LETTERS: 1985: 41 - 42

LETTERS: 1985:  41 - 42 

41.

                                                                        January  31,  1985

Dear R.K. Singh,

I am so glad to have your poems MY SILENCE.  They seem as fresh and pure as if I never saw them before.  You give me far too much credit, for the poems are fully yours.  Even the title is in the poems, repeated several times.  I your friend Krishna Srinivas wrote a fine preface, and I’m so glad he found a way to incorporate my single sentence, which I had forgotten till I see it again.  How clever of somebody to have noticed that by rearranging it could become a lyric.  I am proud to appear on your back cover.

I have been silent so long because I wanted to send word that I have placed my review of SAVITRI, but so far no such acceptance.  I sent it first to BOSTON REVIEW, from where it came back with a printed rejection, then to AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW, where after two months it came back with a generous letter that  although they admired it, it seemed on final judgement to be too specialized for them.  It is now at U. Michigan’s JOURNAL OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN LITERATURE, a suggestion of yours.  It has been there more than a month.  Competition is fierce in the US; nothing moves fast.

By now you should have ORIGIN magazine Fifth Series #4, sent you at last 6  weeks ago airmail, with my narrative poem AZUBAH NYE (26 pages). There are also 25 prefatory lyrics to the narrative, most of which have appeared in earlier issues of ORIGIN, some in COUNTRY JOURNAL, one more in the JOURNAL  for March ’85, arriving in yesterday’s mail.  A publisher/editor in Brattleboro, Vermont—40 miles from here—has written for permission to print all these lyrics in a small booklet.  The whole poem—narrative plus lyrics—has been sent at the suggestion of Cid Corman (editor of ORIGIN) to his friend Allan Kornblum, publisher/editor of Coffee House Press, a very good place.  I wait for his decision.

Also  a novel dealing with some of the material is being read by the publisher of Millers River Press, with headquarters near the scene of action, the locality where I grew up.  And my short novel STILLS FROM A MOVING PICTURE is being read by another publisher/editor, who is interested in it but not sure if he can handle it.

Most of my time this past year was devoted to anti-Reagan campaign, and lately to a Bennington squabble to get rid of a corrupt superintendent of public schools—many letters to the BENNINGTON BANNER, and some very bad feeling stirred up between those who attack and those who support the superintendent, a lot of spent emotion, and I at the center of controversy, which seems on the way of settlement, because just this week the man  has resigned as of June 30 next. 

One more thing: It can remain a secret between us that the quotation from your published thesis as quoted in K.S.’s last paragraph, came from my essay in STRAIT magazine.  I spotted it when I first read the thesis.

Congratulations on your honorary title…

                                                                                    Yrs. cordially,

                                                                                    Lyle Glazier

42.

                                                                                                May  8, 1985

Dear R.K. Singh:

Will write a short  letter rather than wait for time to write  a long one.  Very glad to have yours with your news, the last one from Vienna, where Amy and I were for a week in early summer 1969.  I’m glad you can travel even to a conference that does not wholly please you.

Thank you for several letters and all your news. It’s so good to know you will have a second book. I’m happy for you.

My spring has been very busy. Teaching 4 tutorial students has taken time, all four reading a different track—“feminist literature,” “classic novels of American 19^th century,” “Black authors,’ and Dante’s INFERNO.” The last, especially has been a lot of work.  I insisted on a bilingual edition with notes, so that we could follow the Italian even though it is a language neither had studied.  But the prose translation close enough so that it was possible to follow the original.

Thank you for finding a publication for my Baudelaire poem.  I may have told you that a publisher near here in Brattleboro will bring out my 25 prefatory lyrics to AZUBAH NYE next January.  Then I will hope to have a publisher for the whole book, the narrative and the preface.  Also, I go to Greenfield, Massachusetts next week for a conference  with another publisher who would like to bring out my novel SUMMER WITH JOEY on the summer of an eleven year old boy, 1920. I am not sure he can find funding.

                                Letter

                Li Wang Chen to a Widow

                “Let us comfort

                each other.” I

                believe you: “My

                husband would not

                let me touch him,

                I would lie awake

                wanting to touch him.

                Please write me.”

                My dear,

                ten years ago

                my wife dole me

                “That’s enough,

                time to put

                a stop to it.”

                How could I tell her

                “I cried because

                I am grateful”? Since,

                all night I

                lie wanting her

                to touch me, I

                lock the door like

                a boy hiding what

                he does from

                his mother.

           

            Write soon.

Best wishes to all.

I do hope that your many publications will soon help you find a university more to your liking.

                                                                                                            Yrs.

                                                                                                              Lyle G.