LETTERS: 1978: 18 - 21

LETTERS: 1978: 18 – 21

18.

                                                                                                            April  22   ‘78

Dear R.K. Singh,

I wondered why I had no answer to my last letter to you, and now that I have your report of recent activities, I can well comprehend why you have not had time for foreign correspondence.

It is with the greatest happiness for you that I read of your marriage and of the baby in progress.  If getting a baby is fun, having a baby is even more fun—a great responsibility, too. You   speak in your letter of my “daughter”.  Actually I have three daughters, all of them so much loved that it would be impossible to single out one of them to be preferred for the one you mention.  I loved them from the time they were conceived. When they were small, I loved helping care for them—feeding them with the bottle by night or day, changing their diapers,  washing their shitty bottom – I hope my language won’t seem objectionable to you, but babies are real little animals as well as spiritual human beings.  They require the kind of attentions any other animal requires along with the special attention needed by  human beings.  Sometimes, I feel that parents fail most when they ignore the animal nature of their children, who are spiritual, but not pure spirit.

Your report on the progress of your research interests me too, even though, as you know, I am not particularly inspired by Savitri . As I write this letter, however, I am looking at a small poetry journal ORIGIN, fourth series, October 1977, and  a second one ORIGIN, fourth series #2, January 1978, edited by the American poet Cid Corman, living now in Kyoto, Japan, and the little books printed, as I find on the inside back page, at Pondicherry 605002 by Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press.  Your news that you will visit Pondicherry makes another meaningful circle in the many overlapping circles in my life.

I will be happy to read your 17 page paper on Sri Aurobindo’s poetics, but I would not be able to help you find a magazine for it, I fear.  I cannot find magazines to publish my own writing, and at my age, I cannot take on the chore of trying to place someone else’s.  Please understand that this does not mean I have no interest in you.  I continue to be interested in what you are doing, thinking, writing, but at 67 years, swamped with my own unpublished writings, I feel frustrated enough when one of my own poems, stories, or articles is rejected.  I can give you one possible address: Shantih: A Journal of International Writing and Art,  C/o Brian Swann, The Cooper Union (Liberal Arts), Cooper Square, New York, N.Y. 10003.  I don’t know Mr. Swann nor does he know me; I found this address in a current listing for writers.  It will be best for you to send your article direct to him. 

You ask about your student’s situation here if he fails to have the $1500 required, whether he will have any trouble from official sources if he has less?  I really have no way of knowing.  I do know that today $1500 is a lot of money.  It is,in fact, ½ of my retirement pension for a whole year. Most Americans in my position have much larger pensions.  Mine is small partly because when  I taught abroad in Turkey or India, my university did not pay into the pension fund for me. I don’t  complain about this, because my whole life was changed by my visits to Turkey and India.  Think of it, without those trips I would not have had the inspiration of your acquaintance. 

I am adding for your curious inspection a rejection just received from a national foundation that gives grants to poets. (1627 poets applied.) I submitted 10 poems about my responses to travel. Informing me that I was not one of the poets to receive a grant, the Director of the competition wrote: 

“Dear Lyle Glazier:  One of the readers, Michael Palmer, made these comments on your work: ‘This is fine work, a succession of images from travel with the power, often, of summation.  Glazier’s art is as much in the selection of the scene as in the language, which is  (almost)  transparent.”

May I express my loving good will to both you and your wife.  And please don’t be offended by this further comment. You wrote  “…she is extremely nice and is rearing in her womb my seed.  Too early, but what to do?”  I am reminded of 40 years ago, when my wife and I decided that we would wait at least 5 years—until I could finish graduate school—before having a child.  Then almost immediately Amy became pregnant, and Laura was born within the first year.  It was difficult for us, but I’ve never had any real regrets.  It does become important to take precautions lest you have more children than you can well support.  We managed to  hold off five years for the second, and another two years for the third.

With my warmest wishes to you both,

Lyle Glazier

19.

                                                                                                  May 19  ‘78

My dear R.K. Singh,

It is a pleasure to have your letter from there in the heat of India.  I loved the heat of India.  It was as if, when I was there, my vital center uncurled.  Even in Madras, when it was 44 degrees C, I luxuriated in the heat, but of course I kept out of the sun at mid day, except one noon when I walked from the US Consulate on Mount Road to my Savera Hotel partway down Edward Elliott Road, and that day I wilted even though Indian workmen and women were busy building a new bed for the road.

You speak of working in the house when your wife is pregnant.  I have always helped out with such work.  I can cook and dust and sweep, and during the years when our children were in school, when Amy and I both worked, I came home to help with the sweeping and helped get dinner at night.  As each child was born, I pitched in and prepared bottles for feeding.  When the baby wet itself or dirtied itself, I changed the diapers. This (house husbandry) is much more common in the States than in a European or Asiatic country, where the social custom still makes it important for a male to protect his reputation for virility by never doing a woman’s work.  One of my brothers is like that.  He prides himself on never having lifted a finger to help with the dishes or washing or ironing.  He believes that such an exclusion makes him a better man.  As for me, I always enjoyed taking care of the children, never minding if I washed a shitty bottom, anointed it with fragrant oil, and covered it with a clean diaper. It was always a labor of love.

This year when my wife has been crippled with arthritis, for several months I did nearly all the housework. Now she begins to feel better so I can come down to  my study to write.  She talks of selling this house, but I love it too much ever to leave it.  I would like to die from this house.

Last month for a few hours we had a visitor from Madras, one of my students from my seminar there in ’70.  She has been in Kansas City for two years, earning a Master’s degree.  She must have done very well.  Two of her papers were accepted for American journals, quite a record, I think.   But it was hard for her to be away from her husband and three children for two years.  She works at a Catholic College (Stella Maris) and the Church probably helped her get a scholarship here.  I felt homesick for India when she left.

Don’t fear that your creativity will dry up.  I always have had such a fear, but the impulse keeps coming back.  The poems you sent me seemed fresh and clean cut, but in #801, if I were you, I wouldn’t use the “poetic” word “swain”—not even lightly—because the rest of the poem is very direct and immediate, and I can’t believe that the word really conveys a current impression of Indian young men on the street.

5/26/78

After midnight

across far meadows

a fragrance of apple trees

punctures the windless air

leaking from an old orchard

this year over blown

Love to you both,

Lyle G.

20.

                                                                                                 July  24   ‘78

Dear R.K. Singh,

Your last letter was filled with such contrasts.  I am as deeply moved by what you said about your great love for your wife, compelling you to take an early departure from Pondicherry.  The happiness of a young man in his wife and her for him can be matched only by the deep spiritual sympathy between an old husband and wife who have lived and loved together many years.  I hope that you can have the added happiness of children.  Amy and I knew what it was  not to bring a child to full term; in fact, we lost one child almost at the very end of a pregnancy.  It is sad to have this happen, but in due time we had three healthy daughters.  Please tell your good wife for me that I wish her good health and happy, healthy children.

Your news about Pondicherry and the deterioration of spiritual values in the Aurobindo community was very depressing.  As you know, I am not a great admirer of Savitri as a poem but I have tried to believe it could be a great spiritual social document.  Your account of the rivalry or bad feeling at Pondicherry is a real blow.  I cam believe that all this increases the burden of your progress toward a doctorate.

What you said about your family troubles back home also depresses me. It is sad to see our parents grow old and the family coherence break up.  I never knew this to happen as you have, because both  my parents died the same day when I was 22, the fall of the year  after I got my bachelor’s degree.  My youngest brother was thirteen and came to live with me, and for several years, until he went into service in WW II, I was in loco parentis to him.  We are still good friends.

 

Please, in all your troubles, do not lose sight of  your compensating gift for poetry.  Let your poems express your feelings.  You have a talent that must not be allowed to shrivel up from disuse.

I write on the back of a notice for my poetry reading next Sunday.

My love to you & your wife,

                                                                                                Lyle G

               

21.

                                                                                                Sept 7  ‘78

Dear friend R.K. Singh,

If you wish to, please send a half dozen of your short lyrics to  David Henson, Ed., Applecart, 12201 N. Woodcrest Dr., Dunlap, Illinois 61525, USA

Henson wrote me recently asking if I know any poets who write “transparent poems,” and I thought of your short lyrics.

If you decide to try Applecart, please write to me at the same time, and I will send Mr. Henson an envelope made out with your name and address and stamped with US postage for returning the MS to you.  I know that you cannot send him US postage for the return

.

I’m writing Mr. Henson to tell him that he may have some poems from you. 

Don’t despair of the times when the “poetic madness” seems to have fled.  It will come back, if you really court it.

Love to you and your wife.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Lyle Glazier