Barbara and Eric,

Definitely something about having the knack for
choosing the right books to read at the right time.
The Master Poets baffling the arrogant ignorant
perverse Churchmen with oral and glyphic symbols
relating to trees, flowers, vegetation; the
strength of belief in their “calling” that enabled
them to do this for centuries under repressive
regimes, all the while passing the “secret knowledge”
down to generations of “worthy students,” etc. etc.
really put the fire back in my soul. Graves is “the Dude”
of the moment. All of this brings me back to the wily,
ironic but anomalously passionate, almost “religious”
dedication shared by those three oddest of odd birds: Koch,
the “last avante garde” and “the gayest straight man I’ve
ever met,” according to Frank O’Hara; Grossman, the “rabbi” dedicated
to the “poetry of religion,” as exemplified by secularists
like Keats, Dickinsen, Yeats and Stevens, albeit infused with
a wicked sense of irony; and Frank Bidart, the “regular guy”
who emerged from Lowell’s cult of self-indulgence — particularly
upper-class, white, female; his fetish? — like a modern
Tireseus, able to write/speak so convincingly in both male
and female voices and personae he could easily baffle any
mind-less Turing Machine.

Tired of these arrogant, imbecilic Authorities who swagger
like Achilles because their money and/or unctuous natures
allowed them to earn their Ph.D.s in upholstery or whatever.

Got a letter from a former student, Zoe. She was actually
responding to something you had written in answer to a
statement on my external hard drive (I so hate the word
“blog” and its connotations) and rather brilliantly
suggested small presses try to “unite” internationally into
a kind of global underground. I didn’t and still don’t know
how to answer her, other than to say that going “oversees”
is what you have been doing with your work and that a big
problem for all American writers/small publishers is that
Big Media managed to convince the world that bloated
floaters like Franzen and Wallace really ARE the best this
exhausted, raging drunk of an Empire has to offer. But
even more interesting is this article she wrote on “vending
machines”

http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/971-print-demand-machine-revolutionizes-access-books.html

that’ll print any book you type in, cover and all,
as soon as you swipe-your-card or whatever (talk about “on
demand!”).

I’m forwarding the email from Zoe with “RFC” — request for
comment/opinion or any idea how to address this in an
intelligent way.

By the way: yes indeedy. Did not even begin to work with inensity,
or LIVE with intensity until I qualified as a 4F reject,
too “weak and sickly” for the daily work-force
war-on-unmarketable-arty-stuff stampede toward DEATH:
Arbeit macht Frei!

I may be heading toward the same destination with this
cancer crap, but walking at a liesurely pace,
thinking/talking aloud. Real Whitman stuff.

“Alone and light-hearted I take to the open road…”

ASE