Beerspit Night and Cursing (22 page)

I have this extra copy of the
La Martinelli
book of paintings that Mr. Pound kindly had printed for me…and I want you to accept it.

The work is all from the past 10 years & it is all now
scattered around the world. The little clay head in front is now with Ezra in Italy…The St. Liz Madonna is in London…the Giotto is with Ez in Italy…The Patria is with him also…the Cleofe Santa is with my middle sister…the Isis is at Castle Brunnenberg in the Tirolo…the Daw oo is up at Yale in the collection there…the Chi’ang is with my younger sister…the Ra Set is in Rapallo with Mrs. Pound…the Leucothoe also with Ezra & the portrait…& the artist is over in Tunitas Creek…a likely spot for one.

I want to write: “the grooviest” post master but I cdn’t recall how one spells “grooviest” so erased & wrote as is & do mean it/

Sheri M
.

Los Angeles
Feb. 6, 1961

Dear Sheri:

Thank you for St. Benedict and olibanum and
La Martinelli
, copy #377. If you grow angry with me, as is sometimes your wont, I will return the 3 to you as I do not wish to posess anything of yours that will spoil your spirit or cause regret; but meanwhile, assuming that we are still on terms, I accept these fine gifts with honor and with love.

I have been very ill, but St.’s around my neck, so maybe things will change. Can you imagine Buk, the great Hun, walking around the block on a Sunday, asking the sun to warm him back to life?

I liked your
Cleofe Santa
and then
Ra Set
but the paintings are hard to separate because the main source remains similar. Which means you have not bothered to lie.

Re Major: it disturbs me to think that M. believes modern poets prefer Ray Charles to Mozart, especially when he is discussing Bukowski. It also disturbs me to believe that Major would think Bukowski is the type who would come right out and say: “ssssssssssshit it’s beautiful!” And if Major in his fantasy wants to screw white girls in the park, why hell, let him do it,
of course. Only I would say it shows weakness of soul. Major is full of enthusiasms, young enthusiasms, about art and people and ideas, and when this wears thin, as it must, I wonder where he will stand? Murakami, on the other hand, is tough but good. He drinks the world, touches it, walks away from it, enjoys it, despises it, then sits down and says: “…it is so.”

I got no Uncle Leon; I got Buk, and that’s it.

Yes, he who keeps tenderness is strong…if he does not wear it like a medal.

The rape business is all too much for me. I return clipping as per request.

If you want to use
drawings in next A and P with comments
, sure, ok, only I don’t remember too much what they were about, only got the idea after mailing them that you might think me vulgar tho I only meant a kind of Confucian fun-poking about the obvious.

What do the trees sing, Sheri? What do the trees say? I think it good, I think it best if we do not quite understand the song or the words.

I am still pretty weak and will close this one early.

New Orleans Webb asked for some new poems, and I wrote him off 5 or 6 new ones yesterday which I must now type up and send off.

“The whore of Denver

or the koo-koo bird

will never know

what makes us carry

carry on so…”

loooove,

Charles the Buk

8/feb/61 s.m. pobx 46 san gregorio calif

dear buk/ the presents are now yrs forever & don’t return no matter
WHAT
I say or do/ yes St. will help—Of course I can imagine the Sun supplicated to warm the great Hun…as Sun is
the Greater Hun of you two/ you must mean
“Isis” and not “Ra Set”
as no Ra Set yet in print…but got one on wall currently trying to finish

LISTEN LET ME USE
YR OBJECTION TO CLARENCE MAJOR’S MISCONCEPTIONS IN FORTHCOMING A &
P WILLYA?? I AGREE WITH YOU I’D LEAVE OUT ANY REMARKS YOU WANT BUT TO CORRECT THE MOZART BIT & “SHITTTT’S BEAUT…ETC” IS IMPORTANT…I CDN’T AT TIME AS THERE WAS TOO MUCH OF ME ALREADY IN
but you can now via letter straighten the yg chappie…yes Murakami is tough but there is a civilisation in Japan…& cannibalism in Africa—transplaning cannibals does not change their inborn paideumic (culture-cells) patterns

Maj eats Art whole/ etc white girls—but that is a social pattern—actually it is status & not sex prompting it/ it wd be very dangerous for a white girl to marry a black or brown man right now because when race war comes his status wd change & he’d sacrifice her in a shot

yes
Masa
is a beautiful soul…yr drawings are excellent & I’d send you a proof sheet before printing so’s you cd see if yr comments are wot you mean…they are very funny & disdainful in a witty way/ never think you “vulgar”

Babe—none of us can figure out wot the trees are saying…we just hear them talk & sing/ I heard them say “sheri” but that’d be fanciful/ once when the female next cot[tage] was contemplating suicide…I went out down path & Tree sang in my ear & I thot it was female coming to bother me on my seagazin’ & turned & saw no one & hot foot’d it over & in time to save weeping drinking girl…That time I clearly heard a human voice singing a beautiful melody & right in my ear…first coming up from behind me & then in ear & then all around me—very scary—but lovely humming melody such as a girl wd make who was on way over to neighbor to warn of her coming…but a beautiful cultured girl…a dear sweet melody—after that…the Tree snorted once…no 2cd at me/ the time they spoke in
english it seemed to be a male & a female & the male was telling the female to put something or other on a counter—it was loud & clear & very much in english & the female said something that I cant recall

Their songs sound (accord. to the others & me too) like “Hollywood movie music for a spooky movie” question is: “
HOW
do those hollywood people know the exact sound
IF
they’ve never heard it?” very interesting question

“New Orleans Webb” ved goodttt & now is grow. dusk & must light fires & cook/ was down on beach for 1hr1/2 walk & playin with new pup who is adorable

& so long dear Buk & lemme kno about tellin’ Cl. Major/ the trees are singing right now & they sing every night & all day—off & on/ they are musical have a melody & sound human but none of us can understand what they are saying/ you’d have to hear it to know what I mean/

love love love

Sheri

[
postcard dated by SM 11 February 1961
]

Deah Shed:

Yes, the trees. There is some lore there, even Tree Gods, but only so much can be discussed upon a postcard because by the time they have reached base 400 people have had a reading. It’s a good way to reach the masses, but you know what I think of the masses (cld w all f m), but back to La Martinelli, cd you look into your little book of roaring paintings running into my mind, and I say there is one…according to this…a Ra Set a claypewter idol sitting bound in say red cloth upon pedestal…can I be wrong
AGAIN
? This appears between Ch’iang and E.P. Not Isis, I would not do you the injustice of inaccuracy. Hello to Gib. Hope to get up to see you guys in mid-April. But not sure: health very bad, and in trouble on job…Because the rocket to Venus is going slower, it’ll get there faster.

L.,

Buk

L.A.
Feb. 11, 1961

Muh Sheerie:

Still sick, practical world-stuff, outside pressures, cosmic, comic, diabolical or wot…doing me pretty much in. I have been eating much, trying to get strength, but only getting idiotsoft and flabby; oh, Atilla will run me outa his army!

But wait: I will straighten the shelves yet without the bullshit of wailing. A bestial wail is all right but human simpering and sniveling will not do. But I have been feeling bad god damn god damn.

Well, on Major and the letter-thing, Mozart etc., if you still wish to use parts in some future A’n P, please use what you want and cut the rest. What I write you I write the world only you hear better than the rest. There’s a lot in Major that’s extemperanious and he tends to overshoot the mark. There’s some gluttony. And being black bristles him a bit. The trouble with the black is that they want to be white. If I were a black man I’d want to be as black as possible. Being is simply being and if you do it well that’s all that matters. Dreaming white girls in parks behind the bushes is mental masturbation. I would get myself a black girl and sing black songs and have black children. But I know what Major would say: “It’s easy for a
WHITE
man to talk like that.” But nothing is easy to say; and I measure what I say out of what I am out of similar plus and minus, yellow and green, black and white situations. In fact, I would call this present time in America…
The Adoration of the Negro
. Now a black man can do many things and we let him do many things that a white man would be chastised for…but we do not call the black down for it because then it would be “racial discrimination”. I measure men one by one, individually, and I am not afraid to say that I have met some Negroes who weren’t worth a damn…You see how
STRONG
that sounds, as if I were saying something wrong? Substitute the word “Whites” and you would call it an understatement.

And Major must not confuse an involved poetry with intellect. If Clarence would ever bother to take a paint brush in his hand he will find that the most difficult thing in Art is to make something simple. All the great secrets of the world are simple secrets, never spoken but felt.

Van Gogh was not suave. I remember when I first saw his paintings just around the corner and up the green hill on
Vermont Ave.
, silly old gals chatting and not even looking. And at first look I was disappointed. Shit, these were the paintings of a child-idiot. I don’t know. I expected music and fire. And yet and yet, I began to see the heavy child strokes. And when I got back to my place I saw them better yet. And now they have grown in me like the rings of a tree trunk. Beware the intellect: the closest line between 2 points of creation is a straight and simple line.

And talking about Art will not get it
done
.

Shed, on
the Pound-thing
…what he does with his Greek or his wot or things he might copy out of a book something dead supposed dead because it sounds like part of the words he wants to say that fit in with the words going down through him onto paper is nothing wrong and because he wanted a red shirt and got one, makes him all right enough. And because some scholar who is a scholar and not a poet finds technicalities that do not fit into the technical crossword puzzle of his
TAUGHT
brain is just too bad. But when we listen to scholars the taught brain teaching, we are listening to the dead, not just the dead in death for there are many good there but the dead in life, and this we cannot have and will not have and will
NOT
have. There is nothing correct about correctness because it is only the courage of the ex-stricken, ex-halved mob. Scholars orderly as pidgeons shitting in the park will have their small Sunday afternoon of victory. But things go on, like a red shirt walking in sunlight thinking

[
postcard dated by SM 14 February 1961
]

Deah Shed:

I see where someone in power says Kenn[ed]y’s program for medical aid for the aged is the “Idea of a bunch of socialist jerks from Harvard.” It appears to me that the reactionaries to common intelligence and decency are defeating themselves with their vocabularies,
Walter Winchell
style. I was not for Kenny too strongly at first (the face, the good-boy unsuffering appearance) but Lord, in his first few days in office he has really rolled up his sleeves. It is a shocking and heart-warming experience, and although I have never been interested in politics, I cannot help but notice. Which disproves a lot of malarky about the rich not being able to see through to the real problems. How slowly we learn, and when we have finally learned it is oh so often too late.

L.,

Buk

L.A., mid Feb. [17] ’61
[
postcard
]

Hoy, Shed!

Got yr val[entine]. Youse is good gal,
SaRet
. Most a the cussin u give me, I got comin. Just haven’t tried the olibanum yet, but will wait til my mood is peace. I don’t like to
force
, an that’s a good secret whether in poetry or life, you good gal u….my my but plenty of troubles in simple practical world now rattling old Buk’s string, but I am shouting down the petty and lifting the ol’ beer high to light and love…Fine on your trees, I like that stuff. I must find you a tree god. Don’ wurry bout wat I say on this postcard or others, knowbuddy wd unerstand b. u, good gal. Heard frum N.O.Webb, he say he takin 5 for sure outa batch I sent him, and is goin to try to work in some others. He stick type 18 hours a day, working up 4000 copies. U hard wurker too, Martin; only I iz lazy lousething,       L.,

Buk

L.A.
Late Feb. [26] ’61
[
handwritten letter with drawing of
CB at table, bottle in hand
]

Dear Sheri:

Jon Webb mailed me this mimeo of
kaja
, and not knowing what to do with it, I pass it on. kaja is a little too pure for me—there is a little too much trying—Whitman, I guess, plus the Bible. And yet she writes simply, which helps.

Also Jon sent along some pages “46,” Bukowski. It appears he is working me into the end of his book, which I take as a compliment.

Anyhow, the kaja + 46.