CS’s first letters to Jack, written in the aftermath of her resignation, reflect her anguish over secretarial work and the hopes she had for becoming an editor and a writer. Since 1975, CS had been working on a series of poems which drew on the business office for subject matter.

April 1, 1977

Dear Jack,

I was going to start this letter by telling you about the walk I took this morning. I was going to tell you simply because the sun was warm and the shops were lively and when I caught sight of myself in a mirror I was smiling . . . . I was going to tell you about the walk and the shops and the smile, except that now it’s afternoon and I’m sitting in a quiet room and I’m definitely not smiling. Nope—not smilin’, just thinkin’ about you and the UPC.

I’ve been trying to put my finger on just when my job became intolerable. I guess it all came tumbling down after my short respite in Virginia last September. (A little freedom is a dangerous thing.) Suddenly everything at work seemed so—not absurd exactly, but dumb. Cultivating authors who would never see the light of print; working on Vanguard, the world’s most forgettable “resource”; bouncing on the CE:SA see-saw, the most cumbersome publishing enterprise every perpetrated; typing memos; typing yet more memos . . . . Jack, how do you cope?

. . . . “Ah, youth!” I bet you’re saying. “So naive, so sure of itself!” Well, not really. In truth, I’m feeling antsy. With freedom comes responsibility, or some such.

Anyway . . . I actually have been writing these past few days. I’m reworking a poem called “Conversation Piece,” one of my typewriter poems, which is supposed to be a metaphor for writing poetry. (Ezra Pound once declared that the typewriter was invented for the sole purpose of writing poetry—I plan to use that quote under the title.) My earlier version is really quite silly, with a string of cutesy images. So I’m rewriting it in an entirely different tone. I’m also working on a poem called “Natural Resource” about an office water cooler, the kind with bottled mineral water. I’ve always thought of those things as a kind of blessing, a gift from the mountains right there in our sealed offices where even the air we breathe is processed and has nothing to do with sea or sky or a blue twirling planet. Nature vs. Art, and all that. It’s a good idea for a poem, and it will fit in my collection (THE BRIDES OF DETAIL), but to tell you the truth, it’s coming along lousy. Maybe you could pray for my continued inspiration. God’s a good friend of yours. He/She’d listen.

I miss you . . . . I miss you but I intend to see a lot of you. Okay? Besides, penniless me will be most grateful for any offer of a free lunch, or any free crumb, as long as you’re the beneficent one.

June 28, 1977

Dear Jack,

I’m glad you brought me the print of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Taped to the cabinets in our no-color office, it never captured me. At home now among my golds and oranges it has me riveted. Leave it to Vincent to paint a still life full of furious motion. The bloom in the north left look like a great sienna eyeball, though its jagged pupil appears blind and its petals aren’t petals at all—they look hard and stiff, like the cuticle of insects. All the flowers seem exceedingly angry; they are plucked and dying and they damn well know it! Self-conscious flowers . . . What an idea! But do you know, the strangest thing about this painting is the presence of a clashing hue—periwinkle blue, if I remember my Crayolas. In a canvas full of glowing suntints, its quirky coolness jars you. And yet, the more I stare at it (this blue middle of a gold flower), the less “cool” it seems. It’s beginning to look like the blues that swirl from a flaming gas jet—hot cooking blue. Vincent signs his name with it too.

I may not be a genius, but I’d match my nightmares to Van Gogh’s any day. Recently I dreamed that I gave birth to an enchanting baby no bigger than a child’s doll. I was filled with happiness and couldn’t stop toying with its fingers or carrying it about. Then I placed it on what I thought was a smooth, clean surface. I blinked, and realized I had placed my small perfect baby on a mound of steaming excrement. Horrible!

And then, just a few nights ago, I had a confusing dream which took place at my parent’s house. (You can take the girl out of the Bronx, but you can’t take the Bronx out of her dreams, it seems.) My folks were there, yes, but mostly the house and yard were teeming with unfamiliar people and stranger-children. Wandering among the throng was stupefying, so I was elated to find John there. With him I felt safe. Then I noticed a shocking thing: his fingers were elongated and black and twisted badly at the joints. They smelled. Plainly, they were dead. Dead fingers!

Dreams like these sicken one’s entire day. Where do they come from? At least I know what Hopkins means when he writes that “the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed . . .” Shiver!

Speaking of cliffs of fall frightful, I recently rode the Cyclone, Coney Island’s “worstest” roller coaster. John and I went there with another couple and had a very good day cavorting and eating junque. Early June must be a good time for Coney Island: it was clean and uncrowded. I turn into a jolly, untroubled kid at amusement parks—I want to go on everything. Unfortunately, my fellow adults (when did adulthood happen to me?) have a much lower threshold for being spun and flung about.

It’s been three months. I don’t think I’ve ever had this much time to myself. Even in high school, vacation was only ten weeks or so. I’m several poems richer—certainly not a measure of what I might have done, but they are good poems, and publishable. I haven’t accomplished much else, I suppose . . . I’ve read maybe seven books, a piddling number, and many magazines, my favorite “escape” reading. That’s fitting; these months have been a great escape. And I have accomplished one very important thing: I’ve learned to be more comfortable with myself. . . . My worst fear concerns how I’ll react to working again. I’m still praying for freelance typing as opposed to working the temps. The temps will only put me through the office grinder again; I’ll come out a mental hash! Or so I fear . . . .

Oh, well . . . ta ta. Peace be with you . . . but not if it cramps your style.

December 28, 1977

Dear Jack,

I’ve been looking over some of our old letters. I think the last time you wrote me a nice long letter was on June 29th. In this letter you scolded me for not working hard enough at writing. It must have sunk in, because right after that I sat down and wrote two short stories. I turned to teenage fiction because I was suffering too much trying to write adult poetry! The fiction made going to the typewriter fun again, and I actually thought I might earn some dollars doing it (pipe dream #1,001). I do believe that work is life, you know; here we agree. But during my “sabbatical,” I was recovering from all that “busywork,” that non-life I lived with you at the office. I think you still don’t understand how awful it became for me, but it was. What you did for me—the extra responsibilities and all—kept me going, but it wasn’t enough. Oh, Lordy, what am I to do? Even now I feel tempted to go and get another secretarial job, just for the money, the security, the escape from this god-awful temping. . . . .

I am writing to you on a Wednesday, a blessed toil-free Wednesday, a day I have taken off just for the heck of it. Unfortunately, my apartment has no heat right now, and I am bundled up in my Irish wool sweater and my Irish orange muffler, drinking Ovaltine, and trying to type with frozen fingers.

How was your Christmas? Did you get out of your annual grinchy mood. . . . John gave me ANNE SEXTON: A PORTRAIT IN LETTERS, which I am hungrily reading. Anne wrote furious, spirited letters in which she let it all hang out. No careful phrases, no worrying about spelling or grammar, just a spate of words from the soul. (Me, I sit here with my dictionary and Ko-Rec-Type, ever the secretary, ever cursing out my dumb little Smith-Corona for going from light print to dark for no apparent reason.) The letters are crazy, the unedited Anne, and I love them as I love the poet.

. . . . What a lovely week this is, working only three days, and waiting for a brand new year. New Year’s Eve we’re going to see A Touch of the Poet, Eugene O’Neill’s play about a swaggering failure. Did you see the article about it in The New York Times Magazine? What a cast—Jason Robards, Geraldine Fitzgerald (she’s divine, I saw her once in Long Day’s Journey), Milo O’Shea and even Kathryn Walker, that lovely actress who played the first Abigail Adams on The Adams Chronicles. So I can’t wait!

A temp job at McGraw-Hill led to a permanent one as assistant to the Executive Editor of the trade division, in January 1978. In 1979 CS was hired as an editor at Simon and Schuster, where she stayed for three years.

     
The four of us in 1978:  Father Ed, Mother Kitty, CS, John



October 3, 1978

Dear Jack,

. . . . I don’t remember much about last summer, except that my apartment was steamy and things at work were hectic. I had to work triply hard in order to take a week off and go to Montreal (John and I finally fixed on that), and then Montreal turned out to be on the dull side and there was a dark star over our luck there too. One of John’s teeth decided to assert its presence and he was in terrible, terrible pain. Add violent nausea and you get one ruined vacation. We came home two days early . . . .

Well, we had four good days anyway. We stayed at the Hotel Meridien—kind of a French Hilton, I think—and ooh, la, la, it was luxe. Woodsy lobby, tasteful rooms, enchanting restaurants and bars . . . and a “scenic” elevator from the lobby to the Complexe Desjardins—a multi-tiered expanse of indoor boutiques, movie theaters, restaurants, you name it. And all of it modern and free-feeling, with plants, trees, huge mobiles, and fountains, fountains. All in all, no complaints about the accommodations. Except that the toilet backed up twice.

I’m back now, grinding it out as usual. John is having his teeth repaired for the modest sum of $1,800. We’re enjoying fall, its cool take-a-deep-breath splendor. Last weekend we ate dim-sum in Chinatown, shopped on Canal Street, explored Soho, saw Woody Allen’s Interiors, ate Swedish sandwiches and cookies at Citicorp Center (you must go here!), and bought some nifty tin mugs at Conrans. A very good, if somewhat overindulgent, time! And here’s the best news: my boss is away in Europe for three weeks and I’m free to play editor.

I’m sending you a copy of JOURNEY IN TEARS: MEMORY OF A GIRLHOOD IN CHINA—the first book I’ve worked on here. You may find it interesting, and I wrote the flap copy too. So watch for it—I’m sending it book rate.

 CS in 1979

June 6, 1979

Dear Jack,

Well, here I am in the land of Real Publishing [Simon and Schuster]. Joe Heller was here the other day, and this morning no less than Jason Robards (Nan signed him for a book on Eugene O’Neill). I’ve met Susan Cheever (John’s daughter and the author of a new novel) and will, I suppose, be crossing paths soon with Richard Selzer and Margaret Atwood. La-de-da, I’ve hit the big time.

Of course, I get a terminal case of the tongue-tieds with these people and say little lame things like “Nice to meet you.” Then I skulk into my cave, bury my nose in a manuscript, and make marginal remarks.

Actually, I do have little spheres of influence. I’ve “inherited” two books of my own: THE GENTLE BIRTH BOOK, a look at the Leboyer method, and (don’t laugh) a book for teens called MARIE OSMOND’S GUIDE TO BEAUTY, HEALTH AND STYLE . . . . Who could have known that all those lonely years reading Seventeen magazine would ever pay off?

. . . . I’m jealous of our authors because I can’t seem to get published. I’ve sent my best poems out again and again and they keep boomeranging back with little form letters . . . . One of the kinder form rejections (from Poetry Northwest) says they get 40,000 poems a year there. 40,000 poems! An editor could get too pie-eyed to recognize a Shakespeare, come to think of it.

I know all this and yet I’m very discouraged. You know?

Well, ta ta—the clock is inching toward 5 and I feel like going home. Our phone conversation was kinda brief and I forget just what we said—hope I haven’t bored you by treading on covered ground.