ginsbergletterstochicagoreview_1958

8/3/2019 GinsbergLetterstoChicagoReview_1958

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Two Letters from Allen GinsbergAuthor(s): Allen GinsbergReviewed work(s):Source: Chicago Review, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Autumn, 1958), pp. 46-49Published by: Chicago ReviewStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25293481 .

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TWO LETTERSROM LLENGINSBERG

December 9, 1957Paris

Dear Mr Carroll:Sorry reply so late?I sent your news to PhilipWhalen, & he

says he's sent you work by him &Gary Snyder. They are important poets &much underplayed with all the SF bullshit?however they had strong hands these last years in the scene there,

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went on the road reading with Kerouac &me &we all lived &worked together. Whalen's longer poems are his best, Evergreenonly printed shorts, & an old Snyder poem?I wish you could givethem

plenty space.Whalen said he sent you old mss. of my poem, The Green Auto.That's good to use, the poem, I have wanted that published a long

time. However I enclose a slightly altered better version of it thatI worked on tonite, so please scrap the old version he sent you,and use the one enclosed, if you will.

Thank you for your interest in our work, what you say, butyou know Time will get rid of all the trash& irrelevancy.Whalens& Snyders is hard &will stand. I keep repeating Iwish you usethem, it'd be good deal.

Only one unpublished at all in US so far isBurroughs who isEqual to Jack K. in prose strength. I asked him to send me somemss. and if they've arrived by tomorrow at American Express I'llinclude them with this letter. You would do a great service if youcan find a place to introduce Burroughs. Grove is reading himnow but things go so slow & Iwish he were added to the Pantheon.That's William S. Burroughs?see dedication inmy book [Howl& Other Poems] if you have it.He's inTangiers. Most hisworktoo raw but I asked him to send something palpably printable by

US censor standards. Rexroth discribes him in New Directions16 article.

I am sorry to send you this so late but I have been working veryslowly.Write and let me know what happens.

Sincerely,Allen Ginsberg

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Dear Paul Carroll:Wait! hold everything! I'm sorry, I have to take back thatGreen Auto poem, please send it back! I got into a jamwith

Esquire. I'm starving you see & they wanted a long poem "about"San Francisco so I sent it to them. God knows if they'll use it it'sprobably too open but who knows.... I enclose instead a groupof 14 short poems all little experiments in variable forms.

You must dig, that certain poems which appear at first formlesslike Jack Kerouac's or Corso's have either their own form whichwill be apparent with long familiarity with that style?or else thepoet is looking for something else than new metrical form or non

metrical form?Corso for instance is often interested in pure ellipsis, that's his kick you see?or Kerouac interested in the flow ofhis mind?these are all experiments?you must not judge them bystandards of already written poetry, recognisable standards?thepoems have to create standards of their own-1 say all ofthis as I got letter from McClure this morning saying you

complaining that Green Auto has no form (well maybe the copy

Whalen sent you was bad copy?the copy I sent you last weekhas form?the fucking thing's practically iambic pentameter)But by all means use Corso's H. G. Wells?don't you see what

mad lines it has?"you Mexico you have no Chicago, no whiteblond moll!" a poem isworth publishing for just a single greatimage like that! (but that poem is filled with them?"in 1942when I pulled down my pants/I felt the shame of the Reindeerage," etc. etc.

Kerouac may seem to write Zany by standards of obsoletecomposition that are practiced today but the poems he writes arereally quite singleminded & straight, according to seriousmethodhe's persuing-aU by himself-a real EXPERIMENTALIST (toput it in a tradition)? they also are better in groups, since thereader can catch on to method with several poems?one singlesample is only likely to bug and confuse people, they think it'sa zany exception rather than a learned & long practised rule.

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Lucien Midnight (he said he sent you) is a great wild project &far out style, something to learn from, as far as form. At leastI have learned from it.

Corso says he's includingsome

Zany short poems. Makea

Zanyissue, if you can't convince yourself it's literature. Just as long asits readable & interesting & not another magazine full of dull serious amateur-professional poems. You must dig that at worst asCorso says these poems are not amateur they're WIERD.Please sendme back my Green Auto it's the only copy I haveleft?sorry I fucked up on the deal?actually Whalen sent itwithout my knowing first so I got confused what to do.Print everybody, madly! Have you got any Snyder? He's goodtoo. Did you like little Loewinson's poem? Where are you? Don't

worry what people say if you turn out a screwey magazine fullof idiotic poetry?so long as it's alive?do you want to die an old

magazine editor in a furnished room who knew what was inevery cup of Tea? Put some arsenic in the magazine! Death toVon Gough's Ear!

Help!Allen Ginsberg

Ah! I forgot?I also enclose some final poison for your potBurroughs! He sent me this excerpt this week. . . .print all mypoems if you can.

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