care of H R Laughlin
Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp
230 Park Avenue
New York City

Implacable dullcare's foe & enemy of irresolute versification:

Dear Sir -

Many thanks for your kind sendings. It w'd be a good thing for me to
collect some money from the Great White Padre before he gives it all
to Joe Stalin to shoot craps with with them boys from wut Ez used to
refer to as Thread & Nettle Street.

So will you send me translation payment instructions up to the amount
of about 500 berries? I'll pay the boys and they can return receipts
like the enclosed. If you happen to have any ND stationery there
you might jot down the poems we are paying for in this form, as I
wd respectfully request you to give me this data anyway, as I guess
the facts ought to be on the vouchers, don't you?

I will be in the Boston before too long and will call you over the
talking wire and mayhap we can forgather and confabulate.

Wd yr excellence care to compose a sonnet commencing

"Oh Sex, thou provocative but dubious thing!"

Hedy Mamarr is coming to Alta on Dec 10th. Will you be there? Items
1 and 2 are not related, except by association.

Hope you will see to it that the lousy rich library of your institute
buys multitudinous copies of ND bks for the solace of the little boys.

Hope you will salute some of yr friends on Xmas merry day with subs to the
P of the M. If we can wrestle up 300 more readers the thing will be on a
sustaining and defnded basis. By the way, I think yr number is real luvvvvly,
all around.

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

God Wot You Ate A Bounder Sir, But Kindly Bound On - She said.

Rev Writer with the Right & Left Hands -

Dear Sir -

The official title is Leche de Merdrano, but for short we call it An
Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Poetry.

You are a kind good man to have read the Lorca wollem. You are kind
and good and this is true. I will deal forcefully with Mallam.
Kindly to send the book down here. Express Collect. I will sniff
at its size etc. I may even read a line or two.

I regret about the Mr Important Andrade. How did I to know he was
important? I just took him for a youth in the consul's office. I
thought the verse was real büring and without luminosity.

Regarding Delmore, I think you misjudge him. I hope you will like
his enormous opus soon to appear - GENESIS. M Van Doren and Matthiessen
have read it and reported very favourably to me. Now do try to approach
it with a fresh intention.

This Arrom sounds good. Who he? Could I write him and try to wangle
a blurb outen him? We are going to make a serious drive on the collitches
and a word from Yale would be dandy. To this end I hope you HURRY with
this volume. If we can get samples to the hands of prof before term
starts we have a much better chance of having them order it for a text.
Much money there. So do to hurry, do.

& do you believe in Faith or Works?

NEW
DIRECTIONS

NORFOLK
CONNECTICUT

August 18

Stargazer -

I have suggested to the Episcopal Gent that we subvert from the permissions fund for to pay the notes translations. Do you approve?

I am hesitant to put forward myself as the book runs much longer than we planned and is going to set me back a wicked penny.

In any case, press forward sine delayum on having somebody make that translations of them notes.

Book will not be out till late October as things stand now. You have to allow a month between time review copies go out and official pub date, or else they just omit to review the book.

I think Tom Boggs did get out that anthology. He also got out some advertising match booklets. Me personally I like the matches.

No word yet from London regarding the Penguin anthology. Mayhap the cod and the gadabut are perusing your cryptogrins?

jam e s

Why don't you write for me a poetry textbook, on how to read, approxilate and etc good as opposed to bad permits?

October 19, 1943

Mr. James Laughlin
New Directions Press
Norfolk, Conn.

Dear Mr. Laughlin:

Many thanks for your letter of October 16th. I
am awaiting a proof of the table of contents pages which you
have instructed the printer to send me.

Regarding payment to the contributors, I suggest
that you send the list which Mr. Pereyra mailed you to Fitts
in order that he might make his recommendations. I am also
writing to Pereyra to find out whether he has made any commit-
ments for cash payments.

Copies of the jacket for the anthology have been
received and present a most attractive appearance.

LF

cc: Mr. D. de Pereyra
Mr. D. Fitts

NEW
DIRECTIONS

NORFOLK
CONNECTICUT

Monday

Inspired Sir -

I have written sweet nothings to Benjamin how
it was some other bad body not thee who got
thou and mus mixed up about the permissions
money. It seems, selon the 12th & select child,
that we were supposed to spend 1650 for them.
No great matter.

I note with appovalabation in his last dispatch that he hopes to pick up a little extra money to take care of odd items & your amelioration.

That Blanca Castellon does not seem to have cashed her check or anything. Is she still abiding bei Don Francisco Lopez Dominguez, like you did say? Or should I write her otherly where?

I would have written sooner but have been busy
with the arrival of a small male child. I have
no doubt you noted the bombardment of the
heavens the other night and the passage of
seven cranes in opposite directions across
the bloody sky. His name is Paul. There is
little doubt left that he will be president
to start with.

The attached artwork is sent purely for its
art interest. Or do you suffer from bad collections?

James

NEW YORK OFFICE : 67 WEST 44TH STREET

October 30, 1942

Dear Mr. Laughlin:

Thank you for your letter of October 25th, enclosing the signed
vouchers. The attached statement is a record of all receipts
now in this office. I presume this covers all the editorial and
translation costs you have had to date, including the $24.75 for
Blanca Castellon.

You will notice that our records show a total expenditure for
translation costs of $1,549.70, leaving $50.30 from the allotted
$1600.00.

We are now attempting to obtain an additional $200.00 under the
contract in order to pay those translators who gave Pitts addi-
tional assistance, and also to compensate him for his incidental
expenses. I will let you know as soon as I have definite word
about this.

To date, we have not received a copy of the table of contents
which you said the printer was going to send us. Will you please
see that I get about three of these as soon as possible? I will
then get in touch with Pereyra regarding his commitments and
relay the information back to you.

Enclosure:
List of Signed Receipts
LP

CC: Mr. Dudley Pitts

ALTA LODGE

ALTA, UTAH

Post office, Sandy, Utah

RICHARD DURRANCE

JAMES LAUGHLIN

Xtian & Cultured Sir -

Rehabilitations is this Governor Lehmann business to keep the conquered (?) nations from starving etc. I don't know whether I shall get the job but am trying hard. I hope to be French or Wop interpreter for some big time grocery men who knpws all about beans and vitamins I feel a young man should get about a little in this one solitary life. Not that this is an endorsement on my part of the present Affair. Frar from that. I have no desire to shoot anybody but some of my wife's relatives. But this reconstruction is a fine humanitarian thing that a person can put his metal to.

Well if I get it I hope you will take over the guidance of ND. You could do it readily in three or four hours a day, perhaps less. Very few mss require reading. It would be just a matter of following up projects and seeing that people's books were as good as they could make them. Also collecting tweleve poeticules per anum. You wouldn't have to stir out of Andover. All promotion details would handle from the selling office, and Miss Evans ( Overbrook Press ) would be induced to handle the production. You would just clunk the nad mss, encourage any good ones and keep the various projects stirring as hard as the paper rationing would allow. I would suggest $100 a month. If it took you more time it could be more, but I think that would handle it.

Of course I probably won't get the job account of my sinister Social Credit past and moral lapses.

Pleased to hear you have started on Carrion. I haven't heard anything from Loth yet re the subsidy, but his first letter on the subject indicated he could swing it.

We'll print 1500 in July. 2nd ptg. Can't spare paper for more. Later after war we will photograph a 3rd ed

In the Wasatch Mountains (National Forest). Just above Salt Lake City.

Elev. 8600 ft.

★ Ski Chair Lift

Alpine Touring

ALTA LODGE

ALTA, UTAH

Post office, Sandy, Utah

RICHARD DURRANCE

JAMES LAUGHLIN

April 10

Representative Figure in Liberal US Literature

Dear Sir -

I have looked at the Carrion and that seems like
a good poem and he suitable if there are more as
good.

Yes I mean to include the spinach. That would be
20 and 20 as each bloke gets 40. Plus a little
critical note by youse on the bloke.

Now how much mon shall I ask for for you from
Brother Loth for doing this work. 100? I think
that much he would give without much trouble.

If you approve all this maybe you better wire me
so I can write to him and get the ball rolling
as time it do fly and flieg.

Yuss swift might be nice, but we have already
Melville for 1944 so twouldn't be till 1945, but
bear it in mind.

I think we have about 3 or 400 books left after
selling the govt their 300. Would like to print
another ed but whence cometh the paper? what with
the quotas. More of this anon. A bitter problem.

Yuss we got butter n everything in Utor. But
tis an incult locality and the soul must feed
on nature and sweet man alone.

Regardfully youren,

Xavier Ambiguyan, the Human Comic

In the Wasatch Mountains (National Forest). Just above Salt Lake City.
Elev. 8600 ft. ★ Ski Chair Lift ★ Alpine Touring

ALTA LODGE

ALTA, UTAH

CHARLES O. BISHOP

JAMES LAUGHLIN

Post office, Sandy, Utah

Dear Star of Heaven

Oh Shadow of Earth

Implacable scientist of hearts

Wisdom's girth -

Sir -

Do you have any feelingful opines about a Chilean epic
hight the ARAUCANIAD?

Two Vanderbilt profs have translated same,

It reminds me of somnolent moments in G B Weston's course
on Italian horrors, but perhaps it may be a very worthy
panamerican thing

The princes of this earth are bricklayers

They are in much demand and make two bucks per hour

They are overbearing, wayward and insolent

Them bstrads, they make me feel sour

yr friend A WALL

In the Wasatch Mountains (National Forest). Just above Salt Lake City.
Elev. 8600 ft. Two Ski Chair Lifts Ski School Alpine Touring

NEW
DIRECTIONS

NORFOLK
CONNECTICUT

Alta, 18 Mai

Karpathian Kid -

Yr melifluous phrases to Sig Carrion are a delight to the concupizing
ear and I am duly grateful for your rectification of my iggurance.
I attend his responses have dispatched with the flight of the octane
bird.

Sir if Genesis causes you pain imagine just what it causes me. I
tried and tried to keep that opus in the bard's trunk, buthe would
have it out. I fear the parting of the roads has come from Delmore
unto me. I have mortally wounded his egotroid by telling him
what a dull work I consider this to be. As Brother Levin says, self
pity is not a very broad subject for a wuk of ut.

Attend with antixapation the review in Lettras. They usually send
that to me but it hasn't come through yet. The fust edition was
3000 copies and it is nearly all went. Govt bt 300, perhaps 200
went out for review but rest were all cash sales. I am still more
or less in the hole on it - for the size it shd have sold for
5.00 - but cheerful. Tis a monument to kulture.

Sir you have got a long memory, which portends I hope not a short
thing. I mean that an old married woman like Fletcher Wardwell shd
thus longly stick in yr maw. Curiously the name of her papa is
graven in letters of stone over the fireplace of this building
as he was one of the receivers of the railroad, so poetically
hesited, Denver & Rio Grande, which originally built the place.
Oh it gives me a tunn some cold mornings. Carries me back to
that green grasss all around Bennington and me getting the trembles
from the awful approach of a chaste maiden's chastehed buss. Oh
truly sir youth is a time of great pain and sorrow.

Well, it snows and it snowsand the little flars cannot yet poke
their small green hedes above the enveloping mantle of oimon
white, try what they will it snows and snows, howsoeaver the
waters to roar and rush in the creekbottom which betideneth a
proximate change.

Yr Friend, Sidecar, Bishop of Tyre

Revered Prophet -

FFC Huidekoper declares that you are a golf
player. Sir, I did not know you hid this secret
vice. Will you stop at naught?

I am penning Roth I mean toth today about 150
for translating Carrion. Will also have Miss
Flack - a lovely name, a name that breathes
of lerv - apply for the volumes.

In the meanwhic I hope you will twiddle with
such Carrion poems as you have handy.

Yuss we are going to print about 1500 or so
more of the Anthology ere the type is d Haupt.
will you send me soon directions for any
changes or corrections.

I wrote Em Benet. We charge $5 per poem for
anthologists from that boke if they encoure.

Good Dr if sweet God speaks to you as you
dream in the night write and betell me what
is the sentence of his remarks. In this
land there are not much wonders or visions
these days.

Robt FitzG's poems are realy purty. He has
got a certain style and feeling.

If I get me a job in the Rahabillations would
youse like to edit ND programs during my
awayance? What would this cost? 98% of the
mss are returnable on instant view. Projects
would be abt the same, if paper qu tas allow.
NY office handles all the commercial aspects.

yr fren

Looey Pshaw

Box 397 : Centerville & Mass.

17 July 1941

dear Jay:

In re this Defense job: John Bishop, whom I saw last Sunday at his house in Chatham, tells me that all the details of the making of the book are to be solved by you, me, & God. Of the $3,000 bucks which he has got from the Government, $500 seem to be assigned to the payment of copyright fees &c; $1,700 for the payment of translators, &c; $500 to me, for selecting, assigning, and generally getting the book ready for the printer; $100 to Dudley Poore, for his work on Brasil. What happens to the rest, ¿quién sabe?

When we started on this thing in N.Y., John said that he thought that the translators should be paid at $10 a page. In my letters to them I have been a bit cautious, saying that the payment wd not be less than $8 or more than $10 a page -- and by 'page', I meant page of verse. At this rate, it would seem that we can afford a maximum of 170 pages of english verse, which, what with heads & biographical notes and indices and acknowledgments and the opposite spanish text and a very brief preface, wd probably make a book of about 300 pages. Now there are some things that I should like to get clear in my mind.

1] How large a 'page' do you contemplate? I mean, how many lines (approximately) of verse, supposing a page in the middle of a long poem? I don't suppose we want to jam poems together; but I discover this afternoon, having covered only Bolivia, Colombia, and PARTS of México, Cuba, Chile, Perú, Argentina and Ecuador, that Cornelia hay typed out 47 poems, most of them one page each -- some less, certainly, such as sonnets & brief lyrics --; and this before I have had a chance really to get my teeth into the great mass of material that is arriving daily. Suppose we use a rather small type & do not start a new page with every poem -- here are at least 50 pp., maybe more. O.K.?

2] How are you going about getting translation permissions? I am blandly going ahead & choosing whatever I like, on the assumption that all will be well. Do you want me to send you a record of each poem as soon as it is chosen & translated? With the title of the book it comes from, or the anthology? It has proved hard to get books, and the job is a rush one, so I am depending a great deal on anthologies; and latinamerican anthological texts often do not give sources.

3] I have told the translators that their payment is up to the Gov. and to you. You get the dough, I take it, as soon as the appropriation is made -- which shd be any day now. Is this statement correct? I don't want suddenly to find myself out on a limb, and I'm sure that you don't.

4] My translators, to date, are: Rolfe Humphries, Richard O'Connell, and Donald Walsh. Flores has sent in one long poem, with others on the way; Bill Williams told John that he would serve, but has not yet had time to answer my letter to him; I want to get Hays to do some of the surréaliste stuff, as soon as John sends me his address; and Ortiz de Montellano's wife is sending her translation of one of his poems -- a rather long one, too -- from México. I have asked Archie to do one, and want Jed Taggard to, too. I am a lousy business man, and all I am doing is my little song--&-dance about $8-$10, you, John, and the Gov't. Check?

5] John suggested in NY that Hays, maybe, cd be prevailed upon to write a very brief prefatory note to each author. Wd you be willing to sequester some of the dough for that purpose. And do you want a bibliography?

6] I am putting in about ten hours a day on this job, and Cornelia is doing almost as much -- typing all the texts, because I can't send Gov't books about the country. I hope to get a more or less fixed table of contents into John's hands by the end of the month. And of course I am working on the Palatine -- have about twenty poems done now. But this has to take immediate precedence, of course.

Lemme know these things, Sorr, if you c. and w.:

Dudley

Box 397
Centerville, Mass
21 August 1941

Dear Jakob:

Life, as I used frequently to say to my classes, is funny. This p:m I finished the Greek job, rushed it into an envelope, stamped it, and posted it to New Directions. This evening your letter came, telling me to send it to Alta Lodge. I hope no harm has been done, and that Erskine will send it on to you.

I don't like the book. . . most of it. Some of the pieces I know are good, but I am no longer in that vein, I don't feel the stuff in the way I used to, and I am frankly puzzled by these 50. For there are fifty poems, although most of them are of three or four lines, and some of them only of two -- a neat job, I sad think, for your typographer. But in bigish type, and some pages with only one or two poems artistically centered -- oh, it otta go; it's gotta. Unless it depresses you so much that you'd rather not publish it at all: and honestly, I'd be glad if you didn't! I think that I've let you down badly on this job; but I know that the Gk Tongue, or the auld spirit of the Hellenes, has let me down. Not that I can't decipher same: I just don't admire what I find said.

As for arrangement: it isn't arbitrary, as you will see; but you may think that the book ends on too sour a note. If so, rearrange the poems in any order you like, ONLY be sure that you make corresponding changes in the index.

Proofs: my address, after 1 Sept., will be Adams Hall, Phillips Academy, ANDOVER, Massachusetts. Andover, note, not Exeter.

Title: FIETY MORE EPIGRAMS FROM THE GREEK / in English Paraphrase / by DF. OK? -- Also, I shd like to have, as a title-page device, the red (if poss.; if not, black) _thêta_ that appears on the Alcestis, Antigone, and Oedipus Coloneus title pages. Suely Morley, at Harcourt, will send you the die; and if it is too large, have it rejuiced. I really want this. . . it's sort of the family trademark.

John has apparently wangled an extra $50 out of the gov't to reimburse Hays for his notes, so that's all right. Hays is letting me down, too -- I can't go into detail here, but I have to correct his translations as one corrects kids' themes, for simple errors in reading. If he were doing Latin, he would say that 'vendere' means 'come', because it begins with 'ven-'. Well? But he may snap into action, as I lately wrote him that I was running a project, not a kindergarten. But these are my griefs, not yours.

Your grief is, for X(our Saviour)'s sake, to start some of that half-grand rolling my way. Even if the contract hasn't been signed, it is a sure thing -- sure enough for me to work exactly two months at an average of nine hours a day, for gothing, yet, and it shd be sure enough for youse. I have been counting on it for the first of Sept., and I shall be treed if something doesn't forthcome.

Diómedes de Pereyra, by the way, is taking care of the translation-rights through John's office. In Spanish. John thought this better than Emily, as do I.

Pax, comrade, Pax!