LETTERS:
1974 : 10 – 12
10.
April
6, 1974
Dear
R.K. Singh,
It
is very good news that you have gone back to teaching, for I am sure you are a
born teacher. In New Delhi I felt that
you were not at all happy in your work with the Press Bureau.
I
am glad you like Black Boy. It is one of the books I will use next
summer in my course in Richard Wright and Herman Melville.
I
have been trying to work out a way for you to submit some poems to an American
magazine, and keep running up against the problem of how you can have
manuscripts returned, since you do not have US postage. Why didn’t I think of this before? I am enclosing an airmail stamp. If you wish
you can submit two or three poems to RAPPORT, Patricia Petrosky, 95 Rand
Street, Buffalo, New York, USA 14216, and include a self-addressed stamped
envelope, using this stamp. Betternot include more than two (at the most)
sheets of paper; otherwise the stamp will not be enough. Although it is conventional to type only one
poem on a page and to double space, I am sure that Mrs. Petrosky will excuse you if you type two or
three short poems on one sheet, explaining to her the cost of postage. The magazine is respected, though not one of
the great ones. I submitted two poems there last week.
No
words about STILLS (my novel) except that I’ve heard rumors that the editing
for magazine publication has been progressing.
The NY literary agent sent back the manuscript unread, with the printed
notice that the agent is too busy to read
unsolicited manuscripts. So you
see how difficult it is to win the attention of a good agent.
Yours,
Lyle Glazier
Feb 1, Tokyo to Bangkok JAL
On TV
the face of the slaughtered
Indonesian child
is pure and innocent
as if she were resting
in her father’s arms,
yet the distant viewers,
suppliers of weapons,
do not cradle
the supple frail body
or kiss the petulant mouth,
they are like the Old Testament
Jehovah who took the firstborn
of Egypt for his lawful fee,
and unlike the Hebrews
who as beneficiaries
were bereaved in sharing
the common doom of mankind
the American watchers
see the young face fade from their channel
and do not mind going to dinner
hungry, in fact, as hell
11.
May
6, 1974
Dear friend R.K.
Singh,
It continues
to give me pleasure to think of you there in East Bhutan teaching poetry,
instead of back there in Delhi as a rewrite man for the National Press of
India.
Don’t be too
disturbed over your problem with the C. Rosetti poem. Part of what is involved is the conventional
ambiguity of poetry, isn’t it? I often
could not fully comprehend the poems I was supposed to explicate, and took
refuge in the thought that much of poetry is not absolutely explicable: that is
its virtue. More than one person, more
than one interpretation. I take it that
nearly all readers can agree on the interpretation of the first two of the last four lines of “When
I am dead…” The title itself seems to
tell us that the person speaking will by then be dead, and in the everlasting
twilight of death (“That doth not rise nor set”). She apparently addresses her remarks to an
earthly lover in an (unhappy?) earthly lover affair. At the end of the poem’s first stanza, she
magnanimously (dead people can afford to be magnanimous toward the living)
grants her still-living earthly lover the privilege of remembering her, or forgetting
her (after all, what difference will it make to her). At the end of the second stanza, she shifts
the thought to her own situation in the
limbo of death, imagining her good fortune (“haply”) in being able to
remember, or to forget her earthly lover, and now the net result will be the
same. I suppose that part of the force
of the poem is in the contrast between the dead person’s fortunate fortitude,
and the living person’s irritation that leads to writing the poem about how
nice it will be when the pangs of lover are over. I’m not by any means confident that I’m not
misinterpreting the poem, nor am I much troubled if I am. Poems that are written moodily can be
interpreted moodily. The recreator has
nearly as much right to his idiosyncrasies and the creator had in hers.
When I go to
Buffalo in June to teach in the summer session, I expect to meet Patricia
Petrosky for the first time, and no doubt we will mention you and your
poems. I hope that by then she will have
accepted something from you. But, at any
rate, don’t be discouraged if she doesn’t take any poem in the first
batch. She sent back all my first submissions before finally accepting
one.
I liked very
much your #428 “The flame swallows the creeping road…” and hope that it may be
one you submitted to Rapport. Have you submitted to Nissim Ezekiel, The
Illustrated Weekly of India, C/o Department of English, Mithibai College,
Bombay University, Vile Parle, Bombay?
You asked
about my tour beyond New Delhi. I went
regretfully to Turkey, but became glad I had gone. Everywhere there were friends to welcome me.
From TRAGIC AMERICA 1974
#47 Ankara, Mar 4
What frightens him is
that after three years
he is so torturously alive
#50 Istanbul, Mar 6
Last night greeting with Guzin
erased their years
in a moment,
once he had been humble
to know that this
woman
knew his dark secret;
now there is no need
for humility, love
is taken for granted;
they kiss and he does not see
the fading of her beauty,
and she remarks
not on his thinning
but on his ungreyed hair
#59 Istanbul, Mar 12
Can he possibly
return to Vermont
or should he get a divorce
at his age and
live in Bangkok
or Delhi or Istanbul
renting a room
on his pension
and somewhere in a few years
be found in a gutter
knocked out by some
freak irked
at the pittance
in the old fool’s pocket?
12.
July
20, 1974
Dear R.K. Singh,
I have had a
meeting with Toni Petrosky, when we talked about you and your poems. She is interested in what you write, but
feels that you haven’t yet sent her a poem that works quite to her taste. However, she hopes that you will continue to
try Rapport. I gave her $5 bill to pay for a copy of the magazine, which
she will send you, and for return postage for some poems you may send her.
My summer
courses here are at the 2/3 point this weekend, with my most strenuous efforts
now behind me. This weekend for the first
time I have breathing space. From Friday
till Monday last weekend I returned to Vermont for a 35th wedding
anniversary celebration with my wife.
Amy’s sister, who lives in the old farmhouse where Amy was born (across the
road from our new retirement house) prepared the anniversary dinner. Only one of our daughters (and her husband)
could be with us. Our oldest daughter
Laura, a pianist, is in Fontainebleau, France at a summer music school, from
where she called us long distance. And
the youngest started to join us, but partway on the trip from Boston, her
boyfriend became seriously ill from a kidney stone passing into his bladder, so
they had to turn back, and we had only a phone call from her. But it was a good weekend, and I returned
here refreshed.
My classes
conclude on August 2. I send two poems:
(July 1,
1974)
How like a greek shepherd boy
in her blue tunic and
long trousers with a
chased silver belt about
her hips, she walks into
my room and my heart
leaps because I guess
how clever she is with the
clever intuition of love
matching my cleverness, for
I know I have entered
her heart by pretending
to be invulnerable
to a woman,I have made
her so curious, so eager
that in spite of impropriety
and the warnings of pride
which would not risk
offending family and good
neighbors, she is entering
my room now in her blue
tunic to level me with her
gaze and strip me of defences
while my fingers tease off
her linked silver chain
(from TRAGIC AMERICA 1974
Amsterdam, Mar 22)
Acres of crocuses
--purple, yellow, and white
erections gently
stroked by the sun
Yrs. as ever,
Lyle G
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