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.

 

Seward, Alaska, 14 June 1945 -- "my conscience hurts already"

Rosita my love, 

This is my second day at the Seward office [ACS] and gradually I am being I am being initiated into the mysteries of the telegraph rates. With me the computation is not, as yet, an exact science but I manage to approximate the toll. The characters for whom the Morgan tolls are really quite wonderful. One old Alaskan came in today and misspelled seven words out of seven, including his own first name. I am assured that this only ties the local record. In fact it seems unlikely that the editor of the Seward Polaris could do better.

The paper is surpassing strange, in which it resembles the editor. Hunt, who puts it out, is an old time job printer from Medford, Oregon. More recently he worked in the back shop of a Fairbanks weekly. He is not very good on printing and his newspaper experience is negligible and absurd….

The paper only comes out twice a week—Wednesdays and Saturdays. I’m going to see Hunt and suggest that his time is very valuable and that he would be saving himself a great deal of money and bother if he would turn all the editorial direction of the paper over to me (for $200 a month) and put his time on getting ads and setting type. There are no floormen at all in this town, and he literally drags people in off the street to help him set heads, make ads, and make-up the paper on press days. I doubt very much that he will see the need for my superb services, however, as he fancies himself a crusader. Even if he does, there is still another problem. Because of his crusading, he has deeply offended the local Army officers and on them depends the final decision of whether I can work for the paper. If the business gets that far, I would present it to them as an assurance of better cooperation between the press and the military (don’t say it—my conscience hurts already) were I to take charge.

In the meantime I am back at my writing. I have started again on “Shadows Fall” [first published in 1949 as The Viewless Winds, based on the still-unsolved Laura Law murder case in Aberdeen in 1940; republished by OSU Press in 1990.] and though I don’t particularly like the start I have I think I’ll just bull along until I get into it. I usually get a temporary enthusiasm after about ten thousand words of anything. Lord, Nunny, how I need the encouragement of selling something again. It has been a very long time. 

In doing “Shadows Fall” I’m going to set myself a bit more ambitious goal than before. I want to try telling it in the first person and show, in the development of the story, not only the impact of the crime on the community, its disruption of the social fabric, but also to underline the developing awareness of social problems of the young city editor as he follows the story. Besides which I intend to soup the thing up with enough gonadal doings so that Miss Windsor will have to drop down the scatological ladder and we move up into the upper income brackets.

The weather today is soft and beautiful, almost too warm. Everyone is roaming around in shirtsleeves as, they say, they have been for nearly two months. The last winter was quite mild, and even the bad ones are not too bad…. The mosquitoes are huge but, so far, infrequent.

Food prices are high, but there is a pretty good assortment. We cook our own at the quarters, on a nice electric range. Milk is 30 cents a quart, butter 65 a pound, lettuce 30 a head, oranges 60 a dozen, steak 60 to 80 a pound, pork 50 a pound, bread 20 a loaf. Those are the only prices I’ve seen so far. The boys say it costs about forty bucks a month to eat very, very well. 

Write me long and often about your plans, my little love. Everything looks better all the time from this end. 

You are adored,

M