To Charles Olson, April 8. 1953: "Bach & Bird & Williams ought to be
enough for any "poet" - and he might do worse than not bothering to read
anyone after Shakespeare, etc. Who I honestly , like they say, can't now
read myself. § On this last - it is a constant damn embarrassment, that
S/ at least in the books I can get, the forms of them etc., is so slow
on the page I get bugged, and don't make it. That, say, whereas
Melville, Lawrence, Crane, Cervantes, Williams, yourself, Pound (in his
prose), Parkman, Stendhal, and Homer - are all of a particular
relevance, immediately & unavoidably clear to me, - S/ is not. I'd be an
idiot to say he was, etc. I cannot get into his content, or dig it,
enough, to move me to a proper study." (I quote from the selection of
their correspondence in *Blast 3* as published by Black Sparrow.)
He gets warmed up later in this air-clearing letter: "I don't think
Rabelais is funny...I can't make Donne...I think James is a horrible old
bore... [...] I hate Beethoven and get to hate Mozart...I think that
Bird, Bach, and a few others are all the music one needs."
Nothing like being brutally honest, huh? I've never managed to read
Cervantes all through myself. Who the heck is Parkman?
mj
Mark Weiss wrote:
> I'm trumped! What did he say abiut Shakespeare?
>
> Mark
>
>
> At 09:53 AM 4/16/2005, you wrote:
>
>> I got it the first time, Mark - I read Alison's mail in the morning
>> (Romance Time) & answered before noticing & clicking on yours, which
>> of course made the point more learnedly. I was too keen on showing
>> off my knowledge of Olson! - But perhaps you can tell us whether
>> Creeley ever changed his feeling about Shakespeare?
>> mj
>
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