LETTERS: 1975: 13-14

LETTERS: 1975 : 13 – 14

13.  

                                                                                                                        Jan  1  ‘75

Dear  Mr. Singh:

I am glad to hear from you again, and particularly glad to have your report on the way your Principal responded to PAUNCH/STILLS.  It is typical that he should think that the novel is naïve and weak because it does not draw a caricature of a homosexual so that he could recognize one when he meets one on the street. I am extremely flattered by this response, because it suggests that I suggested well in my objective to convey the impression that there is no stereotype homosexual like the one your friend imagines, or if there is (I suppose that the flagrant QUEEN is what he is thinking about, and such people do exist and are easily spotted). But over and above that obvious type there is a whole range of persons who engage in sex with their own gender.  Many of them are respectable  family men like Jim Gordon in my novel.  Many of them have distinguished careers. They dress conservatively, talk without a falsetto, walk without a feminine gait and in all surface ways seem entirely normal.  If your friend can learn that much from my book, he has learned a great deal, no matter how annoyed he may be to have it pointed out to him.  The differences between the great majority of such men and Jim Gordon is that they never write a book exposing themselves.  However, I am willing to guess that even there in East Bhutan there are many decent respectable men, some unmarried, others with wives and children, who enjoy a romp on a mattress with another man.  They would be no threat to your friend or to you.

 

I am much disappointed with Mrs. Petrosky that she should accept my $5 and not send you a copy of RAPPORT or reply to your letters.  I will write her.  I have been holding off from doing so, hoping that you will hear from her.  I will ask her to send Rapport #7, which contains two of my poems.

Please givem y good wishes to your family, and convey again my disappointment that I spent so little time in Varanasi that I couldn’t come to see them.

I am quite busy now revising Book II of STILLS.  I have one rejection which begins: “Your book is an extraordinary piece of work, but I am afraid it is just plain not for us.  I just don’t feel that it is strong enough in its meaning to permit  it to carry  off the enormously explicit and erotic sexual scenes. I am afraid it would be read for all the wrong reasons and the right ones would  be hidden…”

Thanks for #487 and #520. Good, good.

                                                                                                               Yours,

                                                                                                         Lyle  Glazier

14.

                                                                                                            May 24   ‘75

Dear R.K. Singh,

Thank you for the letter and poetry enclosures. I am glad to hear that Mrs. Petrosky sent you some copies of Rapport . Did she send #7 (Vol.3 #1) with two of my poems?

I am happy to be able to supply you with some airmail stamps for return postage. I think it is best for you to submit your poems. It’s never a very good policy for anybody else to submit.  I hope that Patrick Ellingham will accept some of yours.  He has one of my poems in his last booklet.

It pleased me very much to hear that you have used “Hurt and dismayed…” for your reading list. I began my October poetry reading at State Univ. of N.Y. at Buffalo with that poem.  In 1945 it was awarded second prize at Harvard in an international poetry competition; the judges were two famous Harvard scholars—F.O. Mathiesson (author of  American Renaissance) and Theodore Spencer (Shakespeare and the Nature of Man).  As a result of that award, I was invited to become a teacher of freshman English at Harvard and Radcliffe, a position held for two and a half years, before coming to Buffalo in the fall of 1947. 

I am trying to find a market for my novel.  Vol. III is now done.  The New Yorker magazine  sent me a note (they usually send only form rejection slips) for a chapter about Jim Gordon and Crispus Atticus Bronson  (James Baldwin); now they have had the very last chapter in the book for about two weeks.  I dread opening the mail box.  Their usual  return time is about one week.

I go to New York City June 2-7 for a week of consulting for a program at one of the branches of City University of New York.  While there, I hope to see one or two plays, and one or two movies (The Day of the Locust  &  Deliverance) and at least one ballet.

Our oldest daughter comes tomorrow for overnight before she leaves for France where she will study piano at a  school at Fontainbleaur.  While she is here, our second daughter and her husband will drive up for brunch and dinner.  That same day a professor from Buffalo will arrive for a three day visit.  He is collecting material for a critical biography growing out of my poems. Last semester he taught all sex of my poetry books in his course in Four Buffalo Poets. I was there twice to take his classes, and in April I returned to give a reading with two of the other poets…

From Tragic America 1974

Amsterdam

March 22

Acres of crocuses

purple  and yellow and white

gently stroked

by the sun

                                                                                                 Yrs.

                                                                                                Lyle G