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The following are the collected letters of poets George Oppen and Charles Tomlinson, as transcribed by Richard Swigg for the feature “Addressing one’s peers: The letters of Charles Tomlinson and George Oppen, 1963–1981.” This section of the correspondence spans the years 1966–67.

32.                                                                                                            

Brook Cottage
March 20, 1966

Dear George and Mary,

Elizabeth Kray tells me you have kindly offered a loan of 500 dollars to facilitate our transatlantic  flight.  Never was so much good news heard  by so few for so much or whatever.  Would it be rude to ask for this most useful advance now that the time is here to pay for tickets ?!?  Many thanks.  If we cross in the  mails, just forget this!

We are due to arrive in N. York International Airport, at 2.30 on the afternoon of April 11th, then (oh dear!) off  next day to Utica.    When I say ‘we’ I mean just Brenda and me.  It’s  good that we’ve been able to lodge the children chez their grandmother.

We greatly look forward  to seeing you both and an air of elation now adds a certain glory to the advancing spring with its primroses and violets.

Forgive brevity — a busy time with term pressing to its end.

                                               Love and anticipation 

                                                        Charles

 

---

Elizabeth Kray: Executive director of the Academy of American Poets.

 

 

33.                                                                                                                         

July 28,  1966 

Dear Charles:

Your book, as so frequently happens to us, much delayed in forwarding.   Worth waiting for.  An increasing consistency - or is it that the growing body of work builds, as you called it once, a landscape?  But I see more clearly a deliberate effort to rebuild a demolished land.

The man afoot: the American sketches, it occurs to me now, sharpen the fact. You were so amused by the results of being whirled about in American cars.

I think the sound deepens in the new book.  I think more and more of the poem to J  T as the enunciation of your themes, of your sense of honor - - .  We thank you for the book. There is so little poetry - - if you’ll excuse my loose style once more - - there is so little poetry which actually matters at all. 

                                        Our regards and thanks

                                                       George

 

---

 

your book: Seeing Is Believing (McDowell, Obolensky, 1958; Oxford University Press, 1960).

the new book: American Scenes.

 

 

34.                                                                                                              

Brook Cottage
August 8, 1966

Dear George and Mary,

It was good to get your note and to know Seeing is Believing had arrived.  One does want a few people to see and believe one’s things. 

I am working on that anthology — have typed quantities of  Oppen, but still  have to get done Narrative and 5 Poems on Poetry.  Could you let me have a short biographical note — place of birth, place of any bits you think relevant.  I hesitate to ask Louis his (year of birth), since I fear he’s going to prove awkward and intend to work through his English publishers on rights. Can you tell me where he was born? Also Reznikoff, please?  Many thanks. Was Stevens in An Objectivists Anthology or is my mind misrembering?  Was Eliot?  I ought to have photostatted the title page  but thought my memory wd. carry the load.

I re-read your prose piece, ‘The Mind’s Own Place’ in Kulchur 10.  I must  say it’s extraordinarily well done with some most memorable formulations.   The truth does seem to get told.  Eventually. 

What a lovely time that was in  New York!   Thanks for it once more. 

                                                                      All our love,

                                                                         Charles

 

---

 
that anthology: Seven Significant American Poets, with poems by Louis Zukofsky, Oppen, Charles Reznikoff, Lorine Niedecker, Carl Rakosi, and James Laughlin. It was never to be published, because Zukofsky refused to appear in it.

 

 

35.                                                                                                                          

August 16, 1966 

Dear Charles:

Venerable as one sees me now, he would little believe that I began life as a                   simple infant in New Rochelle, NY, in nineteen-O-eight.  The story may well give hope and courage to younger men.

Zuk was born, also in youthful circumstances, in New York City (Manhattan) in 1904       Rezi also NY - -  in 1894, I think, but I am not sure of the precise year.  Old times, old times, there were men in those days, but we were not.  We were infants.

Eliot’s Marina in Objectivist, O my daughter.   No Stevens, alas my son. 

I am horrified and covered with guilt to think of you typing other men’s poetry. 

              - - if there remains time, I can write to N D (I have  no books here) to ask them to send you two copies of each paperback - - clipped, it would surely make a good enough ms?

Let me know

I’m particularly pleased you like - -  ‘accept’ - - the Mind’s Own Place.  Many people very huffy at the time.  Not, they said, a matter of position - - I believe they thought it ‘crude’ 

We’ve both written often by implication of courage, and I suspect we both know quite a lot about it.  Not, of course, thru being fearless.  And therefore, as always, best regards,

                                                          George

 

 

36.                                                                                                                  

Brooklyn
October 20, 1966

Dear Charles and Brenda

Your postcard-picture, or your comment about it, threw me into a strange state I’ve encountered often, and been unable to speak of at all clearly.  Your remark that people walked is a thing I’d forgotten, or not sufficiently recognized as a factor in the meaning of those places. We encounter these things now as areas where some work is being done, where one goes for a specific purpose. They were once an environment. Maybe nothing’s an environment now. 

                                                                              Merry Christmas to you anyway - - Winter solstice, actually, isn’t it? - - Well, anyway, a merry astronomical Christmas to you.

(Our language is our country.  On the whole a great country. Fails to become astronomical, but resists smog) 

                                                      George + M.

 

 

37.                                                                                                                

Brooklyn
October 22, 1966

Wonderful to have the Necklace, Charles.  The early poems by themselves: the clear core, ‘morning / extinguishes everything save light.’ The beginning - - all the more moving now that one knows where it has led, where it has led so far.  I had not before seen this poem clearly, and its four stages of man.  Tho it is clear; but I hadn’t altogether seen.

The Bead - - the single bead itself?  the single bead of the necklace? Taking on here additional clarity, and there emerges more clearly the choice involved: the solitude, candor and self-sufficiency, necessary to find clarity.  Surely the force of all words comes from their silence

‘The flute speaks (reason’s song …)’ 

                                                                          an ethic, an aesthetic, and without bothering the philosophic systems and the Critique I will say, with the poem, reason itself.

It’s a greater joy than I can say to have this collection among your work. 

All our regards to all the Tomlinsons - - we think of you often.  Ozleworth; of all unlikely names!  to mark an absolute for us, a position at least.

                                                     best regards

                                                         George

I regret that I’ve stolen only a barometer from you, Charles:  there’s a lot worth stealing.

---

the clear core, ‘morning extinguished …’: “At the clear core, morning / Extinguishes everything save light,” from “The Bead,” in The Necklace (Oxford University Press, 1966).

‘The flute speaks (reason’s song …)’: “Flute Music,” in The Necklace.

stolen only a barometer: see Tomlinson’s poems “The Barometer” and “Wind” (American Scenes) together with section 12 of Oppen’s “Route” (Of Being Numerous): “The weight of air / Measured by the barometer in the parlor / Time remains what it was // Oddly, oddly insistent.”

 

 

38.                                                                                                                 

Brook Cottage
October 22,  1966

Dear George and Mary,

It was good to get your letter.  I am ashamed not to have written before, but the summer has been rather chaotic — I had a kidney operation (minor) in June; a month later Brenda found she was pregnant and had a lousy beginning;  a month after that we all caught flu; Brenda went on to a serious haemorrhage and ultimately a miscarriage and was dashed to hospital.  She’s recovering but tires easily and the emotional strain was intense and searching.  It will be a month or two before she gets properly well.

The problem of our American trip is as follows:  we  want to park the kids and come together, but the granny isn’t altogether well.   If we can’t put them in storage I shall have to scrape around to bring ’em.  If we do bring ’em, I imagine Brenda wd. have to stay in N. York while I fared north.  We shd. fly in on April 9th; 11th I go upstate, leaving on Sunday evening.  Fulfill upstate circuit through April 22, return to New York, leave 29th. I hope we can park the kids here in England if only to give me the protection of B’s presence on the upstate tour. Your sister’s offer is terribly kind and, from the point of view of getting to places sounds very nice,  but we don’t want to miss seeing you both all we can and if the kids come along, despite their rigorous 18th century drilling, they might not fit into an 18th c setting, and anyhow there might not be desire for or room for the little beasts. The very real  attraction of 79th St is that with only a week to go at  things, one is on the very threshold, so to speak.

So where are we  now?  What do YOU think  best in the light of all  this and the fact we like a quiet life??

We greatly  look forward  to the trip.   It is a beacon ahead in the sea of another year’s teaching.  I must say, after spending the better part of sixteen years in one kind of teaching job or another,  I begin to yearn for a year out — no sabbaticals here tho’.   I am tired of advising people.

We do hope you are both keeping in the best of health.   Give us your advice about N. York, wd. you?  The fact is, I can picture us all very cosy là bas chez vous deux.

                                                       Love

                                                      Ch. & Br.

 

 

39.                                                                                                              

Brooklyn
February 1, 1967

C + B + J²

Hamilton

I don’t know what’s happened to the mathematics of friendship, or the geography: we seem to have become a repeating decimal or a Cordillera -- -   We’re leaving (not for Nassau: never again) but for San Francisco on November 1st!  Be there till about April.

We’ve told Linda and Alex (daughter, you’ll remember, and son-in-law) to use the apartment whenever they wish - -  they being in Princeton, and having occasional use for an overnight room in N Y.  At least presumably. Have to check with them to make sure they haven’t planned to use the place over Christmas vacation. If they haven’t - - and it’s unlikely that they have - - we’ll mail you the keys

in which case you could leave the books in the apartment. Otherwise mail to S F (careful careful, the Rezi is not replacable)          ((I know, you know that - - just me nerves))

We’re more sorry than I can say to miss seeing you, including the J²  - - - - Maybe sometime soon.

((( Jonathan Cape says it is about to print me - - - but haven’t yet sent a contract.  We’ll see)))

                                                          George                                                                      

 

 

40.                    

Brook Cottage
February 18, 1967

Dear George and Mary,

We were  delighted to receive the copy of the new volume.  It is surprising that so ascetic a beginning as Discrete Series could lead to so public and four-square a statement as these poems, arising from their strong private centres, tentative where they must be (as in the Whitman quote)  but standing there so, so stripped and solid in the light of  public day.   A  most moving and heartening document.  A measure of what integrity  can achieve.  I was very struck  by the way, in the Alsace piece, that the prose, George, recalled the prose of Rezi’s early Testimony, so terrifyingly and accurately on the mark without false pathos — no ‘dreams on the structure’ there .  Last week I did a lecture on the Oppen opera, with no dreams on the structure as leit motiv.  And no falsely prophetic gestures.  I have been reading Duncan’s Of the War — there are impressive bits, but when he becomes conscious of making a public statement he gets slack and Ginsbergy (I mean Ginsberg of the simpler repetitive structures), then turns on a Blakeian howl (as in B’s France and America) about Johnson being like Hitler and Stalin, and Goldwater (Goldwater!) Satanic. These strike me as being factually and emotionally inaccurate. One doesn’t improve matters by exaggeration. Goldwater belongs in The Dunciad not Paradise Lost.  I do dislike this emotional slackness of people anarchistically inclined like Duncan.  End of sermon … Or not quite.  You do the thing properly with ‘An event as ordinary /As a President.’ The word ‘ordinary’ gets precisely what apocalyptic yowling misses.  Hurrah.  Oppen for King!

When the  MS  arrived I’d sent off the anthol, so whether at this point I can work any more into it remains to be seen. I’m fairly pleased with it, tho’ it is difficult, indeed impossible to specify what goes wrong with Zuk in such a book.  If I can get Horses section  from ‘A’ into general  circulation — that’ll be something anyhow.

You know, we do regret that you don’t live just round the corner so that we could walk over of an evening …

May I hang on to this MS?   Let me know if you want it back.  You have done, George, what we all WANT to do.  You have kept it up.

                                      Salutations, congratulations

                                                                 Love

                                                            Ch, Br, etc.

 

---

copy of the new volume: the manuscript of Of Being Numerous (New Directions, 1968).

the Alsace piece: in “Route,” in Of Being Numerous.

‘dreams on the structure’: quotation from “Chartres,” in The Materials: “the lesser // Are dreams on the structure.”

Goldwater: Barry Goldwater, 1964 presidential candidate.

 

 

41.                                                                             

574 Chestnut St

 San Francisco

 California

 (till Sunday June 1st or thereabouts)

 [undated but probably February 28, 1967]

 

Dear Charles

on the despairs and fulminations of the anti-war poems, your ‘belong in the Dunciad not Paradise Lost’ is wonderful.  Indeed I wish you (youse: plural) ‘lived just round the corner so we could walk over of an evening.’

I realized the ms of the new book would hardly arrive in time to influence your editing - -  It was intended largely as an epistle. I’d very much like you to keep it.  I think my primary connection and the address of the poem is to those who know something of how to weather; in your phrase, ‘to keep it up.’ And I would like to know that you have the ms.

                                                regards to all of you

                                                         George

 

 

42.                                                                                                        

Brook Cottage
April 14,  1967

Dear George and Mary,

It looks as if we are going to be just around the corner after  all — or  almost!

I  have been offered the O’ Connor Chair in Eng Lit at Colgate Uni., Hamilton, N.Y. — September to December.  So we shall all be coming over.  Thus we undo our profits!  

Hamilton’s very nice — elegant and white in a Fenimore Cooper setting (about 20  miles from Cooperstown in fact).  I guess we shall move over about September 1st.

Haven’t landed a publisher for that anthol yet.   Curiously enough it’s Laughlin, Niedecker and Bronk they don’t seem to get.  What fools these mortals be.  Ah well, one of  these days.

                              See yiz soon, my dears.

                                                                  luv’

                                                              Ch. and Br.

 

 

43.                                                                                                                   

 April 28, 1967

Dear C, B, J and J Tomlinson (in their prospect of stone, facing now the prospect of snow) But yes, we know Hamilton, it is indeed very lovely, very beautiful, once you become accustomed to wearing enough clothes, which means mittens, boots, the works -- -  Truly, it is beautiful.  I had heard that Colgate was doing something about literature, tho I forget who spoke to us about it - - -  and there’ll be a very fine Oppen-Tomlinson reunion in N Y.  It’ll improve N Y and be the making of Hamilton

ask for anything we can do to assist the cavalcade

(Hope Juliet hasn’t quite up and gone crackers. But our love in any case

                                                        George

change of address: 2154 Mason, San Francisco.  N Y, of course, long before September.

 

 

44.                                                                                                                       

Brook Cottage
August 2, 1967

Dear George and Mary,

Time goes so swiftly — I suddenly realised that in a month we shall be in New York! Would  it be possible or convenient to pass a few nights with you — that is, all four of us!?

We arrive September 1st and should probably be in Hamilton by September 5th.   Perhaps air would be the best way there?  Could I trouble you to find out for me whether there would be a family plan N. York to Syracus (or Utica) and what the price of air fare wd. be on Tuesday September 5th?  Many thanks.

It is very exciting to think we shall be seeing you so soon.  Did I tell you we got to Spoleto this year?  Fare paid!  All very pleasant — Spoleto a lovely little town.

                                             All our love,

                                          Charles, Brenda, J²

 

 

45.                                                                                                      

 [Undated: c. August 1967]

Dear Tomlin     and Tomlinswife and Tomlinsdaughters

(you have by now my wire: I have your letter.  They crossed.  I was distrustful of the mails)

                                         -- -  torn indeed between Colgate and the under-edge.  I can see that.  To J T in a prospect of - - - what? The cottage in Glos is very beautiful  And the US might absorb 18 thousand a year - - - - tho not really.  It would be a very satisfactory income.  Well: you’ll decide.

                                                                                                            it would be very pleasant to have you here --

                                    Wotton on edge or the coal gate?

                                                                             but I don’t know what you felt about Colgate. I do wish we’d been in N Y.  We could have talked and felt again, I think, at home together

                                                  Best luck

                                                   George

 

 

46.                                                                                                                                                 

Little Deer Isle
Maine
[Undated: c. late August 1967]

Dear Charles - - - Brenda and the J’s of Sade - -

Welcome.

Diane Wakoski was - - briefly - - about to use our apartment when we left.  We had told her you should be arriving about the 1st of Sept, and no doubt she’s out by now. We’ll write her to make sure,

          But:

                  Diane was in considerable distress.  By no means in condition for thoughtful domesticity.  And broke. She may never have moved in - - she hasn’t written - -  In which case the place will be covered with dust and the windows grimy, etc.  If she did move in - - - - anything may be the case.

                                                                                          we have only four sheets: they may all be unwashed.  Or the dishes.            or            You decide if you want to risk it: you are, as you know, more than welcome. Keys enclosed.

Mary writing to our travel-agent lady who will send you the information and the tickets.  She’ll charge them (an americanism: I mean to say, she’ll give credit)

                                          And again welcome.

                                                   George

((Mail the keys back if you decide against))

 

---

the J’s of Sade: Justine and Juliette are two novels by the Marquis de Sade.

 

 

47.                                                                                                                                                                            

2811 Polk St

 San Francisco

 (You Ninety States)

 [Undated: c. Fall 1967]

 

Dear Charles +

Herewith the keys    Sorry for the delay.  Been moving in. I do wish you + could visit here - - San Francisco surely is the most beautiful city   Which is not to say we don’t feel strange - - we feel pretty odd ducks.  So, I think, does everyone here, and no doubt all of us are right.  That is to say, we are.  But the city is beautiful.  Clear, clean, sharp, and the bay below the city  -  -  Strange, jagged San Francisco in clear air         And us in  a 1910 house;  back porch, front living room  - - - - what we wanted.  I figure: it’ll be me, and the house should be a house.

Nice to dream of you-all visiting.  I suppose it’s impossible - - -  Well, nice to think of you packing in to the Brooklyn nest  

                                                                                (Haight-ashbury - - the Hippie area - - looks like Dunkirk, the beach at Dunkirk - - shreds and tatters of uniforms, begging from the civilians, a defeated army.  We outlast them, you an me.  These kids deceived themselves: it’s easy to
‘love’ everyone if you don’t love anyone)

                  Welcome to Brooklyn

                                                           [Speak to the neighbors downstairs       Walter and Rita Southworth.  Nice people. They worry about robbers when they hear strangers upstairs. And
they’d like to talk to a Hinglish family - - I promised them.  Use a little strong language, maybe.

                                                   all our love

George      

The following are the collected letters of poets George Oppen and Charles Tomlinson, as transcribed by Richard Swigg for the feature “Addressing one’s peers: The letters of Charles Tomlinson and George Oppen, 1963–1981.” This section of the correspondence spans the year 1963.

 

1.

Albuquerque
April 15, 1963

Dear Mr Oppen,

I wanted to say how much I have enjoyed reading your volume The Materials which I’ve gone through (several times) recently.  The cleanliness, the clarity, the sureness of line and absence of ‘eloquence’ are very moving indeed.  It’s good to see such a book in print and a pleasure to return to it and recommend it to one’s friends.

I wonder if your earlier volume of 1934, noted on the jacket of The Materials, is still obtainable?  Conceivably I could buy a copy from you? I am most anxious to get hold of it and would greatly appreciate knowing if it still exists. 

                              With thanks once more and every good wish,

                                               Charles Tomlinson

 

---

Albuquerque: In 1963 Tomlinson was guest professor at the University of New Mexico and poet in residence at the D. H. Lawrence ranch near Taos. He was on a year’s leave from the University of Bristol, where he taught from 1956 to 1992.

 

 

2.

364 Henry Street
Brooklyn
April 24, 1963

Dear Mr. Tomlinson:

I have three copies of Discrete Series of which I will gladly send you one …

It’s pleasant to know that you like the Materials: it is wonderfully generous of you to take the trouble to say so.  I was troubled while working to know that I had no sense of an audience at all.  Hardly a new complaint, of course.  One imagines himself addressing his peers, I suppose — surely that might be the definition of ‘seriousness’? I would like, as you see, to convince myself that my pleasure in your response is not plain vanity but the pleasure of being heard, the pleasure of companionship, which seems more honorable.

In any case, an entirely honorable pleasure that you take the trouble to write

                                               With best regards

                                                 George Oppen                                                  

 

 

3.

Albuquerque
April 28, 1963

Dear George Oppen,

I was delighted and moved to receive so speedily both your letter and the book. What you say about seriousness implying one’s writing for his peers is extraordinarily good.  I’m sure there is no better concept of ‘audience.’ I think, despite what you say, Discrete Series was also writing for one’s peers and I thank you heartily for it.  One trusts that among the handful of things you’d want to rescue would be ‘The knowledge not of sorrow …’ (the first),  ‘The evening, water in a glass …,’ ‘Closed car — closed in glass —,’ ‘Party on Shipboard’ — ‘homogeneously automatic’ is a splendid phrase — ‘She lies, hip high,’ ‘Fragonard,’ ‘No interval of manner,’ ‘On the  water, solid,’ ‘Drawing.’ These are merely my favourites, not all that I liked. How admirable your taste is for unforeseen distinctions:

                                    (As soda-jerking from
                                    the private act

                                     Of

                                     Cracking eggs);

 

I like also the first part of that poem (beginning P.8).  What is remarkable is the consistency of vision (‘What I’ve seen / Is all I’ve found:  myself’ — you see, I can quote you by heart) and the growth into ever more substantial clarity in The Materials.  I was intrigued in reading and re-reading the latter to know over what period these poems had been written.  Not idle curiosity, but curiosity about the roots of excellence which cannot, surely, be wholly bad.  I wonder also how conscious a group activity objectivism was? — I see such differences between, say, you and Williams and Reznikoff, I cannot help wondering whether Zukofsky’s objectivist programme was not later than objectivist verse which is so disparate.

These half questions move on the surface of a deep enjoyment that your lovely poems have given me over the past weeks and I apologize for allowing them to intrude into what began as an expression of thanks and pure delight.

Perhaps we may chat of these matters in the not too near future?  My wife and I pass thro’ New York on our way back to England in mid-August and if the money lasts conceivably we shall stay for a few days.

I bring out a new book of verse of my own this summer & will send it to you — not for comment, just for friendship.

                          Again, thank you and every good wish for your work.

                                              Charles Tomlinson

 

---

a new book of verse: Tomlinson refers to his collection A Peopled Landscape (Oxford University Press, 1963).

 

 

4.

May 5, 1963

Dear  Charles Tomlinson:

‘Happy that company who are intoxicated with each other’s speech; who, through the fermentation of thought, are each other’s wine.’

Sa’ib of Isfahan, the translation by Edward Browne.  Or; ‘our language is our country’   I’m not sure of the accuracy of that quotation.

I hadn’t thought the Discrete Series ‘bad,’ but I do think the poems require the help, the very great good will of the reader.  Which you generously supply. I had meant to carry the thinking and the form of these poems as far as I could without abandoning the figures of perception for the figures of elocution, or even of mere assertion, which I profoundly distrusted.  There seemed at the time a tremendous difficulty of honesty: the whole weight of sincerity seemed to rest on one’s own shoulders.  As how should it not? But there was perhaps not a body of honest contemporary work, a sincere and public conversation in which to join.  Not, perhaps I should add, that I take truthfulness to be a social virtue. I think very probably it is not. But I think it is poetic: I think really that nothing else is. The sentimentality of an old codger? - - but I was a mere fine broth of a codger at the time.  

It’s been pleasant to be invited to talk about oneself - - and to speak with such affection!  I see I have rather sneakily accepted praise.  But I am reminded, quite against my will, that the poems are, after all, fragmentary and sometimes strained.

As to the ‘Objectivists’ - - the  word properly in quotes because the word has caused some confusion: it derived from an insistence on ‘objectification,’ on form, a matter worth mentioning in the wake of the Amy Lowells.  Tho’ Zukofsky wrote also of ‘sincerity’ as the ‘epic quality.’

As  you suggest,  no one’s work altered, so far as I know, after the word was coined.  It appeared in - - I think three  - - essays that Zukofsky wrote.  And of course those are simply Zukofsky’s essays.  I must have owed more to Zuk.  than either Williams or Rezi could have:  both Rezi and Wms being older than Zuk and I younger.  I had seen Zuk’s work in Exiles in, I think, 1928 - - being nineteen or twenty at the time - - and had set out to meet him. His conversation and criticism was important to me, was of great  importance to me at the time.  I don’t remember therefore that the essays themselves  came as anything new to me.

I noticed that Williams, in the autobiography, speaks of the first meeting of the Objectivists in an apartment on Columbia Heights.  That would have been our apartment, my wife’s and mine.  But what we discussed then was the undertaking to print books.  The work of course already existed in ms. and the dust jackets of the books carried the explanation, written at that meeting by Reznikoff,  that the ‘objectivist press was an organization of writers who had joined together in order  to print their own work  and that of others which they  thought ought to be read.’ It was about as  much as could be said.  We were  of different backgrounds; led and have led different lives.  As you say, we don’t much sound alike.  But the common factor is well defined in Zuk’s essay. And surely I envy still Williams’ language, Williams’ radiance; Rezi’s lucidness;  and frequently Zukofsky’s line-sense.

Those essays, by the way, are reprinted in Kulchur No 7.  I had not seen them  for some twenty years.  I can’t judge their current interest, having known them so long. And the style is crabbed.  But they seem to me sound statements.

An essay of mine, slightly referring to these things, will appear in Kulchur 10, incidently.

Not sure if you wanted all this, but I’ll complete the history.  The Objectivist Press derived from To Publishers;  paper-bound books printed by my wife and me in Toulon.   Printed the Objectivist Anthology - - edited by Zukofsky - - and Williams’ Novelette and Other Prose.

Commercially disastrous.  Paper-backs were new to the U S, and encountered trouble with the  U S customs and the U S customs - - the men on the pier, and the men in the book stores.  Both of whom said they are not books.  The book stores simply would not stock them, or most would not.  Thereafter that meeting on Columbia Heights, etc.

The poems of The Materials were written between 1958 and 1962.  As I believe you surmised.  Too long,  too personal  a story to undertake here:   I kept nothing of the little I wrote for some twenty five years.  That matter of one’s peers - - I have come to believe again, perhaps in  more rather than less despair, that the only possible hope is in the conversation with one’s peers.  Or in thinking as if one were in contact with one’s peers.

In England,  a couple of years ago,  I visited Tim Pember, a writer whose work I had seen - - stories - - and he showed me your work among others.  I was struck and delighted.  Reason for my promptness in reply to your first letter.  I have lost Pember’s address, and I don’t know whether he indicated that you knew each other.

I’m sorry, since you will be in New York, that we will be in Maine in August. Unless toward the end of August - - ? You are welcome in Little Deer Island, in our rented cabin,  if you could possibly make it.

                                                 With regards

                                                 George Oppen

 

---

“our language is our country”: Oppen is partly remembering the line from Tomlinson’s “Return to Hinton,” which he would have seen in Poetry, June 1961 (later collected in A Peopled Landscape, 1963).

Zuk’s essay: “Sincerity and Objectification,” in Poetry, February 1931.

Kulchur 7 (Autumn 1962): Louis Zukofsky’s “Five Statements for Poetry.”

Tim Pember: Timothy Pember, author of the novels The Needle’s Eye (Jonathan Cape, 1948) and Swanson (Cape, 1951).

 

 

5.                                                                                                                    

May 31, 1963

Dear Charles Tomlinson:

I find myself entranced by the poem with which you have presented me.  I see myself - - slightly the elder of the two - - talking to myself - - and smoking my pipe, which is a shock.  I congratulate the three of us on the whole thing.  Perhaps I would want to use it as the epigraph of a book.  Just as you have written it; that is, with your uncapitalized lines in contrast to my habit of capitalizing initial letters to emphasize the different ear at work and the effect - - I don’t know if I am expressing this accurately, but I wanted to say, as if it were heard, rather than written - -

We will enquire about an apartment for you.  I believe something will turn up.  We could offer you the use of our place, but it is impossibly small for a family of four; it would be impossible to put two children in it, unless they should happen to be v-shaped, like corner shelves. I’m afraid you may not have gone to those extremes of planned parenthood.  Of course, because you did not plan to stay in New York.

Your response to my ‘Persian quotation’ is a very nice event.  It was not Persian. I had meant to quote you, but couldn’t remember where I had seen the poem.  It seems I mis-quoted.  Of course it was ‘… our language is our land.’ But I am glad your statement - - even mis-quoted - - seemed good to you, as - - even mis-remembered - -  it did to me.

                                                      Regards

                                                 George Oppen

 

---

the poem with which you have presented me: Tomlinson had sent Oppen a short-line poem composed from two sentences in Oppen’s letter of April 24 (“I would like, as you see, to convince myself … which seems more honorable”). It was published in Oppen’s next book, This in Which (New Directions, 1965), as a collaboration under the title “To C. T.”

 

 

6.                                                                                                        

[Undated: c. June 1963]

Dear Charles Tomlinson:

Sorry to say we did not find a sub-let for you.  Young artist by the name of Peter Young thought he might find something, and will write you if he does.  There seems to be a summer rush to New York.  Lord knows why.  Seemed no more attractive than usual when we left. 

                                                      Regards,

                                                       George

 

 

7.                                                                                                             

c/o Lawrence Ranch
San Cristobal
New Mexico
July 9, 1963

Dear George,                                                                                        

Just a line to say thanks for your efforts in seeking us an apartment.  Suddenly, out of the blue, a friend in Brooklyn wrote to say he’d be away for summer, wd. we like his …? So we leave for there about the 29th, staying till we sail on Aug 17th. It’s splendid up here — mountains, streams, Spanish graveyards, bears, coyotes.  Pity to leave, really, but I wd.  like to see a little art in the urbs.

Just reviewing yr book, so I’ve re-read the WORKS and very enjoyable it has been — review the New Mexico Quarterly to appear the Lord Knows when.   Will send you my own new book, due Aug 29th, as soon as I get back to England.

What a shame we shall not be able to meet.  If you get over là bas,  our address is:

                                                  Brook Cottage
                                                  Ozleworth

                                                   Wotton-U-Edge           [U for Under]

                                                   Glos.

 

Are you writing?  You owe us (the universal we speaking) more pomes for own good.

                                               All the very best

                                                      Charles

 

---

 
reviewing yr. book: Tomlinson’s review of Charles Reznikoff’s By the Waters of Manhattan, Selected Verse (Charles Boni, 1930) and Oppen’s The Materials (New Directions, 1962), in New Mexico Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1964).

 

 

8.                                                                                                        

[Undated: c. July 1963]

Dear Charles:

We’ll be in New York August 1st to the 15th - - a change of plans - -.  Let us know how to reach you.

Yes, I’m writing quite a bit. A fair sampling will appear in July Poetry.  And elsewhere, but as you say of the Quarterlies, the Lord knows when.

                                                       Best regards

                                                          George

 

 

9.                                                                                                                    

July 27, 1963

Dear Charles:

I enjoyed very much reading your review.  Thanks for sending the copy.  I will have a copy made for New Directions-SF Review for the mention of Zuk.  They have three or four volumes of prose in the works of which I have just no opinion at all - - in fact my report on the first two mss shown me was that nothing in the world would induce me to read them through.  But the first years’ poetry schedule consists of Oppen, Reznikoff and William Bronk, in which my advice is obvious enough.  My recommendation of course included Zuk, but the suggestion - - as you see - - has not been acted on.  It is by now too awkward for me to discuss the matter with Zuk at all, but it is my impression that they would be more likely to do a Selected than a Collected poems, if only for budgetary reasons.  I can’t really urge Louis to submit a ms. since I have no assurance at all that they would accept it.  But you might urge him to try it if you think it worth the risk - -  to him - - of a rejection.  If they had a ms. under consideration I could re-open the discussion.

                                          Look forward to seeing you.

                                                   George

 

 

10.                                                                                          

[Undated: c. September 1963]

Dear Charles:

I want to thank you for a people[d] landscape - - I read the quote from Millet as a statement of realism, of imagism, for a moment, and then its sense began to dawn on - - the meaning of factualness, which I think is the deepest meaning of the poems.  I had seen it first in the soldi, soldi, against the sea - -.

We did very much  enjoy seeing you (the American plural: youse).  It would be well worth the voyage to walk and talk with you (youse) in England. We will try to do it.

                                       With all best wishes, all regards,

                                                     George

your quote from John Cage in Poetry is a considerable contribution to the discussion. I thought rather less of it as a poem than you, but it is the statement of an attitude - - Mary and I have been referring to it incoherently as a ‘fun’ attitude - - which we have been unable to grasp.  And which is very much the attitude of most of the young people, the young people  around the galleries - -

Can’t live on that, tho.  No one can.  I don’t mean to deplore or to attack: can’t live on the convictions of the past either.  But they cannot live on that. Something will happen.  Something.  Not impossible that what will happen is that they will cease to live, of course - -.  I am not suggesting that we should lie to each other, this is simply where we are.  I agree we must say so, I made my own defense in the last poem of my book - - ‘We must talk now’ or we abandon one another.  Still, as fun, as hilarity - -  There is something I know, in my bones, about that.

 

---

the quote from Millet: the epigraph to A Peopled Landscape: “I want the cries of my geese to echo in space. Jean-François Millet.”

soldi, soldi: In “Up at La Serra,” in A Peopled Landscape.

your quote from John Cage in Poetry: In his review, among others, of Harold Rosenberg’s Tradition of the New (Poetry, August 1963) Tomlinson quoted and praised Cage’s poem “On Nothing.”

 

 

11.                                                                                                           

Brook Cottage
September [ ], 1963

Dear George and  Mary,

What a pleasure it was to get your note — I had imagined you would still be basking at Nassau and here you are, back already beating with the great pulse.  Did we really only meet twice? — it seemed qualitatively so much more than that and what was so good about our meetings was the possibility of conversation — dialogue.  I began to think that almost nobody in the U.S. ‘went in for’ dialogue: so many literate males — oh, the women are much nicer — simply talk at one: men of my own generation, men younger than me, older men — one becomes their audience and little more.  I’d become quite anxious about this self-absorption:  one grew to expect it. Ultimately, exasperated, I penned my reply — with as little punctuation as possible, in order that I might get

A WORD IN EDGEWAYS

 Tell me about yourself they

 say and you begin to

 tell them about yourself and

 that is just the way I

 am is their reply: they play

 it all back to you in another

 key, their key, and then in mid-

 narrative they pay you a

 compliment as if to say what a good

 listener you are I am

 a good listener my stay

 here has developed my faculty I will

 say that for me I will not

 say that every literate male in

 America is a soliloquist, a

 ventriloquist, a strategic

 egotist, an inveterate

 campaigner-explainer over and

 back again on the terrain of him-

 self — what I will

 say is they are not un-

 interesting: they are simply

 unreciprocal and yes it was a

 pleasure if not an unmitigated

 pleasure and yes I did enjoy our

 conversation goodnightthankyou

 

This is by way of saying YOU weren’t like that. The above is not the sole impression we took home.  It was a great year.  Perhaps the best we have ever had … Back here, rain has been virtually incessant.  Our pipes had burst last winter ruining dining room, ceilings and books.  So wetly in wet we wait, mould on every hand, feeling our premature aches and pains.  Why, it almost drives one to monologue.

I wonder if you have the address of the San Francisco Review, George?  I have an article on a Berkeley painter and I thought I might try them.

As I go up the field for mushrooms I think of your promise to come one day and walk on English ground with an Angle.  You will need rubber boots.  Come to think of it — there are spares.

                          Do let us know how things are with you both.

                                        Love from Brenda and myself,

                                                 Charles

 

---

A Word in Edgeways: written June–July 1963, and collected in The Way of a World (Oxford University Press, 1969).

 

 

12.                                                                                                      

September [ ],  1963

Dear Charles and Brenda:

Words well wielded edgewise.                                                            
                                                           In fact I got to laughing too much to be able to  read it aloud, and Mary had to read it.  So it had a salutary effect: I mean, Mary got a word in edgewise.  Not only improved, but comforted me; I was glad to be assured there are many worse than I.  Which really I had suspected.  Why O why do they do it?  Partly the presence of the man from Outside, an opportunity to write their names in the sky, or anyway on something at a considerable distance.  Possibly England.

We do think and talk very seriously of a visit to the Underedge of Wotton.  Or Wotton-Underedge. Doesn’t mean we’ll manage to do it.  We become very conscious of age,  of the limitation of time, of what we want to work out still.   But if we should find ourselves feeling or being rich, we might invest in plane tickets for the spectacular extravagance of a one week visit in Spring.  What would you think?  What would be a good  time?  Would flying Americans be too much for your nerves? This only asked as wild speculation — I don’t know that we  could do it.   But we would  like to.  The Severn adds its lure.

On the S F Review — now an annual.   They have had a rule against critical articles  of all kinds, but an essay on a Frisco painter - - Berkeley painter - - really should constitute reason for an exception.  I’ll talk to June Degnan about it - - I  think the policy  excluding discussion of art has always been a mistake in any case - -. And I think you should write her offering to send the article if they are interested.   Address

                               June O. Degnan
                               Hampshire House

                                150 Central Park South

                                New York City

 

I should not have bothered you about that poem.  I regretted it at the time.  But this was the contrivance:

[Oppen inserts a sketch of an elevator door with two globes above it, one crayoned red, one green, with the words “Meaning UP and DOWN,” in a reference to the Discrete Series poem “White. From the.”]

So familiar at the time that I don’t think anyone was puzzled at the time.  Printed c 1930 in Poetry.  The office building evoked by its lighting effects in those dim days.  And its limited alternatives, the limited alternatives of a culture.  And its quiet / stone floor.  From there to ‘thus’ - - big business - - ‘hides the parts.’

                                                                                                 Don’t for the love of Pete let this worry you further.  Your version of the child and the ball - - - up, down, up down -  - -  is a gift, and a good one.  I accept.  And the other is lost - - it so happens - - in the mists of architectural history.  And cannot be restored to the consciousness of any reader without a red crayon.  And a two-color print job, which is prohibitively expensive.

                                   - - Similar thing, Louis’ saw horses.  Which I think was entirely clear at the time.  The A’s, the M’s, the horses, the words, do dance and only thru the verse - - all of which he meant as a programmatic statement for his verse.  The primacy of music.

I had heard of Louis delivering half hour diatribes about That Oppen to innocent visitors, one of whom, at least, made a silent and edgewise exit.  Not, I hope, to you?  But perhaps I had better say that Louis really has no grievance against me, nor has the world, or no greater grievance than it has against anyone in these times of the population explosion.  And Louis no greater grievance against me than against anyone who ‘gets printed.’  Awkward for me, tho.  And overwhelmingly ironic to discuss my position as ‘a success.’  I hesitated to go into it, fearing I might become an inveterate explainer on the terrain of myself, but hearing that I am less inveterate than some - - -  Perhaps the effect of your poem has been more comforting than salutary after all. (and I’ll doubt that I’ll produce another book within quite a few years. Maybe that’ll heal things)

                  ‘This earth, this throne of Kings, this England - -’  You mean the man was looking down at his rubber boots when he said that?

                                                                                               But Mary’s from Oregon, a good deal wetter than anything you can show, and New York is the worst climate in the world.  AND has  no mushrooms.

                                            with regards to you both

                                                        George

 

---

June O. Degnan: Oppen’s sister.

Your version of the child and the ball: In his review of The Materials (New Mexico Quarterly), Tomlinson had mistaken the elevator signs in “White. From the” as the up-down motion of a child bouncing a ball.

Louis’ saw horses: Police saw-horses in Zukofsky’s ‘A’-7.

 

 

13.                                                                                                              

Brook Cottage

 Ozleworth Bottom

 Wotton-U-Edge

 Glos.

  September 21, 1963

 

Dear George and Mary,

Thanks for yours.  I am now dully (how does one spell due-ly?) elevated by your two colour design.  Lucidity itself.

Why don’t you come and stay during next Easter vacation?  It’d be lovely to have you both.  Not Easter week, when the rest of the world is abroad, but one of the other four of our recess.  The weather should be springy then and the summer rains will not have begun in full fury.  I must check when Easter is next year.  DO come.  We are painting the guests’ bedroom and will do it with added zest at the prospect of your advent.  You wd, I think, love the parish churches round here and the general intimacy of the green landscape with its walls of grey stone.

Thank you so much for Mrs Degnan’s address.  I’ll send off the MS. with this.

                                               Tante belle cose,

                                                   Charles

        P.S. How about this?

In Longfellow’s Library

 Sappho

 and the Venus de Milo

 gaze out past

 the scintillations from

 the central candelabrum

 to where

  (on an upper shelf)

 plaster Goethe

 in a laurel

 crown, looks

 down, divided

 from a group

 dancing a tarantella, by

 the turquoise butterfly

 that Agassiz

 brought back

 dead: below

 these, the busts of

 Homer, Aeschylus

 and Sophocles still

 pedestalled where

 they ambushed Hiawatha.

 

---

In Longfellow’s Library: written July 1963 and published in American Scenes (Oxford University Press, 1966).

 

 

14.                                                                                                                  

October 1, 1963

Dear Charles and Brenda:

You better mean it: we accept.

A few details to clear up, but almost anyone - - even a vicar - - can can tell us when  Easter is, surely.  The guest room painted with Zest takes care of it from A to Z

when love has commen with lent to town, we will be in Gaynest under Gore.  And walk in those green fields.

                                              With all our affection,

                                                      George

     (Yes: our cultural resources.  Longfellow and all.  I imagine the butterfly on a pin?  but a flimsy affair compared to the word that pins the poem:
that Agassiz

 brought back

 dead: below

 these

 

15.

Brook Cottage
October 18, 1963

Dear George and Mary,

Of course we didn’t mean it — Easter don’t exist:  it’s just one of those Xtian myths disproved by the 19th Century.  April fool!

But, serieusement:  my vacation is March 10th to April 20th, Justine will be out of school March 25th – April 13th.   Why not come in April, as late as possible if only to make sure of good weather and also to MISS the mass holiday, i.e., Good Friday to Easter Monday, that is March 27th–30th.

I write more briefly than I would like, since term is upon us … We’ve just finished painting ‘the Oppens’ room’ as we call it.   Can you stand a babbling brook  outside in the garden or shall I have the authorities switch it off?

Love and great anticipation.   If Winter comes can George and Mary be far behind.

                                                  Charles

 

 

16.                                                                                                        

Brook Cottage
November 19, 1963

Dear George and Mary,

I’d meant to write long before this to say, yes, April 6–13 wd. be fine for the visit — the visit.

At the moment rain and floods everywhere.  I trust they will have dried out by April.  Not usually the cruellest month here.

In haste and the desperation of dozens of essays to grade (‘mark’ we say — I  spikka da Amurricana fur clarity’s sake).

                                                   Love,

                                                  Charles         

 

 

17.                                                                                                           

Brook Cottage
December 29, 1963

Dear George and Mary,

How very kind of you to send us the Mailer and the very fine poem.  We had always intended reading Barbary Shore and now we own a copy we shall do so.  We enjoyed Naked and the Dead immensely but found, despite the good bits, The Deer Park was a sad, tired falling off.  He’s an interesting chap, hipsterism apart, or maybe hipsterism is a necessary part of getting off the ground these days?

We seem to have had a dreary phase of ‘sore trials’ since our return — first Justine was hospitalised, then detonsilled, then a dock strike immobilised our imported car on a London wharf for three months; then my father fell ill, was operated on, recovered, relapsed with congestion of the lungs and is now slowly coming forward again.  Workmen came in to dig us a septic tank, struck three springs, got flooded out. Tedious additions like that.  In the middle of the digging  + removal of inner wall of the house, frost struck unexpectedly and  froze the water supply for three days.  Oh, but this is pure grumbling.  Really, I begin to ache with self pity: ‘Tell me about yourself they / say …’   Basta.

We do hope you had a nice Christmas.  Ours, sandwiched between chaoses, was pleasantly intime and cloistral.  Our one visitor, the vicar, brought a bottle of home-made wine; we walked in the afternoon of Xmas day with the children — a  lovely, suddenly mild, sunlit time with Ozleworth valley swelling and green despite the recent pressure of frosts, the stone walls very solid yet visionary in the lowering light and the trees looking their brushy, knuckled winter selves.

We look forward to Aprille with hir shoures swote.  All the best for 64.

                                              Charles and Brenda