Letters: Ed Baker and Cid Corman, 1973–1975

'From Here to There'

Ed Baker

Ed Baker writes: “The following letters were written by me to Cid Corman in 1973-1975 while I was working on restoring John Penn's 1723 farm-house and writing Restoration Poems and retrieved/purchased from the William Reese Company via abebooks.com on March 12, 2005. Cid's replies to my letters are in Restoration Letters (tel let, 2003). Cid gave a packet of some of the things that I had sent to him to his brother with instructions to sell. The letters included here were included in that package presented here in a little different form.  Some of Cid’s replies to my letters in RESTORATION LETTERS (1972 – 1978), tel let, 2003. The poems were published as RESTORATION POEMS, Country Valley Press, 2008.  That's 35 or so years AFTER first writings / versions of the poems ! As Cid wrote in 1975: ‘No hurry with the book : it won't improve with haste. And now one riding you. Let it accrete and shape it with care as it comes. And then mull it with even more care when it seems “done”. The way you’re working makes heavy demands on each word ...’” — Ed Baker   9 - 10 - 2010 / 11 - 13 - 2012


Click on the page screenshot above for a PDF copy of all the letters.

Ed Baker’s "Afterward": “some of these pieces were published in a little different form in 1975 in Charley and Pam Plymell's Cold Spring Journal and in John Perlman's Shuttle. In 2008 (33 years after these first drafts via letters to Cid) Country Valley Press / Mark Kuniya published Restoration Poems. In 2001 Tel Let Press / John Martone published Restoration Letters, in which Cid replies to these letters ... and more. In 2004 I bought off of the net from William Reese Company a packet of (my) ‘stuff’ that included the original letters that Cid had given to his brother to sell...”