Elliotts to Morgans, Port Ludlow, 1946 -- "The rediscovered sweetness of his life"

Murray was released from the Army, and therefore from Washington, D.C.,  in early 1946. They made their way home to Puget Sound, with a few journalistic stops along with way, where other recently demobilized friends were waiting.

from Jean and Gene Elliott, 1946

Dear Rosa and Murray -- you'll feel dazed for a long time. We still do. And Harry said that for a month after he was out he was afraid to cross streets or enter any situation which might threaten the rediscovered sweetness of his life. We are all very happy for you, have composed a ditty on the theme of "Murray is out, Murray is out" to the tune of "Carmen's in love, Carmen's in love" (Carmen Jones, not Fett). St. T a K. will be in May when you come to Port Ludlow.

Pt. Ludlow mill in 1918. Wikipedia

And please come soon. You can have chess, writing, oysters, a burned-down, debris-covered mill to photograph, hills to climb, fish to catch, bays to kayak in, music to listen to, sun to lie in (I think), our dog to play with (I've tried to teach him to enjoy having his ears bitten a la Haj but he keeps losing his temper -- he's only four months old), our cat to play with and anything else we can think of between now and May. Beer and conversation are understood ("Have a little wine of the country, Rosa" -- oh, Rosa, I've learned to make fudge -- chocolate and peanut butter -- although I haven't learned it very well because it never gets completely hard).

...We'd love to have the split bamboo blinds. We're making a trellis-work and grass and tree (one) sidewalk café effect outside our back door and the blinds would be useful. I also want (please) the top to the Mexican bean pot which you gave us for Christmas 1943 sans top because Murray thought all packages with ribbons were for him. But don't worry if you can't find it because I have another one that fits. Bring your (Judy's) cats if you like -- we're making an animal-and-children compound. The only items which are at all important, really, are your sleeping bags. We have many beds, little bedding. (Dorsey maintains that we can sleep nine guests comfortably at once but I think seven is our top limit unless a lot of them are in love with one another. ...)

 

Dear M and R, this will be just a note because we want to get in the mail tonight. This is David talking now, and not sleeping D or Sick D or even Mildred, but the real David. I'm just back from a week-end in the city and it’s the first wk end in the city I've spent that hasn't been Angst-voll. All the major creature needs were taken care of and I feel like a clean vessel once more. Ludlow has no floating female or male population to minister to the body's needs, which is probably a good thing. All the same one

does need what he needs. Miss Stein once said this more or less repetitively in a poem called "Needs be needs be needs be near." Today I attended the lecture given by Joseph Warren Beach or whatever his name is, the Walker Ames man who is teaching contemporary poetry. His lectures are enlivened by phrases like "As Robert (Frost) said to me ..." He is very urbane and exceedingly charming and somehow made me feel like becoming a poet. The novel is really a bore and I keep thinking of more attractive things to write about. Rosa I'm glad you liked the ending. Murray, a friend of mine tells me that he saw in a recent Harpers a story called I think, "A Little Oversight" about two GIs n Wash D.C. in the hottest part of summer wearing full Class A woollens and being arrested for taking off their blouses or blice. I immediately thought of you. About being a poet, the best poem I've written is very simple:

GHOST

In the night

All in white

He don't care

If he is a fright.

Why I'm burbling like this I don't know. Perhaps Bill James was right about celibacy. You know he was celibate for a week once and got enormous quantities of writing done. Here is an anecdote a friend of mine who is taking Giovanni's Philosophy of History course told me. Miss Pierson did Marx for her paper and in reading it got all involved with a middle-aged Russian in the class who asked several pointed questions. Their conversation got rather heated and was abruptly terminated by the Russian's jumping to his feet and grabbing his coif and shrieking, "I, who have been through four revolutions, am forced to listen to this stuff!" It fair panicked the seminar.

...

 

from David -- Port Ludlow  -- 1946

Dear Murray,

Charles Olson and Howard Lewis, shucking oysters

loves, ruins an incipiently good baritone by refusing the heed the advice of competent teachers, continually violates his own integrity by taking jobs which he is gradually cutting himself down to fit, and ends by staying in the navy as a commissioned officer--a success by what has become his own measure. You will agree that it is a degrading and ignominious end, but there is a lot of sex to compensate.

If you could write me a letter asking me about the state of the work and telling me the idea has possibilities, etc. etc. I should be most grateful. You probably know more about it than I anyway. Please include news about your own productions. I am curious, and besides it would look impressive. It would be nice too if you would begin one paragraph with a phrase like "A person of your ability".... Do not be too Pollyanna, but I do not trust the govt.

Our house is taking a little more time than we hoped it would, but it's a nice house and is quite beautiful. We would all like you to come and see us. Good luck, and give my best to Rosa.

David

Are you going to join the AmVets Committee?

[the GI Bill allowed self-employed people the difference between their monthly earnings and $100 a month for a maximum of 52 weeks in two years after discharge. Since the difference between being a self-employed writer and being unemployed is often hard to parse, aspirant veterans asked more established ones to vouch for them.]

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, Lerme, Mexico, March 7, 1951-- "spanish is mighty huge, for me"

The poet Charles Olson had been full of questions about Murray and Rosa's life in Mexico in the '40s, and had talked for years about a trip. In 1951 he and Connie went to the village of Lerma, just south of Campeche on theYucatán Peninsula. Charles poured himself into Mayan archeology, both physical and metaphysical, writing to his friend Robert Creeley that

i take it, a Sumer poem or Maya glyph is more pertinent to our purposes than anything else, because each of these people & their workers had forms which unfolded directly from content... "Mayan Letters, A Charles Olson Reader," p. 101

In writing to Rosa and Murray, who did not feel competent to have opinions on modernist poetry, he wrote more about places and people. 

From Howard Daniel, Shanghai, China, 20 August 1947 -- "they had Coca Cola poured into their brains"

Dear Murray and Rosa: 

This is a belated replay to your letter of 12 June. Jesus am I ashamed. Fact is that your letter arrived in the middle of our conference when I was working about 20 hours a day. Immediately after the conference a million odds and sods of work turned up and I kept
putting off correspondence.

Howard Daniel

I have bad news re the return trip via Seattle and the glorious North-west. Judy had to take her vacation earlier than we expected and is at  this moment in Maine with Mutti. I had to stay in this hellhole longer than expected. I shall leave about September 12 and return to New York via India, Pakistan (wherever in Christ’s sweet name that is) and Prague, London, etc. I am terribly disappointed as I had looked forward so much to seeing you. ... The news in your letter was interesting. How did Charley Olson’s [Charles Olson, modernist poet, who lectured at the University of Washington in 1947] lecture go? what is he up to now? 

I’m afraid this is going to be incoherent. I have stinking neuralgia all down the side of my bloody face and cant concentrate on more than three lousy words at a time. It’s more than somewhat hot in these parts so our office shipped in about fifty fans. The damn things are blowing on you from every angle. I’m against them. Am always on the verge of getting pneumonia.

Am tired. Just returned from a three week trip to Bangkok (aint that just a name for you?) Hong Kong and Manila. I liked Siam very much. Interesting place with wonderfully soft people. The Philippines I don’t go much for. It’s a horrible example to anyone else about to be taken over by America. The poor bloody Philippinos! They fought so hard against the lousiest part of Spanish imperialism and had their revolution (a noble affair) squelched by the Americans. Then they had Coca Cola poured into their brains for forty odd years with little interludes like the Japanese. Jesus, the place is a cultural wilderness. The destruction was tremendous and the whole air of the place is pathetic. I like many Philippinos but the rich sons of bitches I contacted are enough to give Job the bleeding piles.

I hope your course at Puget Sound [Murray had begun teaching that the College of Puget Sound, now University of Puget Sound, in Tacoma] doesn’t end up with the enraged parents bringing you a small gallon jug of hemlock. It ought to be a lot of fun, though. What do you know, I tracked Mary Barrett [a classmate of Murray’s from Columbia School of Journalism; she stayed in China to cover the Revolution] down. She is with USIS in Shanghai and having a pretty interesting time although it’s getting so that working as a cancre squeezer in a waterside brothel operated by your sisters and mother is a better atmosphere than working for the Democratic National Committee or the US government.

...

I’m leaving here in about three weeks time. Shall be glad to get back. I miss Judy too much and it is impossible to know what the hell is going on in the great big world. I’m very sorry about not being able to return via Washington but hope that something can be managed round Christmas.

Love,

Howard

for more about Howard Daniel: 

http://www.alburycity.nsw.gov.au/resources/documents/Behind_the_Mask_-_Daniel_Gift.pdf

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

From Charles Olson, 7 February 1947 -- "here I sit cross-legged in bed"

Morgans, my wonder children!

Here I sit cross-legged in bed (India), with my neck smeared with a stuff as black and oily as axle grease (America), and on the point of it all (the gland directly west of the cortex) an ice bag (Alaska), doped with penicillin (Cheese) and wrapped in my black and red check jacket (Dockton, Wash.)

Before all this it was sulfa: with which I ask you forgive us you did not hear earlier a big shout of thanks from Olsons Incorporated for pictures and pictures and pictures. What’s nice about it all is that you and us agree all the way thru that this OLSON is BEST, fur and all, but says publishers—spontaneous like—this ain’t no Eastman-Emingway affair, and there’s no need for you to prove your wirility and so, would like a nice, harmless, uninteresting, stupid and empty puss to fill a column. To which I sd: shit.

Charles Olson, 1946. Rosa Morgan photo

About publishers: would like to ask you a question. Just got contract for next book, which will sign, for it’s a $750 advance. But decided to dicker a bit on the  foreign rights. The contract calls for 75% to me on English as well as translation sale, and I’ve written back saying, not, that’s too much of a cut to them, I want it the same as movies, radio etc: 90%. What is your experience on this so far? What % do your contracts call for on such rights? 

Between us and you, this book has me pissless. It sold on the basis of an outline of tales, clearly, tho unstated, in prose. And what do you think has happened so far, every  time I put my hand to the material? It damn well bloody does turn in to werse! I’ll include one thing which may or may not be good, and may or may not have something to do with the book. 

Which reminds me, to hear anything about what YOU are up to along these lines, we have to hike ourselves to N.Y. and see one delightful fellow names Howard [Daniel] to learn a damned thing. He’s concerned you’re going to have to stay out of the state of Washington after the present mss, [The Viewless Winds] is finished. What’s yr plan? Gradually exclude yourself from each place you know? Patzcuaro [Day of the Dead], and now Wash. An “intriguing” idea.

Life is quiet. (I mean as well when I’m up as down). Harper’s Bazaar bot a pome. But otherwise the mail is mostly bills.

I don’t think I’ve made clear what excitement the pictures brought us. I should also make clear that my publisher, sir, is NOT Houghton Mifflin. Try again!

y&x  – the poems and drawings – is still being kicked around by the publisher’s failure to get the proper plates for the drawings. I’m pessimistic it’ll ever see the light.

Connie is spending her time these days, of course, trying to keep up with a sick man’s multiple needs. But she’s terrific, and wants me to tell you how exciting the picture flurry was, and how much she misses you, and loves you. We lie abed and dream about buying a Buick convertible and winging out to see you! She damn well ought soon to see that Great West of ours, I’m sure you agree. …

Yrs, 

Connie & Charles