remember when I used to write and send you fifteen or twenty or more stories a month, and later, three or four or five—and mostly, at least, one a week. From New Orleans and Frisco and Miami and L.A. and Philly and St. Louis and Atlanta and Greenwich Village and Houston and everyplace else.
I used to sit up by an open window in New Orleans and look down at the summer streets of night and touch those keys, and when I sold my typewriter in Frisco to get drunk on, I couldn’t stop writing, and I couldn’t stop drinking either, so I hand-printed my crap out in ink for years, and later decorated same crap with drawings to make you notice them.
Well, they tell me I can’t drink now, and I’ve got another typewriter. I’ve got a job of a sort now but don’t know how long I’ll hold it. I’m weak and I get sick easy, and I’m nervous all the time and guess I’ve got a couple of short-circuits somewhere, but with it, I feel like touching those keys again, touching them and making lines, a stage, a set-up, making people walk and talk and close doors. And now, there’s no more Story.
But I want to thank you, Burnett, for bearing with me. I know a lot of it was poor. But those were good days, the days of 438 Fourth Ave. 16, and now like everything else, the cigarettes and the wine and the cock-eyed sparrows in the half-moon, it’s all gone. A sorrow heavier than tar. Goodbye, goodbye.
[To Caresse Crosby]
December 9, 1954
I received your letter from Italy a year or so ago (in response to mine). I wish to thank you for remembering me. It built me up some to hear from you.
Are you still publishing? If so, I have something I’d like you to see. And if you are, I’d like an address to send it to: I don’t know how to reach you.
I’m writing again, a little. [Charles] Shattuck of Accent says he doesn’t see how I can find a publisher for my stuff, but that perhaps someday “public taste will catch up with you.” Christ.
You sent me a pamphlet of a sheaf or something in Italian last year in your letter. You have mistaken me for an educated man: I couldn’t read it. I am not even a real artist—know I am a fake of some sort—sort of write from the bowels of disgust, almost entirely. Yet, when I see what the others are doing, I go on with it. What else is there to do? [ . . . ]
This factotum has another menial job. I hate it, but I have two pairs of shoes for the first time in my life (I like to doll up for the track—playact for the real railbird character). I have been living for the past 5 years with a woman 10 years older than I. But I have gotten used to her and I am too tired to search or to break.
Please let me have your editorial address if you are still publishing, and thank you again for being kind enough to remember me and write.
1955
[To Whit Burnett]
February 27, 1955
Thank you for the return of old stories; and the enclosed note.
I’m doing a little better now, though I almost died in the charity ward of the General Hospital. They sure mess up there, and if you’ve ever heard anything about the place, it’s probably true. I was there 9 days and they sent me a bill for $14.24 a day. Some charity ward. Wrote a story about it called “Beer, Wine, Vodka, Whiskey; Wine, Wine, Wine” and sent it to Accent. They sent it back: . . . “quite a bloody spate. Perhaps, some day, public taste will catch up with you.”
My God. I hope not. [ . . . ]
By the way, in your note you said you had never printed me. Do you have a copy of Story, March-April 1944?
Well, I’m 34 now. If I don’t make it by the time I’m 60, I’m just going to give myself 10 more years.
1956
The poem “A Note to Carl Sandburg” remains unpublished; A Place to Sleep the Night was abandoned after Doubleday rejected a few chapters.
[To Carol Ely Harper]
November 13, 1956
The poems you mentioned are still available—I do not keep carbons and so do not recall the poems completely but am particularly pleased with your accepting “A Note to Carl Sandburg.” This is a poem I wrote mostly to myself, not thinking anybody would have the courage to publish it.
I am 36 years old (8-16-20) and was first published (a short story) in Whit Burnett’s Story mag back in 1944. Then a few stories and poems in 3 or 4 issues of Matrix about the same time, and a story in Portfolio. As you know, these mags are now deceased. And, oh yes, a story and a couple of poems in something called Write that came out once or twice and then gave it up. Then for 7 or 8 years I wrote very, very little. It was quite a drunk. I ended up in the charity ward of the hospital with holes in my belly, heaving up blood like a waterfall. I took a 7 pint continuous transfusion—and lived. I am not the man I used to be but I’m writing again.
Received a note from Spain yesterday from Mrs. Hills informing me that one of my poems has been accepted for Quixote. And I am to have some stories and poems featured in the next edition of Harlequin, a new magazine that put out its first copy in Texas and has now moved to L.A. They have asked me to join the editorial staff which I have done. And it is quite an experience; and this is what I have learned: that there are so many, many writers writing that can’t write at all, and they keep right on writing all the clichés and bromides, and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the “i’s” small, or, or, or!!! . . . Well, you see, I can’t join the Experiment Group but I am honored that you might have asked me in. There simply—as you must know from your nervous breakdown—isn’t enough time—I have my trivial, tiring, low-paying job 44 hours a week, and I am going to night school 4 nights a week, two hours a night, plus an added hour or two home work. I am taking a course in Commercial Art for the next couple of years, if I last (this is the night school deal), and besides this, I have just started my first novel, A Place to Sleep the Night. I am being very profuse in telling you all this, so if I don’t send you a couple of one-minute plays, you’ll know why. However, if I know myself, you will get some attempts from me. I don’t think, though, that the play-form stirs me as it should. We’ll see.
1958
The four poems mentioned below were printed in the first issue of Nomad in 1959.
[To the editors of Nomad]
September 1958
I am gratified that you found 4 poems that you liked. This is quite a wholesale number and a shot in the arm for quite some time to come. Either the poetry field is opening up or I am, or we both are. Anyhow, it’s nice, and I must allow myself a feeling of niceness once in a while. [ . . . ]
About me, I must seem pretty old to be about beginning in poetry: I was 38 on this last August l6th and feel, look and act a hell of a lot older. I’ve been working with poetry the last couple of years after about a 10 year blank, self-inflicted I suppose, and rather unhappy but not without its moments. I’m not one to look back on wanton waste as complete loss—there’s music
