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1958

The four poems mentioned below were printed in the first issue of Nomad in 1959.

[To the editors of Nomad]

September 1958

I am gratified that you found 4 poems that you liked. This is quite a wholesale number and a shot in the arm for quite some time to come. Either the poetry field is opening up or I am, or we both are. Anyhow, it’s nice, and I must allow myself a feeling of niceness once in a while. [ . . . ]

About me, I must seem pretty old to be about beginning in poetry: I was 38 on this last August l6th and feel, look and act a hell of a lot older. I’ve been working with poetry the last couple of years after about a 10 year blank, self-inflicted I suppose, and rather unhappy but not without its moments. I’m not one to look back on wanton waste as complete loss—there’s music in everything, even defeat—but coming up on a death bed in a charity ward slowed me somewhat, gave me the old pause to think. I found myself writing poetry: hell of a state. I had been, in my earlier days, working with the short story, getting quite a bit of encouragement from Whit Burnett discoverer of W[illiam] Saroyan and others and founder of the then famous Story magazine. Whit finally took one—I used to send him 15 or 20 stories a month and when they came back, I would tear them up—back in 1944 when I was sweet, fiery and 24. I landed 3 or 4 stories in Matrix and one in an international review of the time called Portfolio, and then I more or less tossed everything overboard, until a couple of years back when I began writing poetry exclusively. For the first year nobody bit and then I was published (and this brings us up to date) in Quixote, Harlequin, Existaria, The Naked Ear, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Hearse, Approach, The Compass Review and Quicksilver. I have work accepted for future publication in Insert, Quixote, Semina, Olivant, Experiment, Hearse, Views, The Coercion Review, Coastlines, Gallows and The San Francisco Review. Hearse is bringing out a chapbook of my poems Flower, Fist and Bestial Wail early next year . . . I went to L.A. City College when I was a kid and took a course in journalism but the nearest I’ve gotten to a newspaper is every 2 or 3 days when I flip through one without too damned much interest. Went back to night school there about a year ago and took some art courses, commercial and otherwise but then too, they moved too slow for me and wanted too much obeisance. I have no definite talent or trade, and how I stay alive is largely a matter of magic. That’s about it—you can take the few lines you need out of here.