Beerspit Night and Cursing (47 page)

Tommie Yee
: a fashion photographer prominent in New York City in the 1940s.

The Psyche
: apparently a new version of an older painting of hers.

A.D.L.
: Anti-Defamation League.

Suzie Wongs
: the 1960 movie
The World of Suzie Wong
concerns a Hong Kong prostitute who falls in love with the artist for whom she poses.

Leoun…Cocteau
: this long poem, admired by Pound, was first published in 1945 and later appeared (in Alan Neame’s English translation) in
Agenda
as the complete contents of its Dec. 1960-Jan. 1961 issue, which
CB
later comments on (see his letter of “almost December” 1961). Cocteau’s film
La Belle et la Bête
(1946) features “couches leaping out on halloween masks” among other effects.

Examiner
: the
San Francisco Examiner
, one of the city’s major newspapers.

The Life of Borodin
: first appeared in
Quicksilver
(Autumn 1958), rpt. in
BW
(19), where CB changed the title back to “On the Steppes…,” even though
In the Steppes
is indeed the standard translation of the Russian composer’s symphonic piece.

“
ever-present English woman
”: Pound’s British-born wife, Dorothy Shakespear.

married to a millionaire’s daughter
: though Frye’s family was wealthy, CB is greatly exaggerating here, as he did elsewhere.

SEBELIUS
: Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), Finnish composer.

Walker…yr A and P
: a drawing of Walker by SM did indeed appear on the cover of issue #5, which CB received at the end of January.

Signature…Targets #4
: pp. 13-20 of issue 4 of
Targets
was published separately as
A Signature of Charles Bukowski Poetry
in December 1960.

Horse on Fire
: one of the poems in
A Signature
, concerning Pound and Canto 90; rpt. in
RM
(70). See Appendix 1 for SM’s comments.

Lord Beaconsfield
: i.e, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), author and prime minister of England.

Bastinado!
: usually a beating, but here probably a play on
Basta!
(Italian: “enough!”).

Pax vobiscum
: Latin: “Peace be with you.”

Grove Press
: at the time, the most important publisher (along with New Directions) of avant-garde writing in the U.S.

took you to task about it in A & P
: SM reviewed
A Signature of Charles Bukowski Poetry
—with special attention to “Horse on Fire”—in the next issue of
A&P
. (See Appendix 1 and notes to CB’s postcard of 30 January 1961 below.)

Hokusai
: Japanese artist (1760-1849).

Coke books
: Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), English jurist. His
Institutes of the Laws of England
is frequently quoted in Cantos 107-109.

Conrad Aiken
: American poet and novelist (1889-1973).

a poem of mine about fory
: “Letter from the North,” rpt. in
RM
(120).

Fastest Insight Alive
: unidentified.

mid fan. 1961
: SM dated this letter January 14, but the reference to Kennedy’s inauguration invalidates this date.

Kennedy…Frost
: references to the inauguration ceremony for John F. Kennedy on 20 January 1961, at which Frost read his poem “The Gift Outright.”

prof in the English dept. of Louisiana State University
: John William Corrington; for CB’s response, which he quotes below, see
LL
9-10. (Cf. CB’s earlier use of the aphorism in his letter of 12 October 1960 above.)

Millers kissing Monroe
: dramatist Arthur Miller was married to actress Marilyn Monroe.

Barrymore
: John Barrymore (1882-1942) was remembered for his portrayal of Hamlet in the 1924-25 season.

Dos Passos and Koestler
: John Dos Pass os (1896-1970) and Arthur Koestler (1905-1983), politically active novelists.

Nora
: Nora D. Lyden, a contributor to
A&P
.

C. Day Lewis in the Sat. Ev. Post
: the English poet and critic’s essay “The Making of a Poem” appeared in the 21 January 1961 issue of the
Saturday Evening Post
. Charlie McCarthy was a famous ventriloquist’s dummy.

A and P
: issue #5, published January 1961. It contains four poems by CB, none of them collected in book form: “I Get All the Breaks,” “Poem for My Little Dog Who Also Growls Quite Well,” “Scaled Like a Fish,” and “A Disorganized Poem on a Disorganized Day, with Women Running in and out and the Price of Beer up 2¢ a Can” (reprinted in Appendix 2).

Murakami …Walker
: other contributors to this issue: Masayoshi Murakami has four poems (one entitled “Bamboo,” hence CB’s postscript); Arthur Richer two poems; Clarence Major contributed three poems as well as a review of CB’s
Flower, Fist & Bestial Wail
; Richard Gumbiner has an essay entitled “Some Notes Taken at the Museo National de Mexico”; Jory Sherman a poem entitled “Little Breath Prayer”; Samuel F. Lewis an untitled poem of light verse concerning Robert Graves and Robert Frost; Walker has a poem entitled “Sheri” printed on the front and back covers, as well as six poems within.

Norman and Buk
: SM’s own contributions to this issue include a scathing review of Charles Norman’s biography
Ezra Pound
(1960) and one on
A Signature of Charles Bukowski
(reprinted in Appendix 1)

sleepin’ wit the white gals
: a reference to Major’s poem “Chicago Scene” in this issue of
A&P
.

drawings…with comments
: these appeared in
A&P
#6; see Appendix 2.

“
Isis” and not “Ra Set”
: SM was thinking here of her painting
Princess Ra Set
; she forgot that there is a photograph of her ceramic work
Ra Set
in
La Martinelli
, which also includes her
Isis of the Two Kingdoms
.

YR OBJECTION…IN FORTHCOMING
A & P
: these never appeared.

Masa
: Masayoshi Murakami.

Vermont Ave
.: the address of L.A. City College, which CB attended 1939-41.

I would…men’s believing
: the concluding lines of Pound’s early poem “An Immortality” (
Ripostes
, 1912).

the Pound-thing
: CB’s “Horse on Fire.”

Walter Winchell
: radio and TV personality (1897-1972), known for his gossipy style.

SaRet
: that is, Ra Set: see note to SM’s letter of 14 February 1964 below.

kaja
: pen name of Kaye Johnson, a poet.

“
moth going…an hr
”: from “Hooray Say the Roses,” in
Outsider
1 (Fall 1961); rpt. in
BW
(27).

Pay Yr Rent or Get Out
: also in the first issue of
Outsider
, rpt. in
It Catches My Heart in Its Hands
(1963).

Wilder Bently
: Bentley was an acquaintance of SM’s, otherwise unknown.

next a & p…poem for the dead whore
: CB’s “Poem for Liz” appeared in
APR
#6; rpt. in
RM
(195-96), and in Appendix 2.

The Flowering of the Rod
: from the
Selected Poems
SM urged CB to buy.

Lux in Diafana…Ursula benedetta
: the titles of two paintings by SM mentioned in Canto 93, from which she quotes.

blurbs Webb sent
: for the first issue of
Outsider
.

Longshot Poems for Broke Players
: a chapbook published later that year (not 1962, as usually given); see CB’s letter of “Late Oct. ’61,” below.

Layover…Lay Over
: originally published in the
Naked Ear
#9 (as indicated later in the letter), rpt. in
RM
(51).

Judson Crews
: prolific writer and editor for small presses and magazines.

Gil Orlovitz: Act of the Sonnet…stealing one of my lines
: that is,
Art of the Sonnet
, one of Orlovitz’s (1918-1973) better-known books of poetry.

some lines…bird-light
:
SM
had criticized these lines in her review of
A Signature of Charles Bukowski
.

Muss…Carlotta somebody
?: Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were executed on 27 April 1945 and then hung from their feet from a scaffold.

hung Ben from his heels
: echoes the opening of
The Pisan Cantos
: “Thus Ben and la Clara a
Milano
/ by the heels at Milano” (74/445).

Elizabeth Bartlett
: a California writer.

Ferlinghetti…censorship fight
: over his publication of Ginsberg’s
Howl
. His novel
Her
was published by New Directions in 1960.

Whalen
: Philip Whalen (1923-), San Francisco poet.

7 Poets Press…Larsen
: Carl Larsen edited CB’s
Longshot Pomes
[sic]
for Broke Players
.

Pagliaccia
: Pagliacci
, Leoncavallo’s famous opera.

Winters, Lowell, Ransom, Tate
: major American poets at the time.

Alaric
: Visigoth king and conqueror (370?-410).

Spad
: a French fighter plane.

d.p.’s son Omar Pound
: Dorothy Shakespear’s son (1926-), raised by Pound as his own.

eeeezzzzesss
: Isis, the Egyptian goddess.

stancioff family
: a well-to-do family that SM stayed with intermittently during the 1950s while visiting Pound.

“
bright hawk…shall chain
”: from Canto 91 (635).

gautier
: Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), French sculptor, championed by Pound.

Pascin
: Jules Pascin (1885-1930), Bulgarian-born American painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.

beverly
: Beverly Applebaum, a poetry contributor to
A&P
.

red and square-shaped thing
: SM’s portrait
Daw oo
.

McNaughton kitty
: William McNaughton (see note to SM’s letter of 20 December 1960 above).

pound’s usury canto
: Canto 45.

american mercury
: a magazine founded by 18H. L. Mencken in 1924 that had become extremely right-wing by the 1960s.

Rick Beck-Meyer
: unidentified.

My book: Longshot Pomes for Broke Players
would appear in October.

Mummy:
four of CB’s poems were published in an issue of
Mummy
in 1962.

white niggers:
probably a reference to Norman Mailer’s influential essay “The White Negro” (1957).

H.D. issue: A&P
#6 was dedicated to the dying poet and contains several essays on her work by SM. CB contributed “Poem for Liz” and five pages of captioned drawings: see Appendix 2.

book with college prof.:
never published.

death of H.D
.: she died 27 September 1961.

x-wife…magazine
: Frye’s
Harlequin
.

Vegas
: rpt. in
BW
(33-34), part of which reads: “I said, there’s some gal up North who used to / sleep with Pound, she’s trying to tell me that H.D. / was our greatest scribe; well, Hilda gave us a few pink / Grecian gods in with the chinaware, but after reading her / I still have 140 icicles hanging from my bones.”

Pound poem for H.D
.: a puzzling reference (there is no Pound poem for H. D. in this issue of
A&P
); perhaps a poem Pound included in his compliments on the H.D. issue, which were conveyed to SM by a mutual acquaintance.

recordi
: Italian: “remember.”

serenitas
: Lat.: “brightness” (Canto 111/803).

The Day…out the Window
: this and the following poems are from
Longshot Pomes
; titles have been supplied in brackets after SM’s page references.

roohoooshuns wd dream of beating a donkey
: an allusion to Raskolnikov’s dream in Dostoevski’s
Crime and Punishment
(1866).

Rev. H. Swabey
: Henry Swabey, an Anglican clergyman and occasional reviewer for
Agenda
; he corresponded with Pound on Social Credit.

sue Nation magazine
: SM was so incensed at David Rattray’s description of her in his
Nation
article “Weekend with Ezra Pound” (16 November 1957) that she wanted to sue him, but was talked out of it by Dorothy Shakespear.

icor
: ichor: an ethereal blood, the blood of gods (Canto 91/631).