Charles Olson to Morgans, March 26, 1947 -- "I ate yr praise like the child I am"

I find most of Charles Olson's poetry bewildering, but his letters are wonderful. He took a liking to my folks when he met them in 1945, probably through their mutual friend Howard Daniel. My mom took two of his favorite early author photos, including the one below. It sounds as though it was used in the first edition of Call Me Ishmael, though I've never seen a copy so I can't be sure. 

George Bush, a Black man, settled in what is now Washington state in 1844s. He was a founder of the town of  Centralia, and he and his prosperous farm were resources for many of the settlers who arrived in the next decades. Murray and Rosa had hoped to write a novel based on his life.

Much of the Olson/Morgan correspondence is in the archives at the University of Connecticutt.
 

Western people: 

We are so very excited this once at least to have got THE PIX used that I am skimming off to you the News this moment it is on the street. We think it looks wonderful and prove R & H the tame, stupid folk we've thought so far. Don't you? Like the review, too, no?

Charles Olson -- Rosa Morgan photo

Yr letter was a joy, and I ate yr praise like the child I am, going back again for more. I don' suppose one ever gets again this silly, giddy delight of a first book. Yesterday, in a half hour, I learned the Greek alphabet!

Joining you on the west coast was a San Francisco Chronicle job the day the book came out, with emphasis on Pacific man. Which proves what I know. And plans are coming to the boil. The slow pot. Both of us are so hungry to come out and see you in what yr letters make such a Morgan place. I don't know anyone who makes such a scape around themselves as you two do: Patzcuaro, Danube, Jubal Early, Puget Sound. We now have the idea of using the French advance -- if it ever comes: it would cover Greyhound r.t. for 2 at least. Or if a windfall shld spill out of some tree, add it, and buy a car, on the assumption we could sell at a higher price West: accurate? 

I hesitate for one reason only: my New England guilt over work. But in a year and a half I have done so god damned little that staying put does not seem the answer. I merely compound the guilt. The Indian-white-Negro book jumps and halts, jams like a gun which is neither prose nor verse. I guess I shall never take poems (which have kept dropping) as work enough to justify a year. 

Your own projects are very exciting. Is Viewless Winds the labor union tale Howard swears will get you run out of the State? As to the Guggenheim on George Bush, it's a natural, and you should have no trouble nailing one. The customary date for application is October 15, but it occurs to me that you most definitely have a claim on the Post-Service grants they have now added ... 

I feel so certain that a Guggenheim is waiting for you at any time you want it, that another plan suggests itself: the Bush subject is so precise to the narrower interests of the Rosenwald people* that you might be able to double your advantage, get the Rosenwald for this, and hold the Guggenheim for the next idea. Beyond such a suggestion I'm afraid I have no other info on the Rosenwald, didn't know, in fact, that they made grants except for community projects, more or less sociological. Which may be all your way: if you knock off a sharp statement of yr project and ship it to them pronto as inquiry, I think it possible you may break them open. If anyone could, it's you and George Bush!

Am I right that old Dr Will Alexander is the boss of the Rosenwald? Was Manpower head here until the bastards chased him out, (the bastards that are now on top and are turning us into a mondithic fascist state right before our eyes). ( Two phenomenon simultaneous: the huge geological slide of Britain and this nation of ours repeating Europe 30 years ago: Jesus!)

Must quit and ruse Connie to feed the Gloucester monster. Call this a note, and swing us back another. We miss you. Letters help. Big love from us both -- and from Kate. 

Yrs, 

Charles

*The Rosenwald Fund, a project of the philanthropist and Sear Roebuck and Co. co-founder Julius Rosenwald, began officially in 1917. Its primary mission was to provide schools for Black children in the South, as well as housing and workshops. Rosenwald, who was from a Reform Jewish family, admired Booker T. Washington and saw him as a mentor for projects of advancements and self-reliance. He persuaded other wealthy whites to join him in building schools and providing supplies, teacher salaries and teacher housing.

The fund also gave direct grants to individuals involved in cultural work. Most of them were Black, including Marian Anderson, Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou, Gordon Parks, Rita Dove, and Julian Bond's father. A few went to non-Black scholars working on projects relating to African-American history. Presumably Charlie thought Murray might qualify for one of those. That didn't happen.

 

from Charles Olson, 27 May 1947 -- “it is verse I shld most properly be about”

Our western wonders:

Yr card today sure got me where it hurts. For I as well as you have been appalled at this unconscionable delay. And no good excuse. For I take it spring fever is not such. (Surely not where such fever shld have led us by bus to you people!). 

Or maybe it hasn’t been spring fever. I have a hunch it’s deeper, got something to do with redirection of work. For I came back from 2 weeks in nyark all fired up by an offer to do article for Harper’s bazaar at $250. So I ripped right ahead, and in two weeks had a 5000 word THING done, plus a BALLET! And plans for two more articles! Very very unlike Mr. Olson, as you know. And I guess it was too much, for the article bounced and with it not only the 250 but the figuring one will do on more such sales as well, the ballet bounced! And the final stuttering work on the two further articles which were to make a trilogy ground to a final stop a week ago.

The point of it all being, (April is a cruel month discounted at usurers’ rate) that it is verse I shld most properly be about and I was forcing myself with all this other business under the mistaken notion I could make some dough. In witness thereof do please see current WESTERN REVIEW for poem written before newyark and one I am most interest to hear both your response on. They only sent me 2 copies, or yd certainly have one from me –- 2 copies and no check, alas.

Perhaps all this money business sitting on my nights and days is due to our GRAND PLAN: Europe in the fall. With which we are full right now, and do most need your advice. For we—or rather, it was Connie’s brilliant idea—have hopes we may be able to combine trip we said we’d make to see you and Europe, both. For we are told there are boats to France from the west coast. Know anything about ‘em? The idea of a visit west to you, then a long leisurely swing through the Pacific and the Indian, and the backdoor to Yourup is most engaging. We are probably as uneconomic as usual and the cost of such a route will prove prohibitive, but it’s what we’re working on at the moment.

Connie Olson, left, with Howard Lewis, Murray Morgan

and unknown someone

. 1947

But in any case we’ll go. We have an invitation to Aix en Provence and another to a schloss in the Italian Tyrol: so, for a couple of months we’d have no rent problem. I figure the gag that I’m going to be in France (and now maybe England) for the appearance of book ought to get us passports, no? – And jeezus, to shake our feet of this too, too familiar people of ours for a short breather of another air however however, is good for the soul. 

We are such fools not to write you, for to have letters from you is one of our rare joys. In fact, despite our own omission, we both keep going to the box each day thinking, maybe there’ll be a letter from Rosa and Murray! And there it was today, and now the card is covered with four shades of green, two cerulean blues, and a loufly jonquil yellow, for it caught us right in the middle of converting the whole damn studio into a living space. The old bitch gone in the teeth from whom we rent went off to Europe and we took the plunge: have moved out to the studio bed and all, and have arranged it! And how we’ve arranged it! Mit what colors, you should never see! So, if we get out there, we’ll be in time to trim the Morgan’s new house.

Gooducks, that’s what I’ve had on my draw, that’s what’s taken so long.

So do, for god’s sake, excuse us, please, and write us back a long letter full of all you are up to, how work goes, what a wonderful place Washington is (make us drool), what of the books, and all the rest. – Judith [Daniel] was here Saturday and we had a Morgan session. She was busy as a president on her lecture bureau. Have you signed up yet?

 

 

Thanks for much things said via CMI: ads are deceptive, sales slow but already over what the smart boys figured. My own hope is that the edition exhausts itself by winter (3000), which will give me two advantages: 1, 500 bucks for Europe, and 2, not to find myself on some remainder shelfs.

Big event lately was second coming of the messiah, Father Eliot, whom I met in such a way as to justify these tentative lines: 

Pound in a penitentiary

Eliot in a parish house:

the end does not justify the means

(the lowdown according to the rhythm of things)

but, to put it Possum’s way,

a heresy is better than none

Meanwhile, in the crowd, sing-song the beggar cries

‘Orbs for the lamps of Eliot

orbs for the likes of Pound

orbs for

Pound for

In their beginning is their end

End of stanza 1^st.

T.S. Eliot, 1950

T.S, the old arrow collar adonis is aged mightily, looked most so when clerical at St Thomas Parish House, less so at Mellon next day when 900 come to hear him read the old things while Biddle, David Finley, and others who cut the coupons and the passerby, layed the laurel on:

The Archbishop and the ape-neck Chief

shall comfort their syllabic grief

But hoooH, Fasa!

Connie, I just see, is asleep. We’re worn out from this unseemly painting and arranging we’re doing, It’s now pushing midnight, and I must stop. But I was damned if I’d let slip another day. Take this as token it won’t happen again. For our hearts, darlings….

All love from both of us

(&K)

Charles