Journal Excerpts, 1968


February 25
Finished reading The Vanity of Duluoz by Jack Kerouac. What nerve—in the best way!

March 19
I go hear John Berryman, Robert Lowell, and others read poems by their dead friends Jarrell, Schwartz, and Roethke. Unbelievably depressing, so I forget everything that (didn't) happen there, and quick. ("Everything" includes Berryman's account of guests in fleebag Times Square hotel complaining of commotion in a hallway: "It was Delmore . . . gasping . . . for breath!")

March 25
With Ted Berrigan at the Byrds concert, Fillmore East. Ted tells me that John Wieners once dressed up in his mother's clothes and makeup. John's father came home, took one look, and left the house. Ten minutes later, he called John from a phone booth and said, "Now, John, you be a good boy."

March 25
Introduced by John McKendry to Marcel Duchamp outside the MoMA Dada Surrealism show, opening night,10:04 p.m. Duchamp had the first room to himself. "Go—go see the show!" he beamed.

 

 

  

April 17
Giving a guest lecture on Pierre Reverdy in my modern poetry class at the New School, Ron Padgett said: "Nothing extraordinary ever happens in a Reverdy poem."


May 2
Nice dinner at the Padgetts'. Stayed late to watch Dames by Busby Berkeley on TV. Really funny dialogue but numbers not so hot. One character named Ezra Ounce and another named Hemingway—who wrote this thing??? A moment when one of them says "We must gird our loins for the battle" followed by "And those loins will roar!"


May 7
Two "political" readings: today with Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch, Harry Mathews, David Shapiro, Dick Gallup and Peter Schjeldahl for students in lounge during riots at Columbia; and last night for Eugene McCarthy's presidential candidacy, with Ron, Ted and Kenneth at a bar called Eugene's. At Eugene's we meet a nice girl who turns out to be the niece of Charles Reznikoff; she promises to invite us to dinner to meet her Uncle Charles.

May 14
At Merce Cunningham's opening night, the after-performance party in the lobby of Brooklyn Academy. I sit down to dinner next to Jasper Johns and across from Maxine Groffsky, John Cage and Marian Javitts. Dessert is a dubious-looking honey pudding served in little cups. Johns tastes it first, then gives Cage some from his spoon. I offer some to Marian Javitts who says "No, thank you." then Jasper offers some to Marian Javitts and she takes it. Laughter. I offer some to Maxine and she declines. Jasper offers and she accepts. I offer some to David Whitney— same thing again. John Cage returns to the table. "John," I say, "will you have some of my pudding?" "No, thanks, I've had some." Johns offers him some from his spoon and he takes it. Marian tells me that there is a very simple reason for all this, something she learned from feeding her babies: "You withdraw it," she says, "you don't really give it to them." What Jasper was doing was putting the spoonful to their lips and making the offer in one complete gesture.

May 23
At Gotham Book Mart, a party for Kenward Elmslie's and Joe Brainard's book The Champ. Joe's drawings on the walls of the upstairs gallery. I buy the drawing of the baseball player wearing uniform number "53" partly because I liked it and partly because of the blond, English (like Julie Christie) girl behind the counter.

Ron Padgett and I go to dinner for Charles Reznikoff at his niece's house on Riverside Drive. CR talking, using his necktie as worry beads—fidgeting. Quotes from Hamlet: "Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart." He has "double" the Testimony already published, unpublished. Vachel Lindsay, "the one who could read" [aloud, he meant]. Dylan Thomas, "a druid." He said he looked through Zukofsky's A Test for Poetry and found a poem he liked (not signed); he looked it up in the index and discovered it was by him. "It nice to know you had it right all along," he said.

June 12
Reading with Joe Brainard at St. Marks Church. Afterward, when Joel Oppenheimer was complaining that any worker but not a poet could have a house in Queens, Kenneth Koch rejoined, "But a successful poet can have queens in his house."

August 11
Monteverdi—what a pretty name he has!

Carl Rakosi, here at Yaddo, walks into the music room while I'm listening to Satie, Messe des Pauvres, and says, "He must have been insane!" Rakosi roomed early on with Kenneth Fearing who, he says, "died senselessly of lung cancer—he never had a cigarette away from his lips!"

August 15
Finished compiling the David Smith chronology for MoMA book, a big job. At "1963" I realized I was happily getting near the end, but getting there meant David (May 23, 1965) had to die.

August 20
Shakespeare's first poem, written while drunk under an appletree at Stratford:
   Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston,
  Haunted Hillsborough, Hungry Grafton,
  Dodgeing Exhall, Papist Wicksford,
  Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bidford.

Trotsky: "Lenin is dead. The words are like great rocks falling into the sea."

September 19
Visiting Allen Ginsberg in Cherry Valley, a Saratoga sunflower for Allen and Peter. Huncke is there. Peter tries teaching me how to milk Bessie the cow. No soap. Jeep ride to Drummond Hadley's house in Cooperstown. "What would Frank think of the Revolution?" Allen asks. Sitting on the grass looking at the starry night; Polaris, Orion, Cancer . . . Allen (ever the egoist!) says, "If we all disappeared they wouldn't even notice."

October 10
Things Monroe Wheeler said about Marcel Duchamp: "He was going to organize the Stettheimer show [at MoMA] but then went to Paris and wouldn't come back in time." Mary Reynolds: "Duchamp had a long romance with her. She had a long nose and chin. But she had a voice that was very light and beautiful. She said Marcel was a cunnilinguist. On the other hand, Duchamp said he used to go see her because she lived near the Eiffel Tower." Did Duchamp know Gertrude Stein? "Yes, but he was too raffiné for her."

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