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Letters 1992January 8, 1992 Dear Jack, I got back to the office on Monday, to be confronted by the dreaded Beast of Backlog and the Harpy of Messy Desks. Today I am finally coming out from under. My week-and-a-half off was partially ruined by an abscessed tooth under my bridgework. The pain assaulted me on a Saturday so I had to wait till Monday before seeing the dentist for a root canal. At least I felt fine on the important days, Christmas and New Year’s. Tavern on the Green was festive, as always, and the grub was pretty good too. I especially liked the first course, chestnut truffle soup, and the last course, buche de noel. And we drank champagne, of course! Giftwise, John gave me the Gucci watch I have been coveting, and my boss came through with tickets to Les Miserables for January 30th. He had tucked them into a paperback copy of the book! I was floored. Norman obviously made your holidays joyful! I love to hear about your grandson, and how you dote on him. . . . . No news from the grant people, so I do not have to face the terrible prospect of leaving my paying job (alas!). I suppose these grant people look for writers with more obvious credentials—advanced degrees, professorships, a history of prize-winning. This does not describe me. “Green building of sealed glass, who jails me here?” And who jails the career women around here? I don’t understand them at all! For example, one of R’s direct reports not only has a time-intense, stressful power-position, she has two children and one more on the way! Half the time her hair is dirty; she doesn’t even have time to wash her hair and now she is having another baby? I think she’s crazy. Life does not have to be this draining. And I wonder what on earth these women find so compelling about business and the bottom line that they choose to cut themselves off from their children at their most adorable and needful “Norman” ages. These women don’t require the money. Their husbands are wealthy power-types, in the main. I guess they really love their jobs. Yet I can’t fathom it. For all my reluctance to have children, if I did have them, I could never entrust them to strangers. Women’s choices’ remain so twin-edged, don’t they? The world is changing so rapidly, even communism seems beaten, but gender issues remain muddled. Have I turned into a lousy feminist? Ah, well. I’ve come to believe that identifying oneself with an “ism” is unwise. I think of myself as an amalgam of three isms: Catholicism, feminism and psychoanalysis. Some would argue that these things are irreconcilable, but I think they make for an exciting synthesis. In a nutshell: psychoanalysis gives you a tool for deciphering your past so it may be transcended; it also celebrates the wisdom of the body. Catholicism (Christianity, whatever) gives you hope, inspires love of neighbor, helps you set your mind on eternal things; it celebrates the soul. Feminism’s concerns are more temporal, but in seeking to liberate women, it seeks a globe-shaking new order; it celebrates the potential of one-half of all humanity. I love these systems, and I hate them. I love their potential for transformation, personal and social. I hate their orthodoxy, that which turns feminists into puritans, Catholics into fascists, and the analyst’s couch into—a bear trap! January 31, 1992 Dear Jack, Sounds like you’ve been laid even lower than the President who lost face—and lunch—among the finicky Japanese. But why don’t you want pity? Even when I have a mild cold, I require pity. . . . . I am home today, waiting for window repairmen, and typing this out on my Smith-Corona “word processor,” which uses cute wee diskettes and has no hard drive. Last night John and I saw Les Miz. R had gotten us fabulous tickets—first row center, mezzanine! I didn’t think the show would be my cup of tea, but I enjoyed it, even if it is a Classics-Illustrated approach to a great work. The singing was superb, the sets and lighting endlessly fascinating. Gosh, these performers give their all, don’t they? It’s been a long time since I went to the theater, and that dedication and spiritedness it what impressed me most, I think. I don’t seem able to approach my own work with such—what—belief? Faith in its inherent goodness? Faith that people will respond? Not to mention faith in my own ability, faith in my right to say things, faith in the worthiness of my pursuit. The poetry business: who do you screw to get out of it? February 7, 1992 Dear Jack, I am so sorry you had to go through all those ghastly physical turmoils! I only hope your dad-and-daughter doctor team did right by you. . . . . Please keep a watch on the health situation. Abdominal problems can be very serious as one gets older. In my opinion—and this is based on my amateur’s study of things medical—my father died of abdominal distress. . . . I think he died of peritonitis. Peritonitis will cause wracking, bend-the-body agony in a younger person, but in an older one the symptoms aren’t as acute. It can be caused by a lot of things—a burst appendix, a strangulated bowel, advanced diverticulitis—and my father was famous for his intestinal woes. The moral is: take care! . . . . Will hearing about someone else’s agony help at all? My dear boss, whose wife is due to give birth to their third child any day, just found out that his beloved 5-year-old son has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most serious type. The prognosis? The child will steadily deteriorate and die young. My heart goes out to them. I just don’t know what to do. One thing R will do, he tells me, is make sure the kids see Disney World and all their other “dreamed of” places while they are still able to enjoy them. In other words, he can no longer afford to “postpone joy.” There’s a lesson here, no? Guess what? I am more or less back in my poetry workshop. One of the participants. . . . invited us to her apartment in Harmon Cove, NJ for brunch last Sunday. We were all to read aloud from the poets we love. Wasn’t that a great idea? So six of us sat around her fireplace reading poetry and gossiping. The occasion was not entirely uncomplicated, though. I read some Sharon Olds poems and a fellow in the group blasted her work, calling it “exhibitionistic.” It threw me; I took it personally. The others didn’t say much, so perhaps they agreed with him. Well, you know, Sharon is exhibitionistic, I suppose, and rather shocking and also whippingly honest. She’s not going to appeal to everyone. The Poetry Center course is over but the class decided to meet informally in someone’s living room, once every two weeks, with the same teacher continuing as leader. The fee is $200 for ten sessions. . . . . So tonight, I give it another try. Happily, we meet on the upper west side, at 93rd and West End—an easy jaunt. February 7 It was great seeing everyone again, and meeting in someone’s living room is much more congenial than sitting in an overstuffed, fluorescent-lit classroom. The Poetry Center at the Y is not a comfortable place. A typical class was plagued by distractions such as a roaring air conditioner, a dripping faucet, and the sound of trumpets from a music class down the hall! . . . . Perhaps this weekend will be jolly. There is a “winter festival” in Central Park tomorrow, complete with artificial snow supplied by the folks at Killington. Because it is sponsored by Mastercard, I have tickets to the hospitality tent and a free buffet lunch. Then, on Sunday, some friends make their big move from Long Island to the upper west side. John and I will help them move in, and surely we’ll reward our labors with some serious revelry. Again, hope you’re totally mended and finding some serenity. March 2, 1992 Dear Jack, Thanks so much (and so belatedly!) for the Valentine . . . . I have put off writing to you longer than I’d wanted. Last week, I had to fill in for the general manager’s administrative assistant again. He is even higher on the totem pole these days and it was a frantic week. Irate customers are put through to his phone when they call the bank—the type of customer who has already gone the 800-number route and gotten no satisfaction. The stories I heard! Some were victims of our collections agents. Don’t ever default on your credit cards! We send 3-fingered Louie to break your thumbs. Just did our taxes. We owe $1,200 again! And the co-op has just raised the maintenance fee and levied another double maintenance charge for March. I have just put another version of my manuscript together. Once, I thought I had written two complete mss., but I have decided to go with only the best things—and that makes one manuscript. I pronounce it finis! I am proud of it and grateful to have somehow written it. I think of myself as a poet who writes rather quickly, but gosh! The earliest poem in the book was written in 1974. Most were written between 1986 and now. I would say, we’re talking eight years’ work here. At our last workshop, my po-teacher read a Sharon Olds poem to us. I was correct in assuming that she does not care for Sharon’s brand of outcry, which she regards as self-pity. However, she did like a poem from SATAN SAYS, “The Language of the Brag,” which she feels brings personal experience into a wider frame than, say, Sharon’s poems about her childhood turmoils. Personally, I don’t read Sharon’s poems as self-pitying. For my money, Sharon is seeking to express what usually remains repressed, and I respect that. . . . The teacher admitted that she can’t read most of Sharon’s poems because they are bad for her soul! Ach, maybe this is the wrong workshop for me. But what would be the right one? Fact is, I can curl up on the couch with a volume of Sharon Olds in one hand and a volume of Richard Wilbur (perhaps our most “contained” and artistic poet) in the other. These poets are probably anathema to one another. But I want everything, I want to write with Sharon’s visceral honesty and Dick’s benignity and dignity and craft. That’s my purpose; perhaps, ultimately, that will be my contribution, if I am ever allowed to make one. Had a nice brunch yesterday with D&M, who are nicely ensconced in their new brownstone just five blocks away. Their apartment is NYC-small, with a bedroom the size of a walnut, but with the biggest kitchen I’ve ever seen in this neighborhood. The rent is $1,000 per month, which is considered a good deal these days, if you can believe it. We brought them an irreverent housewarming gift, a plaque from a flea market with a picture of Jesus and one of those “Bless Our Home” verses. Kitsch for the kitchen. We hope they forgive us! March 13, 1992 Dear Jack, It’s TGIF day, my boss is off, no one is bugging me, even the phones are quiet. I am eating lunch: tomato soup and a small salad of chicken and diced peppers, and some potato chips. The sun pours through the picture windows and all’s right with the world. And still I’m blue. I don’t know what it is, but I seem to be in a funk . . . . I’ve lost control somehow. Though this lunch isn’t too bad, in general I am eating crapola, and I am disgusted with exercise. I’ve been writing only sporadically. At the office, I’ve been silently losing patience with people and their needs, needs, needs. At home, my closets require a makeover, most of my casual clothes are in a laundry heap, and there’s nothing in the refrigerator except Jose Cuervo, in whose arms I take my only solace. I was invited to a family wedding and said no, I was due at the workshop last night and didn’t go, I am disinclined to be with people in any social way. I am fearful. “Don’t ask me who my father was or what I do, I am this, this!” [The quote is from a poem by Sharon Olds.] I wish I never joined that workshop. I keep obsessing over it, you see, and am filled with conflict. This Olds controversy has unsettled me more than you know. I realize this about myself: I hate disagreeing with people! I find it hard to speak my mind in the face of controversy (and then I feel wimpy when I don’t). I like Olds, they don’t—it’s a simple literary disagreement—but I feel ganged up on, misunderstood, and unloved. A psychological mess! After all the shrinkage and all the inner work I have done, I still get bogged down like this. I am this, this. And then there is the simple fact of my being a more advanced writer than some of the others. I feel it puts me in a difficult position. Aha! My old fear of being envied . . . maybe that’s why I read aloud in such a choked-up way. I’m in hiding, in purdah, I’m afraid to shine, shining is my original sin. Well, it’s helped, telling you all this. You’re a good psychologist! Right now I am also faced with the task of trying to get GLIMPSES OF THE BODY published. Except for entering previous versions in a few unlikely contests, I have never put the book forth for publication. It is truly a disheartening thing to peddle poetry. It’s not like any other kind of book—you can’t “package” it, or “promote” it, and though you may be offering a publisher your life’s blood, you are never offering a potential profit. It’s amazing the stuff gets published anywhere at all. I have written to Nan Talese—she has her own imprint at Doubleday now and she can do what she wants—but I’m sure her reply will be “please don’t send, poetry just doesn’t ‘fit’ on my list.” And I have written to a former colleague of mine, now Scribner’s publisher, asking her if there is an editor there or anywhere who might read my ms. Both of these brilliant ladies will probably recoil in the face of my needs, my needs. Nevertheless, they are my “ins” and I owed it to myself to try them before approaching the mini-presses and the university presses. You are in a similar boat, it seems, writing less-than-megabuck books for a place like Westminster Press which doesn’t even bother keeping you apprised of publication dates! They would never do that to Danielle Steele! It’s humiliating, and enough to make one want to take up a gentler profession like, say, sumo wrestling. Well, I do feel more hopeful, having articulated my distress in this letter. I shouldn’t be so glum, I guess. I just got a big raise, after all, which, given the crises here at the bank, is surely something to be grateful for. Bodily damage due to nutritional laxity and indolence can always be undone. And whether or not I belong to a congenial workshop, whether or not be book gets published, I have written, I am a writer, I am This, this! March 25, 1992 Dear Jack, I’m feeling lots better this week, having forced myself to both get new poems started and resume my workout regimen. I was mighty sore for a couple of days, which always happens when you let the weight training slide and then take it up again. Brain training is a lot less painful! I went to a Weight Watchers meeting at work last week, but decided not to join. “Portion control” is their principal motto. (I prefer the immoderate life!) Anyway, only the men at the meeting were fat. The women were at a point where they would have stopped their diets if it were 20 years ago. Today every woman wants to look like Fonda. Bring back Sophia! She was so well-fed and luscious looking. Not for her a scrawny slice of skinless chicken and a bowl of green air! That’s the type of thing I’ve been eating for a week, along with mini-portions of brown rice, small oat bran muffins, etc. I have yet to lose an ounce! Why am I going on like this? I can’t seem to free myself of these fell obsessions! I need a deadline or a really good book—something to keep my mind off my mind. I recently picked up VINELAND by Thomas Pynchon. After reading ten pages, I hurled the book across the room. Don’t see what the big Pynchon hype is all about; the book seems slangy and self-indulgent. A guy with a pony tail from Blondie’s Tree House, the office “plant contractor,” is in R’s office, watering sundry growths. This is an industry, crimping and primping bureaucratic greenery. Sometimes I wish it were my job, communing with plants instead of irate cardmembers, needy managerettes, etc. Yeah, I call those little 25-year-old, 95-pound junior execs the “managerettes.” They are so annoying with their little peter pan collars and their MBA’s. I am such a sourpuss! I got a terse note from B at Scribners, expressing her utter inability even to focus her mind on the publication of poetry. Nan was more cordial, and more helpful. She explained she could not even bring Galway Kinnell with her from Houghton Mifflin because poetry gives the Doubleday sales force nervous prostration (my words, not hers!). But she gave me an editor’s name at Knopf to try. I will try there. . . . but it’s a long shot. They are the classiest publishers in the world, I would sleep with Freddie Kruger on a bed of slime mold and nettles to get on their list, but I’ve never known them to publish a poet’s first book. Meanwhile, I spent an hour at the library writing down names and addresses of less lofty publishers. The prospect of hawking my book makes me feel unprotected, desperate, depressed. Today I put R on a plane to Washington DC where he is giving a speech on database marketing to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. He is quite a talker. Do you know what the key to success is, in the bank business, the book business, the ministry business, any business? It’s the ability to keep talking no matter what. Almost every successful person I know runs at the mouth! It doesn’t matter what you say, as long as you fill up the room with your overconfident chatter. Pontificate, speechify, filibuster, confabulate, vocalize, vent, declare, declaim, tattle, rattle, blab. Do these things and they will make you editor-in-chief, director of marketing, mayor, poet laureate, grand poobah, and pope. It is alien to me! The reason I love poetry is because a poem makes a profound statement with great economy. It is the opposite of diarrhea mouth. I am such a humanitarian. Not! I am sitting in the General Manager’s hot seat again today, though it’s not too toasty because he is on vacation in Florida with the wife and kiddies. They went to Disney World. Nevertheless, he telephones constantly, presumably between junkets on Space Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean. If we don’t send packages of memos and spreadsheets to his hotel every night, he goes into withdrawal. I appreciated your last letter. You seem to understand my plight, and, alas, to partake of some of it, with your own despair in the face of everyday disagreements and misunderstandings. As for “fear of shining,” it is indeed a terrible problem for me and many women. Maybe that’s one reason I love that hymn, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” Poetry is getting rather overpopular lately. All over the city, there are readings, readings, readings. One crazy jazz club downtown called the Nuyorican Cafe holds “poetry slams” where poets get up, do their thing, and compete for a prize of $10. Judging by what I’ve heard, the poetry is mostly a throwback to that coarse, loose beatnik jive of the 1950’s. I hate that stuff but I suppose I should hunt around for a more congenial forum for reading my work. But then I’d have to shine and this could turn me into a pumpkin or a cockroach or something. I remain your bug and your gourd, April 2, 1992 Dear Jack, I’m so happy for MLB—a steady, glamour-packed acting job in Lettice and Lovage, and all that travel! I’ve quit the workshop, this time for good. . . . . I needed air. Luft, luft! And there’s been so much overtime at the office, I just don’t have the energy. Either I’d be arriving late or arriving on time but with no time for supper beforehand. . . . . And now to SAINT MAYBE. I agree that Anne Tyler is a genius at hauling you into her fictional reality, that even the babies seemed three-dimensional. I feel I know those Bedloes, and I found their dilemmas and tragedies perfectly realized. Ian spent twenty years making reparations for one all-too-human act of adolescent rashness. He was guilt-driven and shame-laden. Yet he lived a noble life, almost in spite of himself. In the end, we begin to grasp that he wasn’t such an agent of disaster after all, that his role hadn’t been that central, that basically he is just another fumbling member of the human community—and as such he is entitled to people’s love and respect, and to a sense of personal wholeness. That’s a message we can all ponder. What’s so important about our everyday “sins” anyway? Only angels don’t commit them. And the real evil-doers, the Hitlers, aren’t even capable of guilt. The rest of us mortals have to be kinder to ourselves, sweeter. We have to relax the Sugar Rule! Yes, your family reticence reminds me of the Bedloes’. The household I grew up in represents the flip side of the same coin: instead of being sanguine and Pollyanna-like, we were jaundiced and negative. Our weather was always frigid or sweltering or too “something.” People were cutting with each other; my parents were the original Bickersons, but it went beyond bickering, right into civil war. Land mines, everywhere! Did you watch the Oscars? Silence of the Lambs swept the big ones. It amazes me, that such a grim, even gross, movie won Picture of the Year. Usually they choose “inspirational” films, or epics. Lambs was heavy, psychological stuff; I’m impressed that it won. Congratulations on sticking to your low-fat regime. Me, I’m a mess, my weight is up, my hair is weedy, I’m forever wearing “tents.” Not ready for summer. Not ready for public appearances. Not ready for prime time or any time. Even my carefully tended nails rebelled and broke off. Just call me Stubby. But remember me as Ann-Margret, only more on the intellectual side. Got my manuscript off to Knopf. In my dreams! Tomorrow I will send it to the Pitt Poetry series for their annual poetry contest. I would sleep with Hannibal Lecter after a 3-day fast to be on their list but it’s not likely to happen. Next week I will get a mailing out to every other likely publisher, offering them a look at the book, and just cross my fingers that a few will ask me to send it. It is quite difficult to manage all this, and still do my job and squeeze in some writing. I can say one thing for sure about my manuscript: it is beautiful to behold, thanks to Microsoft, and to my trusty laser printer. . . . . This evening I am off to Penny Whistle Toys to buy some baby gifts. Everybody around here is reproducing. I am also picking up a bag of Terra Chips for an office baby shower tomorrow. Terra Chips are these merry, colorful snacks made out of unusual root vegetables. They are expensive and wonderful, and definitely not for a low-fat diet! April 13, 1992 Dear Jack, I am not up to much these days, just getting those letters out to publishers and also throwing myself into some spring cleaning. The ancient water pipes in our building sprung a leak last week, and every day I’d come home from work to find the evidence of workmen in my bathroom. They’d leave piles of gray plaster dust and streaks of grime in various hues. Grotesque cigarette butts would be floating in the toilet. Loathsome! John did the heavy work, while I tackled the reorganization of shelves, etc. I like such obsessive-compulsive tasks but please spare me the dirty work. I clean my kitchen floor, oh, every two years or so. It’s quite an archeology when I finally get around to it. Your writing projects seem to be cooking! Your comments about the lack of conflict in your life and art confound me, though. The Bedloes avoided conflict, but still there is “conflict” in Anne Tyler’s story; the lack of conflict = the conflict, in a way. If your workshop cohort speaks the truth, then I hope you won’t ignore what she is telling you. You seem to be throwing your hands in the air and shouting “It’s hopeless!” Really, getting conflict into your fiction is not hopeless; neither is conflict alien to you as an individual. This is me you’re talking to! There is also the possibility that your workshop cohort did not hear your story properly. It happens! I am drafting a fan letter to Sharon Olds in which I make mention of our correspondence about her poetry. I think she’d love hearing that a minister finds so much to admire in her work. Do you mind if I tell her? April 16, 1992 Dear Jack, Your warm support for my work doth keep me going! But don’t feel you need to be instructive. We’re different in this regard, I think. You feel loved when people offer guidance, and I feel loved when they trust me to “do it myself.” Really, I am quite pleased with the letter of introduction I am using. And you can be sure I will approach every single likely publisher; Norton has a letter already. I would sleep with Cujo to get on their list. Am I doing it “right”? Am I “promoting” myself properly? I don’t know! Poetry is a very different animal than fiction or nonfiction. It’s beyond hype, and that’s one of its glories. . . . . Anyway, I don’t have it in me anymore to prance and self-promote. I’m a good poet, the force is with me, why I don’t know. But I can’t dazzle a potential publisher with a list of stellar magazine credits; credits I have aplenty but no Paris Reviews. I can’t tell them I’m known on the reading circuit; I’m not. All I have to offer is a fine manuscript in a genre that few people read and few houses can afford to publish. For a very long time, I’ve been talking myself out of submitting my ms. because of all those negative factors. And now I’ve decided to dress her up and take her out. Is St. Jude the patron saint of lost causes? Then let’s bring him into the loop! There’s a crazy old movie I remember watching on TV in the 60’s: A Fine Madness, starring Sean Connery as a beleaguered poet. All I remember is one scene where he moans, “Why did I have to be a poet?” Sweeter news: both copies of ELF are out, with my poems inside: I am in ELVES. I am also in the current issue of Without Halos though I’m not real proud of the one they chose . . . . The office is exciting! Today we announced a repricing strategy that will lower interest rates for our best customers—the kind of news that sends business reporters into overdrive. Phones are ringing! On Monday, we launch our Photocard—we’re the first major card issuer to put the cardholder’s photo on the credit card. All this is happening at the very moment we are downsizing. On April 27th, R will announce his reorganization plan. My job is safe. Ironic, isn’t it? I don’t identify with QBank nor do I care deeply about the work we do (my “distance” giving me a certain inner freedom, and making me unhurtable somehow). And yet I am valuable to them, reliable, and seem to be engaged in the business at hand. And so here I am, starting my seventh year at the bank. Incredible. Green building of sealed glass, who jails me here? Perhaps I should also write, Green building of sealed glass, who rescues me? For this job is also saving my life, in a way, keeping me sane, keeping me human, and among humans. My poem “In Company” perfectly expresses the way I feel about work now, and represents a step up from my earlier “victimized” stance. “To be imperfect and of use is all I ask; to be in company.” Do you remember that I had once written to you about the events described in that poem? It was 1984 and my first foray back into the world of the living after the analysis thing. I was working at a crazy place called Qual Fab. The heart attack, the squabbling artists, the beds behind the desk: I mentioned all that in my letter. I do sometimes use my letters to you as grist for the mill . . . . I should read Jane Smiley’s latest? I haven’t found it at any of the libraries. They hardly have anything good, it sometimes seems. I met Jane once, in my S&S days . . . . Until I find a good novel, my favorite reading remains the re-reading of poetry. I can never get enough of my favorites. April 30, 1992 Dear Jack, Out of the seven letters I have written to publishers, I have heard from four. Holt (very graciously) said “Don’t send it,” the University of Georgia Press said “Send it in September,” Wesleyan sent a “we-get-800-poetry-manuscripts-a-year-so-don’t-bother” letter, and Farrar Straus & Giroux said “Sure, send it now.” The person who said “Send it now” is Jonathan Galassi, the most famous poetry editor in America. I would sleep with Jessica Rabbit to get on his list. His assistant’s letter wasn’t exactly encouraging, but I am encouraged anyway! I am Projecting Positive Thoughts. When Shirley Maclaine does this, she wins an Oscar. So my manuscript is under consideration at the two most prestigious houses: Knopf and FSG. I figure, start at the top of the ladder and don’t give up till you reach the bottom rung, at which point start climbing again. I did write to Sharon Olds, O, I practically gushed. And I told her all about your admiration for her, and that you were hoping to use “The Unjustly Punished Child” in your book. I do hope she gets a kick out of my letter, and maybe takes a moment to draft at least a brief reply. I did not ask her for any favors. I could never bring myself to do such a thing. We are having one damn cold spring, aren’t we? I’ve been throwing a coat on the bed at night! May 19, 1992 Dear Jack, I’ve been working very hard! The “rearchitecture” at the office has generated a real administrative headache, with people needing to switch offices and someone (me) having to coordinate all that. I am neck-deep in floor plans! My word processing load has also been heavy lately; R has had a lot of “decks” to do. “Deck” is a word we use to connote a large presentation, I suppose because it’s a big stack of pages which gets “shuffled” into shape at the last minute. Decks are a big part of my life! I have learned a couple of new words at QBank. “Deck” is one. And do you know what you call those product offers that are affixed to your bill statements—the ones that hang off the envelopes? Bangtails! No news on the po front, bad or good. It’s almost summer, so I will have to wait till early fall before submitting my manuscript anywhere else, at least when it comes to the university presses. Anyway, I have decided to take a break from all things poetical. I’ll keep reading poetry, but no more submitting, and no more writing, for a while. I’m sick of the stuff. Feh! Poetry! . . . .The name of Danny Santiago’s novel was FAMOUS ALL OVER TOWN. You take me back to one of the strangest episodes in my life when you bring up Danny. There I was, involved, indeed enslaved, by a fictitious relationship of my own (I refer to psychoanalysis). And then, as an editor, I “discovered,” and carried on a correspondence with, a “fictitious” author, a white man in his 70’s posing as a young Chicano. Once he called me his Virgin de la Candelaria! Come to think of it, I was behaving like a kind of virgin, an “innocent woman,” earnest and gullible. Overnight, it seemed, all my bubbles burst. I had not discovered a new literary light, I was no Max Perkins. I was not engaged in a process of growth but one that had become suffocating and stagnant. Suddenly, I didn’t know who anybody was anymore. And just as suddenly, I knew myself for the first time. And you know, things were much better when the masks fell off. When Dan James and I finally met, at a bar on the upper east side, I was more impressed by the real person, by that altitudinous, white-haired, hot-eyed charmer, than I ever could have been by squat, in-your-face Danny Santiago. I loved him a lot. I felt sorry for him, though. FAMOUS ALL OVER TOWN was a fine first novel, but it seemed less fine, written by such a mature man. And he was full of pipe dreams for his next book, which would maintain the false persona and which even then I knew would never come to be. Still, I walked out of that bar a free woman, vulnerable, given all that had happened, and not quite ready for my new life, but authentic at last. That was 1984, I guess. Not so distant a date, and yet when I look back at that younger woman I see someone whose potential was impressive. She has not fulfilled that potential. No, she’s taken the easy way out, working in a so-so job for a cold corporation, growing cozy under the anonymous veils of her purdah, and only once in a while writing something real. I sit here by sunny windows acknowledging this truth, and not being particularly bothered by it. June 4, 1992 Dear Jack, Guess what! John and I are going on a cruise to Bermuda July 11th. About a week ago, the inspiration hit. Though I knew I needed a vacation, I also felt too jarred and jittery to hassle with planes or long drives. The cruise idea seemed perfect: we’d just pile into a cab and fifteen minutes later be officially on vacation. . . . . It will be our first cruise. Bermuda we haven’t seen since 1980. I can’t wait to refresh my toes in that pristine turquoise water again. May I confess something to you, though? Every time I plan a nice vacation, a little voice keeps raking me: you don’t deserve this. I mean, here I am, diligently going to work every darn day, and writing poetry, and cleaning my own toilet, etc., so why wouldn’t I deserve a nice vacation? You are unworthy, you are spoiled rotten, you are a sinner, you have usurped your big sister’s place in the world, go and sweep the cinders, and blah, blah, blah. I am reading THE LIVING now. Annie Dillard’s portrayal of the pioneer experience in the Pacific Northwest is just staggering. She employs a deceptively simple diction, and yet some passages are so beautiful you’ll be tempted to reread them right away. Don’t miss this one! June 17, 1992 Dear Jack, Along with your nice letter came a small pink envelope containing a personal note from Sharon Olds. What a fine day for mail yesterday was! How did things go in Ohio? When an old, ailing person dies it does seem like a blessing, I suppose, but what a mixed blessing. After writing your mother every single Sunday for all those years, your fingers will feel a certain longing now. I wonder, did she save your letters? What a testament that would be! My father was only 71 when he died, and he died without warning. It was devastating and, truthfully, nothing has been the same since. Suddenly my mother, a dependent woman to begin with, was totally alone. She did well for a few years—she sold her house and took an apartment in Belfast, Maine. I was proud of her. But then her eyesight failed, a cataracts operation failed, and she began to get befuddled. (She also started drinking too much, and hurt herself a few times.) Into the boarding home she went, and now she’s just biding time, and taking up space. I am failing her, I suppose. What am I doing for her, really? I can’t write her letters because she can’t read them. If I could get someone to read them to her, she would not follow the drift. I send gifts now and then, but she shares a room and has no space for much stuff. I feel I should be rescuing her, not from the plight of old age but from all those anonymous hands that tend (or don’t tend) her. We were so close, she and I, and now we’re lost to each other, even without a death. Your mother’s passing has me contemplating all this. Contemplation is good! And basically (except for a gum infection I’m taking penicillin for), I’m feeling pretty good. “I like New York in June, how about you?” It’s wonderful to get outside again. Whenever I can, I’m walking cross-town, through Central Park, as part of my trek to work, and I bebop around town over the weekend. Have you been following the Marianne Williamson phenomenon at all? I noticed her first a couple of years ago. I’d be channel surfing after work, and there she’d be, this great-looking megahip preacher chick. I saw right away what she was doing—blending Christianity and psychology—and I found that congenial. About the actual Course in Miracles—a dense tome that supposedly was divinely inspired—I reserve judgment. But I can’t help liking Marianne, and I’ve taken her book, A RETURN TO LOVE, out of the library. I don’t know what the churches think of her; she uses Christian terminology in decidedly untraditional ways, so I suppose that could alienate people, yourself included. Skeptic that I am, I am trying very hard to find holes in her thinking, but so far—and this surprises me—I agree with most of what she says. Her message seems elastic enough to work well with a person’s lifelong religious leanings. She doesn’t dispute Christian teachings at all, she simply applies them to the world of modern work and modern relationships. Underpinning it all is the idea of our essential goodness, an inborn light at our core. I’m sure she’s right about that. And that is exactly the precept that was missing from my own “Christian” background where everyone—parents, priests, nuns—taught me that I was a well of badness. Sometimes I dwell on old mistakes and missed opportunities, always I am paralyzed by my limits. It needn’t be this way, you know? I am going to take my cruise in a prayerful way, I think. First I will be at sea, contemplating the idea of infinity, of horizons, and then, in Bermuda, I am going to try to restore both body and soul, and let the sun burn me pure of negativity, the clear water baptize me into a new life. Also, I will have a few rum swizzles. Isn’t it a fortunate thing that John and I have the time and money to do this? One should not underrate one’s good fortune. I hope you’re feeling all right. What did your mother leave you in her will? It’s not money or goods I mean, necessarily. It’s just that—now you are a legatee. Whatever you have inherited, may it be rich, and ravishing! June 23, 1992 Dear Jack, Indeed, you are a born storymaker. Think of all the “stories” you have encountered—in Ohio, New York, New Jersey, the southwest, in your travels, in your ministry. I would really like to read some of those stories. And the events surrounding your mother’s passing are putting you in a fertile frame of mind to tell them. Get thee to a Wangery. The Century just accepted my poem, “Adipose Ode,” which brings me out of a dry period, as far as acceptances are concerned. Knopf rejected GLIMPSES—with one of those “polite” rejects I remember so well (“...too few resources to publish much poetry, etc.”). The editor’s letter told me something I didn’t know—that a man named Harry Ford serves as their poetry director. This guy was a former colleague of a very senior editor at S&S, who was nice enough to show Ford some of my poems back in 1982. He wrote back with the most scathing attack on my or anyone’s work I have ever seen. It is one of those awful, grievance-inducing memories that one clings to with a perverse passion. I’m not a thick-skinned person to begin with; ten years ago, I had no skin at all. His comments were crucifying, and I did not write a word for some years afterward. One ought not to relinquish one’s self-esteem so easily; I am learning stand firmer. Harry Ford is not someone I ever want to do business with. I had read that he retired from publishing, from Antheneum, with a big party and great fanfare some years ago. So it surprised me to learn he is the poetry authority at Knopf. I hope he didn’t read my manuscript. Perhaps this is not the right moment for you to read Annie Dillard’s THE LIVING—for, despite the title, her book is loaded with deaths. Everything is strangely intense and luminous during a period of grief, isn’t it? You’re right: grief is not a symptom or a disease, it’s an important part of life. (If you’re the kind of person who suffers anxiety and depression for no apparent reason, it’s almost a relief to feel bad when circumstances warrant it. For once, you know your reactions are sane.) I’m always fascinated by your declarations of your mother’s beauty. How nice it must have been to have a young, pretty mother . . . . Young, beautiful, heroic and holy—what a combination! July 22, 1992 Dear Jack, I’ve been there and back. What a wonderful, quirky experience cruising is! There you are, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean—which is another name for the middle of nowhere—with darkness everywhere, and one moody moon, and you are watching a Vegas-type show or dancing in a nightclub or chomping on egg rolls at a midnight buffet. Once in a while I would stop to contemplate our true whereabouts and drop my mouth open, perplexed.
In general, though, everything was perfect, and I felt great every single day. No seasickness for me, I could have eaten a horse (in this context, probably one carved delicately out of a watermelon, or molded from paté).
Now I’m back home, back at work, and . . . . still quite tired—call it cruise lag. At the same time, I am less traumatized by real life than usual after time off; I feel as if I wafted off into some other dimension and reemerged quite new. Well, that’s how I spent my summer vacation, Volume XL, No. 2. Expect less color and more angst in my next letter! August 3, 1992 Dear Jack, Everything is now dullsville, compared to cresting “on the wave.” I was ill for over a week with a sore throat. (O blessed carnelian throat, that kept me out of work for two placid days!) And I got an honorable mention in a Rhode Island poetry contest, for The Lisa Steinberg Ghazals [later retitled Nursery Rhyme]. You’ll recall that was just a little exercise I did for the workshop, and here it is, being recognized. I read May Sarton’s JOURNAL OF A SOLITUDE years ago and liked it—though I am wary of anything that celebrates the solitary life simply because I am so drawn to it. I could cut all ties to society easily, I think. It’s in me—”it” being a core sense of desolation, as if the most authentic part of me was launched on an iceberg back in infancy and has been drifting in an arctic zone ever since. This is not introversion, this is reclusiveness. I identify with Emily Dickinson more than any other poet. Had I lived then, in similarly prosperous circumstances, I too would not have ventured past my curtain. Perhaps Providence has done me a favor, by making certain I have to work for a living. There’s no staying in; I have to go out! I am growing tired of “going out” to this particular workplace, however. I just keep chanting my mantra: This too will pass. For I have grown weary of QBank at other times over the course of nigh these six plus years, and always it has passed. Getting back to literary matters, you might enjoy Richard Selzer’s autobiography DOWN FROM TROY. He’s that surgeon who writes so poetically. Here is someone of your generation, and perhaps your disposition (romantic!), writing about his quirky beginnings. His father was a do-everything doctor who treated not just the middle class of Troy, N.Y. but also its criminals and whores. His mother was the local diva. In the end, he fulfilled both his parents’ ambitions for him: he became a doctor for his father, a writer for his mother. Fascinating! I could never write a book like this. What could I possible say about my beginnings? UP IN THE BRONX My father got drunk every Saturday night and my mother got mad at him. We ate a lot of bologna. We watched a lot of television. They gave me piano lessons but I had ten thumbs. The End. This amazingly temperate summer is already petering out, with Labor Day just around the corner. John’s boss is giving another party at his Saugerties estate, so our second annual faux riche weekend is coming up. Got nothing much else planned, having squandered such eminent sums on the cruise. August 13, 1992 Dear Jack, Since you are so high on May Sarton, I bought a copy of her journal AT SEVENTY. Very involving and soothing, I thought. She lives the kind of life I sometimes imagine for myself—contemplative, creative, attuned to nature and comfortably ensconced on the Maine coast. The Yorks are just south of Ogunquit, so John and I have driven around those parts, and have discussed retiring there someday. May is fortunate to be so close to the enlivening Atlantic, with enough property for her ambitious gardens. How loved she was, by so many friends and readers! I could not keep all her friends straight in my head, there were so many mentioned. Actually, one could quibble about May’s failure to limn those friends so that they seem individual, distinct. Can everyone be that hard-scrabble valiant and benign? And she despairs over what seem to me light burdens indeed—like too much fan mail! I should be so hassled. Still, she makes the age of seventy seem a very fine age—a time of freedom and power—and that is the real value of the book. . . . . In this diarizing mood, yesterday I took out copies of letters I wrote in the 70’s and early 80’s, some to you and quite a few to my sister. I cringed a little. Oh they were perfectly well-written, but how ponderous and defensive I could be, and how lugubrious! I was not a happy person then. Young, gifted I guess, and not unbeautiful, but sliced up inside. I don’t know why you liked me! In any case, I prefer the view from 40, even though my dark circles have dark circles and my face is traveling south. I complained about secretarial work in those letters, so it seems ironic that I am still doing it. But what a difference! The office of the 90’s bears no resemblance to the office of the 70’s. Word processors, computers, copiers that collate and staple—these things have taken the drudgery out. I don’t mind the work; lately, in fact, I’ve been throwing myself into it, as a refuge from my inner life, I think. (Once in a while, one wants to escape one’s inexorable self self self!) But reading May’s journal has me feeling friendlier toward the inner life, and I’m looking forward to a more contemplative fall. September 11, 1992 Dear Jack, When you were gone, I kept a little diary going, à la May Sarton, but for your eyes only. Tuesday, August 25 I did get hold of more of May Sarton’s journals, and have now read THE HOUSE BY THE SEA and ENDGAME. I loved HOUSE, for that is the story of her embarking on a new life in York in south-coastal Maine, where my own heart has put down roots, or at least shoots. I trust you noticed that she mentions the Marginal Way now and then? . . . . Last Saturday we did make our trip to Saugerties. Everything was as I remembered it: perfect. The pool was a lively place, with many a stocky male making many a mighty splash. John pedaled around on an amusing inflatable float with a rotary foot paddle. There were golf carts around, so we took a spin around the property, with yours truly at the wheel. It was fun! I found out that when John’s boss bought the estate, it had been unoccupied for ten years. The pool was in place at that point, but it had been taken over by an army of frogs which were scooped into big drums and relocated to swamps! Can’t you just picture it? With September on the horizon, I am getting back into the submissions game, shuffling poems into attractive batches and selecting periodicals to assault. Amber Coverdale Sumrall has asked me to read “Wild Women of Borneo” at a kick-off in November for the book she edited, CATHOLIC GIRLS. I’ve enclosed a publicity sheet; just look at the company I’m in! It is only rarely that I encounter one of my publications in mainstream bookstores, but this one looks like a hit. Wednesday, August 26 Are you wondering about the weather back home? Over the weekend, we had that perfect summer weather we’ve been waiting for since June. Up in Saugerties, all was heat and light, the pool glinting, the Hudson shimmering, the greenswards a clear emerald under the sun. Add the sound of laughter and clinking glasses, and the atizz, atizz of the occasional dragonfly: a fine summer day! Now, late in the work week, we are being hit by August’s typical dog breath. A haze sits on the city. I look out on a panorama of tea-colored smoke cloaking the skyline. When the city sky fills with abnormal tints, the effect is always maddening. . . . . We took some Macy’s gift certificates, a length-of-service award given to John at his office, and bought a little stereo system. Our old system failed a long time ago and we never replaced it. Now we are up to speed: CD player, receiver, dual tape deck. They are doing great things with miniaturization nowadays! The system fits in a cubbyhole in our brass TV table; we prayed to Saint Hightechia and it fit right in, with not a centimeter to spare. It’s about a third of the size of our old system, and sounds three times as good. 4 PM: I have never seen the sky look this way! Upper Manhattan and the Bronx are under a murky pall; if before a haze lapped the city, now it swallows the city whole. There goes a lightning streak! This electric atmosphere has me feeling feral. Don’t you feel that way sometimes? When those storm ions start dancing, you want to get up and do a wild dance too. Thursday, August 27 Today is a carbon copy of yesterday; the skyline is in the same soft focus. I’m in caffeine withdrawal, feeling headachy and slow-footed. I’m on tetracycline therapy due to the gum problem, which means milk is forbidden. No milk = no coffee, because I drink it light. Coffee seems to me a beneficent morning drug. My favorite thing is to get up early at 6 AM, and just sit on the couch alone for an hour, nursing a big mug of coffee while reading poetry or perusing a catalog. It eases me into the day. Lately I’ve been sleeping till 7 though, and missing my quiet time. I don’t know how the working mothers of young children manage their mornings! Even getting one small one bathed and dressed and off to the sitters would, in time, unhinge me. I’m reading May Sarton’s SELECTED POEMS now. Her style seems antiquated, don’t you think? She writes with what I’d call a philosophical lyricism—and occasionally it gets pedantic and leaden. I like the witty ones best; did you read her poem about the strutting goose? I am the goose of geese, the king of kings. My favorite is “Prayer Before Work,” though I disagree with the idea of “strict” form being a poetic essential. Reading May’s poetry has me reexamining, clarifying my own stylistic preferences. I love to use form, to write sonnets and sestinas, or work in some free-wheeling form as in “Warts and All.” But only now and then do I lock myself in to strict rhyme and meter the way May did. I especially hate counting syllables! Even some of my sonnets are irregular. When I was editing science books in the early 80’s, I was enchanted by the idea of “broken symmetry” in physics and genetic “errors” in biology; without the perfection at the core of nature breaking down now and then, there would be no progression, no mutation—no Milky Way and no evolution and no blue eyes! Anyway, I think the idea of “broken symmetry” is a useful one for poets. In art as in nature, perfect symmetry results in sterility. I deplore run-at-the-pen free verse, but strict formalism is the other extreme. Monday, August 31 Your clipping came Saturday. No note, so I’m not sure how you want me to read it. All those “complications” concerning male-female friendships have always seemed like delightful little soupcons to me. Speaking of male-female liaisons, today is John’s and my anniversary, our 13th since the marriage, our 19th together. 19 years! We’re going out to dinner, to a new southwestern restaurant in our neighborhood. Today is also my mother’s 82nd birthday. I’ve sent up a blue nightie and one of those birthday cards that light up and play a tune; she’ll be able to hear the card, and detect a little light from it. The image of my isolated, confounded little mother in her boarding home is burned into my heart, always. I cannot rid myself of the horror and the guilt. Someday I may be in like circumstances. It soothes me to know no daughter of mine will suffer such guilt. Sad thoughts and yet these are such gorgeous end-of-summer days! Magritte sky, Van Gogh sun, languor, languor... Tuesday, September 1 Last night’s dinner was a disappointment. Guacamole was nice but came with a ziggurat of jaw-breaking blue corn chips, thick as bricks. Tuna tostadas, though nicely presented kabob--style, were buried under a mound of what looked and tasted like vomited olives. And the margaritas! An article on homeopathy in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine explained that homeopathic remedies are made by diluting a medicine in water to the point where it is virtually non-existent; the water is said to retain a “memory” of the medicine. We decided these were homeopathic margaritas, with a “memory” of tequila. I may be joking about eccentric meals but I’ve been weeping in the ladies room again. What triggered it? Just some rude guy on the telephone. (It’s amazing how obnoxious some people act, even when they are calling to drum up business with us.) But, of course, it wasn’t jut some yahoo on the telephone that upset me. May Sarton says something in her RECOVERING journal about the perils of not living your own life. I feel this is true about me. I’m not sure whose life I am living; my mother’s, perhaps? She was a secretary, you know. Only the poetry is truly of me, and for me. And I’m writing so little these days; it’s as if my essence is a sponge all squeezed out and desiccated. Nothing can flow from it. Sounds melodramatic, but you know what these spells are like. And still the sun shines on, with such a brilliance it could knock you off your favorite horse. Wednesday, September 2 Last night I said to John, “If I told you that I am not living my own life, and the idea horrifies me, would you understand what I was saying to you?” “Whose life are you living, then?” he asked. “My mother’s,” I said. “Don’t be silly. Your mother was married to a man with a dead-end job. There’s no comparison.” And that was heavy sarcasm of the self-deprecating kind. John just doesn’t get anywhere in his job. Though he’s in sales now, he is not exactly totting up those commissions. As he says, quoting a drunken Albert Finney in some movie, “We’re just a couple dead end kids.” Dead end kids. Thursday, September 3 Back from the dentist. Condition improving but not cured. If not better in two weeks, he will do something to my gums that sounds like another word for torture. Rains and mists have moved in; again I labor in a clouded bubble. It suits my mood. The mists are encircling, enveloping. They hug. I sent my manuscript off the University of Georgia Press last night. They read “first books of poetry” in September. They seem to prefer slim volumes, so I removed the section of work poems and brought the manuscript down to 72 pages. What must it be like in the southwest right now? Hot, hot, hot? Some like it hot and you must be one of these. Dry too, huh? When I was in Wyoming, grown men went around begging for lip balm. What am I to do about these desperate moods I keep sinking into? Just finished RECOVERING. May is forthright about her own despair in this journal. She reports on a mastectomy, but her illness is not the real issue: that she takes like a trouper. What she is recovering from is a feeling of worthlessness triggered by a dashed love affair and a crucifying review of her novel. It comforts me, to hear that someone of her stature can be this sensitive, this vulnerable. Demons of worthlessness plague me too. Lately I’ve been feeling unlovable as a person, erased as a writer. Why, why, why won’t the better journals publish my work? I am leaving the office now, venturing into the mists. Friday, September 4 A three-day weekend beckons! I have enlisted John’s promise to help polish the apartment tomorrow, and then I just want to sleep late, read, listen to our new stereo, brunch with friends, and maybe see a movie. Today marks our last casual Friday at the office for a while. We’ve been “dressing down” on Fridays for the summer, a new policy this year and one most of us love. Some of the hotshot men hate it, though. They feel undefended without their armor, empty without their suits. Tuesday, September 8 I went home last Friday and dyed my hair from the dark auburn I’ve brushed for three years, to brown. I want a more grounded, natural look now. I’ve been wearing it in a French twist. A mizzly weekend it was, damp and overcast all three days, but perfect for books and naps. We watched a treacly movie, The Prince of Tides, on Pay-Per-View. I read a lot of poetry—Marvin Bell, Elizabeth Bishop, THE BEST AMERICAN POETRY 1992—and started THE HAPPY ISLES OF OCEANA by Paul Theroux, one of those travel odysseys I love . . . . And what a weekend for news! Rude individuals with no respect for authority hurled cruciferous vegetables at our Commander-in-Chief. Thugs! At the Lincoln Center autumn crafts fair I bought an amusing ceramic snake, slim and long, with a big open-mouthed grin. He came with a little green apple to tuck into one of his loops. I collect things like this, odd objects that radiate a certain mana. I’ve placed it on a shelf, next to my ceramic altar plate purchased at the same fair some years ago. The plate is about 14” by 15”, and it pictures the earth as seen from space; the words “My Body, My Blood” are written at the top. The colors are black and brown and tan. I thought it was a sacred thing, and I display it joyfully, even though I am unworthy of it. I feel unworthy of everything lately. Sorry to be such a drag. It’s just that, every once in a while, I get hit by a pang of fear or despair or anxiety. Whatever is plaguing my mouth is only adding to my feeling of doom. My dentist seems perplexed, and as a consequence I don’t trust his diagnosis or his therapy. I am rinsing with some kind of powder you mix with hot water. The concoction stings and causes gross white patches to pop up here and there along the gum line. Do you know how I feel? Flayed. Flayed is how I feel, and the only poem that calls me to the page is something I’m naming “The Three Meanings of the Verb 'To Flay.'” The three meanings are: to take the skin off, as by scourging; to criticize cruelly; to steal from, “rip off.” Maybe it’ll be a Hopkinsesque “terrible sonnet.” Maybe it won’t be at all. We’re still planning two weeks off in October. John and I have discussed a 3-4 day trip to the Berkshires for hiking, antiquing and a stop at Hancock Shaker Village. Then I just want to come home and get reacquainted with myself. Just like May Sarton, I relish time along to “have a long think” and get centered. Her journals are validating to me for this reason, that they celebrate a contemplative yet secular life. Tomorrow I am applying for a 1993 grant from the New York State Foundation for the Arts. Every year they award $7,000 to a whole bunch of writers and artists, with poets eligible to apply every other year. $7,000 after taxes isn’t much. I couldn’t take any time off with it, but I could buy a state of the art computer system. If I could work on the same software at home as at the office, my writing life would be seamless. Friday, September 11 Gosh, we’ve been busy here at the office! We’re entering our Annual Madness—hatching our “PLAN” for the following year. Nothing is left to chance at Mondo Mammon. We are mapping out next year’s goals and allocating budgets. The credit card business has been thrown some curve balls recently, with the entry into the market of non-bank issuers, such as AT&T and now General Motors. No one can issue a “plain vanilla” card anymore and expect to be profitable. Now consumers select from a vast menu of credit cards that come with features like air miles or long distance phone discounts. We are churning out new card products to meet the demand. I’m not so gloomy today. Maybe because it’s Friday, or because the weather is freshening up after two days of grunge, or because I slept like a baby last night. Getting submissions out raises my hope level too. It’s time, I think, to end this journal. May Sarton ends by summing up her year or years. How shall I sum up these weeks? Ah, when I began this journal, I was dragged under, hard beset, my gums aflame, my sense of self wavering, my new CD player virtually without disk. Now...my gums are aflame, my sense of self is wavering, but my new CD player has at least eight disks! Praise the deity for this irrefutable progress! Hoping that you and Mary had a wonderful trip, and your new wheels whirled without incident, and you now feel renewed and ready for a productive fall. . . . September 28, 1992 Dear Jack, Thanks for the catchy birthday card, with its apt recommendation to relax, and for your ample letters. . . . . Based on your recent letters, you are certainly not heeding your own advice to relax but rather filling every waking moment with projects. I mean, really!—ceramics, racquetball, housework, yard work, renovations, correspondence, choir practice, tutoring, birding, Spanish lessons, Bible study, plus your various writing projects? Mother loved everything you did, but did she convey a love for who you were? The eternal questions! Here’s where we’re different. My mother loved me just to be there, she didn’t encourage me to do anything, indeed she made me feel incapable of accomplishing things. So I grew into a person with a core sense of disability. You’re mixed up in your own way, I suppose, but it’s a more productive neurosis. When your writing is stalled, at least your bathrooms are clean! I’d prefer that to my characteristic spells of soul-paralysis. I sometimes have a vision of my hands in manacles! This is not good. Maybe we should each try to stretch, eh? You try to linger over tasks instead of rushing through them, and edit down that “to do” list. I’ll try to unlock those manacles and be more disciplined about my work. You asked about the impact of the Kennedys on me and my family? Well, I remember how excited the nuns were in my school, to have a Catholic in the White House, yet we were all so indoctrinated in the “supremacy” of all things Catholic that, to a ten year old, his victory seemed inevitable, hence unremarkable. I do remember being a little “in love” with JFK when I was 12, for I’d be home in time to watch is 4 o’clock news conferences where he was always so witty and slick. But there were no icons of JFK hanging on our walls, and no pix of the Pope either. You and your wife have been spending time with a friend who has AIDS. Four men in my building have died of it. I remember, late last year, boarding the elevator with a fellow who had once been on the co-op admissions committee with me—an absolutely delightful person, with a good word and a smile for everyone, a robust fellow who rode his bike everywhere. Suddenly his face was a skull’s face. Fear shot through me like a laser. We have got to find a cure for this terrible thing. Four days and counting. Friday, at 5 PM, I leave my officious office aerie for two weeks in a row. Sunday our pal Steve comes in from California for one day of NYC frolics, then on Monday John and I are off to the Brook Farm Inn in Lenox, Mass., which advertises with the line, “There is poetry here.” Well, there will be a poet there, and a poet’s spouse, and we hope to have our fill of autumnal air, apple cider, pumpkin pie and so forth! October 11, 1992 Dear Jack,
It’s Sunday now, and I have a week’s vacation left before returning to the rigors of Mondo Mammon. I haven’t had an expanse of time alone at home like this since I took the month of November off in 1988. Not sure how I’ll spend it. I should work on my writing, but if I know me, I’ll persuade myself that, hey, this is vacation, let’s party. Which means I’ll walk around town, shop at Bloomingdale’s and Saks, see a movie solo, work out and maybe atone for it all by mopping some floors and clearing out some closets. I will certainly lift a glass of something in your honor on the 15th. Happy birthday to ya’, October 29, 1992 Dear Jack, No crossing in the mail this time! We’re still in the grip of 1993 Plan here at the office and I’ve been working overtime without a moment to myself. But the big Plan presentation was yesterday, my boss is traveling today, and so I’m back! Fall at last has padded into the city on little red tabby feet. Right across the street from QBank is a grove of autumn trees, their fire-orange foliage on eye-level with our cafeteria windows—a gladdening sight. And Central Park is resplendent; the bushes burn. I was a little late this morning because I took some time to “smell the roses”—that is to say, crunch the leaves. I have both of your October letters in front of me. In your letter of the 9th, you make mention of a successful sermon you gave. Typically, you leave out a crucial detail—what the sermon was about!!!!!—but I am certain you delivered it beautifully. I have never heard you speak but I can imagine how good you are; your voice is mellifluous and you are a pro at organizing your material. Were you always so fearless about public speaking, and can you impart some wisdom? I am supposed to do that reading next month, and I am shaking in my shoes. You know, you are a totally successful man. You set out to be a minister and you have triumphed both in the pulpit and in the “business” side of things. You have written and published several books, for goodness sake, and you’re a big man in the church. Funny that you still feel a need, as you say, to break into the secular market. If you want to, go for it, but I don’t think you should waste your time feeling as if you haven’t “made it.” You have. And what you have achieved in the “divine” market was also achieved through merit and hard work and craft. What is this “head start” you’re talking about, anyway? You were smart enough to get into Wooster at age 16, and then you took the ball and ran with it. Does yours seem like a small pond? Everything is a small pond today, everything of quality. The mass market is a junk market. That’s one of the main reasons I never went back into publishing. Once I became more inwardly firm, I just couldn’t work up enthusiasm for giving my best, most creative self to flash-in-the-pan best sellers, to beauty books, or cookbooks, or how to’s. Once in a while, sure, you get a PIONEER WOMEN, but even that was basically populist Americana. What a love-hate relationship I have with mainstream publishing! Certainly I am disappointed that my poetry won’t be published by a big New York City house—for when all is said and done, that is the kind of publisher I know best. (Galassi at FSG wrote me a nice little no-can-do note, by the way.) You’re right about those poets in the Donald Hall book; they had advantages, they were born elite. Still, Robert Frost’s first book did not come out till he was in his 40’s. And certain poets from the “wrong side of the tracks” have become prominent—some of the black poets, for example, and Anne Sexton. Screw Harvard; Sexton didn’t even go to college but she wound up teaching college! When I start dwelling morosely on all the privileged people, I get into one of my “dead end kind” moods, but I suspect it’s just that—a mood. Ah, yes, moods! I’ve had them aplenty, I’ve been self-flagellating all year. Except for admitting as much, once in a while, to you, I’ve kept quiet about what I’m really feeling. Sometimes I want to vent and lament to John but I restrain myself. Why drag him into it? I’m determined to keep “together” for love of him, and to make our home a sanctuary . . . . I’ve been keeping things tidy, lighting candles, putting out orange-scented potpourri...I think they call it “cocooning.” What a difference the CD player has made in this regard! We put on ear-caressing music, curl up with books or puzzles, have a cognac...these placid evenings are what I live for. Meanwhile, the outside world gets more and more corrupted. Once again this morning I had to flee a subway car because of human stench. The other evening, under renovation scaffolding at the Dakota, I espied a homeless couple doing what couples oughtn’t to be “doing in the road.” The homeless have been camping out there for a long time, right at the top of the subway station I use daily. You’ll recall that the Dakota is that famous apartment building on Central Park West and 72nd Street, Yoko Ono’s digs, and Lauren Bacall’s, and a host of other wealthy people’s. Quite a contrast: the grubby homeless lying around on their damp mattresses as the mink coats go by. . . . . Art! When I was home a few weeks ago, I spent a happy couple of hours at the Metropolitan Museum. They’re showing Magritte now. Do you know his work? He’s known as a surrealist who portrayed wild juxtapositions, some quite mind-bending. Turning a corner, I came upon a Madonna-like painting of a mother and baby—only the baby’s head is on the mother’s body, to scale, and the mother’s is on the baby’s!!! I actually cried out. Many of his paintings are hauntingly beautiful as well—for example, there is a street scene portraying townhouses at night (all dark, with street lamps lit), but the sky above is a daytime sky, his trademark cerulean with cotton-puff clouds. Day and night are married in this picture, and the effect is delightful. I am drawn to Magritte, all the more because he was a good citizen and a loving spouse who refused to get caught up in stereotypical bohemian excess. “I am an ordinary man who happens to paint extraordinary pictures,” he said. Fame came late for him—he earned his paycheck doing advertising art—but fame came, and even the stupid ad work provided inspiration. His story gives me hope! You never talk about art and I suspect museums bore you. Too much museum can be mausoleum, but now and then I have a holy experience in one. I’ve stood awestruck before Nike at the Louvre, and Van Gogh at the Met, and Rodin always floors me. Right now, there are some Rodins displayed on the roof garden at the Met, including two works called “Fallen Caryatids,” caryatids being those portico columns in the shape of women. Here they appear to have buckled under their heavy loads—an amazing conception, gorgeously executed. Here I am writing this letter while my desk piles high with undone tasks! I had better get cracking . . . November 17, 1992 Dear Jack, Thanks for your long, literate letter about art and books, etc.—a wonderful antidote to Philistine Fever, an occupational hazard here at the bank. Right now I’m reading CAN POETRY MATTER?, an interesting collection of essays by Dana Gioia, a poet of my generation and, until recently, a businessman. You’ll find some of his poems and an essay in THE LITERATURE OF WORK. Gioia has some scathing things to say about the poetry being written by the “career poet,” that strange creature who gets an MFA early in life, then starts teaching creative writing in the universities. He also wants poets to rally to broaden the audience for poetry, which he is sure is out there. I’d like to meet this Dana Gioia; I think we’d have quite an affinity. The CATHOLIC GIRLS reading was Sunday!—my first public reading in 17 years. It took place at a feminist bookstore called Judith’s Room on Washington Street in the Village, not too far from MLB’s Jane Street . . . . the place got unlawfully crowded. A great turnout! The bookstore owner got up and welcomed “Catholics, non-Catholics, ex-Catholics, recovering Catholics” and then Amber Coverdale Sumrall, one of the compilers, said a few words of introduction and the reading was underway. Six of us read and I was last. (Amber told me she thought “Wild Women of Borneo” would make a strong ending and I figured, hey, I’ve waited 17 years for this, what’s another hour?) It went well, Jack! I warmed up with “The Intimidata,” a plain-speaking poem about the killing strictness of the Catholic educational system, and then did “Wild Women.” I say “did” and not “read” because, as planned, I recited the poems from memory and tried to give them a more dramatic interpretation than is usually done at poetry readings. Poets tend to hide behind their books and manuscripts, and read in a deadpan, chanting manner. That’s not for me. I want the work to come across, I want the audience to be able to follow the poem’s logic and momentum. So I performed it from memory, and made eye contact. Afterwards, I got some nice compliments from people, a few of whom told me I was the best reader of the day. I am so relieved and happy about this! Still, the performance was not all I’d wanted it to be, because nervousness kept me from feeling fully in the moment. My knees were shaking just a little! And I think my voice needs work. I remain quicksanded here at the office. Every day there’s another “deck” to put together. . . . December 1, 1992 Dear Jack, I was in the audience last night when Sharon Olds gave a reading at the 92nd Street Y, in their large, intimidating auditorium. She’s a lovely person, a gentle person, the very antithesis of her fierce poetry. Her presentation was half “book poems,” already published, and half new material, including a sexy marital poem, a pro-choice poem, and a funny poem about her diaphragm flying all over some fleabag bathroom when she was 19. She stood there, slim and erect in a navy outfit, her wild grayish hair the only evidence of a secret flamboyance. I think you would have fallen in love. Her voice and stature held firm, but her hand shook a bit for the first half of the presentation. She was nervous! This is a comfort to me. Sharon has read everywhere, in every kind of venue, and still she’s a bit nervous! It is not an easy thing, going public with intensely personal work. The other reader was Thom Gunn, a famous poet who read flatly. My Thanksgiving weekend was leisurely and sybaritic—after weeks of unrelenting stress at the office, I felt it was much earned. I’m an indifferent cook, as you know! Still, on Thanksgiving Day, after a morning of parade-o-rama, we managed to get a delicious little meal on the table for just the two of us. Instead of a big turkey, which we could not have handled, we sautéed boneless chicken from the local gourmet meat market—understand, this was the flesh of a “free-running” bird, and far pricier and tastier than Mr. Perdue’s. We made buttery mashed potatoes and fragrant ratatouille, and bought the rest from local vendors—cranberry-orange relish, chestnut dressing, gravy. We also had Roederer champagne, which we slowly savored to the tune of lute music. Toward 4 PM, we went out for a walk in Central Park as dusk settled in. Ducks squawked in the lake, it drizzled, a fog sanctified the silhouettes of buildings and blessed every tree. I was happy, Jack. Am I supposed to “miss” the family thing, with a mob of kin chewing drumsticks and making noise? I certainly don’t miss my family, and all those pathetic, argumentative holidays in the Bronx. Growing up, all I hoped for was to someday have peaceful holidays, with no ugliness. Now they’re here. You’ve dropped a hint that your own family is growing . . . . Your grandchild will be the apple of your eye! I am content with my mini-family, but I realize that in setting limits on family life I have curtailed not only strife and agon, but considerable joy. December 11, 1992 Dear Jack, This morning we are in the grips of that nor’easter. The crystalline QBank building rises 50 stories into the Queens ether, with no other skyscrapers around for company. We are being slammed by gale force winds, and we are creaking and swaying. Downstairs, the weather is so violent, a woman broke her nose this morning when she was hurled by wind into the building! They have actually had to close off half the doorways in the lobby, and up here we have been instructed to lower all shades in case the windows shatter. Every five minutes a new disaster hits: the bridges closed, the FDR Drive flooded, LaGuardia in limbo, a sea wall down, subways without power...if I have to camp here tonight, it will be a nightmare! Now to more domestic disasters. On Saturday morning, I moved the refrigerator away from the wall to vacuum the coils and when I plugged it back in—no juice. It had gone to fridge heaven, and high time. The clunky old monster came with the apartment in 1975, and was old then. When we moved in, it had scotch tape and dog hair all over it—in fact, I was never able to scrape off all that shaggy tape! It had one of those old-fashioned double plugs instead of a three-pronged one, it constantly needed defrosting, it huffed and it puffed and it reeked. An authentic piece of s---. We immediately went out and bought a frost-free Frigidaire. (On day like this, one is grateful for one’s QBank Visa!) We arranged for delivery the following Saturday, but they rang our doorbell three hours later and hauled it in. They even carted the old one away. I would think that such a major purchase would make one feel elated somehow, but no. The fridge just stands there whitely and coldly, containing our milk but loving us not. We had our holiday party at the bank yesterday, a raucous spread in our darkened, tarted-up cafeteria. The buffet was pretty awful and I hate crowds—so I stayed for half an hour and then left. That was the only holiday “do” on my calendar, so it’s downhill from here. December 15: Well, I survived Friday and did not have to sleep at the office. The E train brought me safely into midtown Manhattan at around 3:30 PM, but the train I usually connect to was still out of commission. I wound up walking 25 blocks in the storm. Well, mow me down—it was an adventure, being whipped by the crosswinds! Otherwise, all was well with me and I hope with you. I have never seen anything like this. Two beloved Bronx areas were very badly hit: City Island and Edgewater Park. I spent my childhood summers jumping off the jetties in Edgewater and swimming in the private beaches of City Island, where an aunt and uncle lived. City Island is still a charming place, a little Cape Cod, with boat yards and marinas and that fisherman’s ambiance I love because it reminds me of my father. I cry to think of all the devastation. Did you see Dinty Moore’s “About Men” column a week ago Sunday? His is most definitely and indubitably a male, but he sneaked a story into CATHOLIC GIRLS. I thought it a hilarious situation, and I’m glad he did it! Such things are bound to happen when a book’s editors keep themselves as “distant” as the editors of these literary anthologies do. I have lamented to you in the past about how impersonal this business of early publishing can be. Well, it is—and here’s a story that proves it. Have you seen the book yet? It’s all over the stores in Manhattan and selling briskly. One of those New York Magazine contests, this one asking for “urban and eastern” songs versus “country and western,” has me hatching silly titles and lyrics: Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be bicycle messengers Well, in spite of Friday’s soaking, and the fact that I have been surrounded by people with nasty colds (John, my boss, the secretary next to me, the sneezing lady at the drug store, etc., etc.) so far I feel fine and am looking forward to a great new year. Hope you are also fighting off the germs and feeling hopeful. And what do you want for Xmas, little boy? (I want something from Tiffany’s and world peace.) ——Back to Contents—— |
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