Letter to Mike Cuddihy, September, 1974

Dear Mike,

Several hours, now, after you called. I wrote a story, got five hours sleep, did some typing, planted some early scarlet globe radishes, helped Ginny put up ten quarts of chard, greens, and so on, cut some stove pipe for another wood stove we'll be needing by the middle of November, and now I'm writing you. October 1st is the day I have to go back earning a living, I think.

Mainly I'm glad you called, and I know you are out of the hospital and better and carrying on with your work, which must have piled up like the pyramids. I have neither the intelligence nor the stamina to edit a magazine, so it is hard for me to see how anyone can do it, Please don't feel obligated to answer my letters and poems, what with all the other things you have to do. I hate to say it, but you'll probably have more from me when you get back to Arizona. You sounded well on the phone, but I detected some coughing. You may have a special diet, but you might try homeade sourdough rolls, made with soya flour, buckwheat flour, wheat germ, etc. I don't eat meat much -not that I'm a veg - and they give me plenty of energy, especially with butter and yogurt and wine or Tang or whiskey.

Today, almost the last of September, is the best day since the first of the month. We've had lots of rain and cool weather. Today, no clouds and a warm breeze. I am sitting out in my back field typing this, where I always work during the sunlight. The critters were getting into our garden at night. We tried a light, but that didn't work. I got an old speaker, ran a wire from the radio/stereo out to the garden, and now they are seranaded by Mahler or Gospel from the radio all night long. It keeps the varmints out. Also, during the day, if I wish, I have the benefit of whatever kind of music I have. Sometimes in the night, fishermen on their way come by the road hauling their boats, and they hear a preacher shouting out the haunts of the Holy Ghost. I am writing and I can see them slow down. sometimes turn off their headlights and listen. We have things that glow tied up on a wire to keep out the birds.

With the garden we can get by on groceries for around 25.00 per month, not including liquor. Our fixed expenses are 400.00 a month, whether we eat or not, so we can get by fine, going to a few movies, buying no books but a few drinks, with nothing unexpected, for about 500.00, which is about all I make when I'm surveying. Since I've bought my own transit, that should go up, unless the economy keeps going down. If we want to go out, we go to this black tavern. Ginny has done a couple of paintings for the owner and his woman, and I've known them there for eight years. so we get free beer. And we always end up eating supper with this shoe shine man who lives with his mother, who is about 90. Sometimes we go to the monastery, and sometimes to see Ginny's folks. So. all in all, we live a good life and have it far better than most, when I think about the floods, hurricanes, draughts. About mv only literary contacts in this vicinity are narrowed down to two people. One. a fat lady, about forty-eight, who has her PHD in English. but who doesn't teach. She lives in a rundown modern mansion on top of a mountain and runs two motels in the town of Fayetteville. I've known her from another place, before she moved there, and several husbands ago, since I was a kid, when she lived next door to us on the lake. She always had boxes of fine books and I read them all and she was fine to talk to. At that time she was teaching. A rich man married her five years or so ago, an old man, and soon died in her arms, leaving her this big house, holdings, and the motels in the college town. However, she takes care of her old mother and father and her new, soft husband, and three children now all in college, so she is gradually going broke,letting things go, including herself. The other contact is seldom made, and he happens to be her best friend. He is the new head of the Eng. dept. at the U of A. However, he is a strange choice, and most unlike most heads of dept.'s I assure you. An obese gourmet bachelor who likes to travel all over the world. He is independently wealthy, and to say the least a marvelous genius, completely at odds with his new, voted-in job. I never see him anymore. (I see several words not spelled right, and a bad sentence or two, but I won't take the trouble to re-write this.)

As I said, that editor came and left A note from him said he filmed and interviewed Tate (Allen), finished up on Eberhart and Wilbur, and was going to see Leonie Adams and Barbara Howes. He was mad because I wouldn't go with him, run the camera and invent questions to ask, but he just didn't understand my situation. I under-stand the merit of getting these older writers down on film for posterity, and I know -according to him- I would get to meet them and they could help my career, as he puts it, and I know the importance of having a poet film a poet and not a dumb T.V. cameraman, etc., but all he was able to offer was a bootlace over a shoestring we're on now, not to mention the month of lost time I'd have, my last month. He wanted me to put aside my responsibilities of keeping this place together so Ginny has all her time to paint and garden, and he wanted me to put aside my writing in favor of these "last chances to get them" approach. These are all great people, but the last thing in the world I care about is the Fugitives and their narrated influence on poetry, etc. Dugan and a couple of others put it better than I could when they said, poetry-wise, I had more in common with Faulkner than the New Critics and that Nashville bunch. The domains of The Southern Review, The Sewanee Review, and The Kenyon Review are a far cry from Yoknapatawpha county, the terrain of the imagination. Cowley's know that.

In one letter I told you I pulled out the muscles in my back, hauling in a wood stove. That is the reason I might not be able to go back to work on the 1st. It is hard to carry anything up hill. But I'm not one to carry on about no boots when some are without feet. I do worry about my old mother and grandmother, in their 60's and 90's living together, but the monks take care of them. My mother will be the only woman to have ever have been buried in the monastery cemetary. How about that. She wants me to help her write a cookbook so she can die rich. At least, that is what she says.

I was studying about death and Ginny jolts me by putting on a record inside and the sound comes outside: "When death comes creeping/in your room/God told Nichodemius you must be born again/If I were a gambler I'd throw my cards away/Well run sinner run....

Will you explain about your wife again? Did she grow up in Memphis or just go to school there? No, wait. She is from W. Helena? I can't remember if those girls in that poem were from St. Anne's or St. Agnes'. It seems like the school was pretty near either the Park or Normal theatre. I knew a girl, Michelle Noverease, she went there. I was 11 or so. The church and the school were right close together, and I remember the street not being too wide and a chainlink fence. But the action in the poem comes from the old Strand theatre. Those girls had gone uptown to see a movie. Mv father had an office in the Peabody Hotel and another in the Cotton Exchange, and yes, Charlie B. Lemon is one, real character, too tough and lean and good to be drowned out by any of the poet's spices. He was a bad son-of-a-bitch when he wanted to be. But when I was real young I knew girls who went to St. Marys, Lausanne, Miss Hutchnson's, older ones from Sienna, but don't get me wrong, "I wasn't high class" as Elvis put it.

I found a little grove of persimmons and this evening we are going to pick a few sacks full to freeze. We've got lots of apples up. As soon as I get me a good mitre box, I'm going to make some picture frames and bookshelves from the wood I got off an old barn. There are so many things I need to do, other than write.

I told Ginny about the woman in liturgical art, and she's very excited, even though I told her not to hold her breath as you said. She's done several Annunciations that are some of her finest work. I'm sending a slide of one. Another has a Negro in a white suit getting off a train and a poor girl with a suitcase sitting on a bench. She's done one of Merton that the head of that Eng. Dept. has. She wants to do some classic portriture of the monks. especially the older ones, in the Vermeer, or Fra Flippo Lippi, and so on. Then again, she wants to do them at work. She's doing one of old brother Jerry playing a flute in his fantastic museum. If she can get a subsidy on the series, I think it will really amount to something one day. She is a hard working artist. Up at dawn and to bed early. She never talks about what she intends to do, she does it, And she is tech. very competent, so she doesn't react the other way. She approaches drawing like Blake. And her art starts from scratch. there is none of this prepared food, none of these 15 cents biscuits in a box. When some more of the slides get back, I'll send you some.

From what you said, you really know lots of poets. I think Logan is for real. I like some of Howard's translations and some of his poetry. I've only read one book bv W. Matthews, and I liked it. Only a couple of poems by C. K. Williams. the ones about the pistols I remember, especially. Here, it is impossible to keep up with any of these poets. only what comes across in the magazines. (By the wav, I'm not one of those who condescend to the little magazine. Any poet who does is something of a lickspit. There is onlv one train running for poets and the good magazines are the boxcars, hauling our goods.)

Soon as I can, I'll subscribe to Ironwood and get some of those who follow my work to do so. That ought to help you out a little. You just got out of the hospital. and I know things are probably rough. I hope you have one of those government grants for yourself.

I hope you have that letter I wrote you about your poetry: I didn't mail it to Kentfield. Somehow, the copy of Kayaks I found got burned up for kindling. I don't know how. We've been doing a little cleaning, so what I just found, I just lost. Did Kayaks do an entire book of yours? The ones 1 remember best are RAIN, COTTONWOOD TREES IN DECEMBER, FUGUE, ORGAN MUSIC. And my favorite line is: So why give up your leaves/Unless it was to spend/A season waiting. Please excuse if my quote is wrong. I know a poet who I've lost contact with name John S. Morris, and he is the only one who writes like that. He was born in Virginia, his mother Indian and father Welsh, Most of his life he lived in Arkansas. Now, he's pushing 40, but I hate to think of him that age and still unknown. He is one of the nicest people I've ever known in my life. His Cherokee- Welsh-Arkansas self is beautiful. His wife and daughter are fine. I wish I knew where they were. If I ever have a chance helping someone publish a book, I'm going to try to find him.

If you have published any books, I'd like to get one.

I'll be keeping in contact with you on things. I know you are busy as hell. Good spirits.

Yours,

Frank

Mike Cuddihy