the earlier ones are to me a
permanent and exquisite contribution to our fund
of fine verse. It is stupid that they are not
in all the anthologies, they will be.