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Chapter 8 (Part Two)
DISCOVERING THE ANARCHIST-BUDDHIST POET:
REXROTH'S LETTERS TO GIBSON (1957-79)
In Search of Songs
As the 1960's came to an end, rather than protesting the War in
Southeast Asia in the tragic mode of "Noretorp-Noretsyh," Rexroth
favored performances of poetry with ecstatic song and rock music for
their appeal to the young of the counter culture. In a letter of 15 April
1969, he ridiculed typical readings by "literary poets." He also made
a wise-crack about James Laughlin, his best literary friend and
publisher, which is not meant to be taken seriously. I had been
negotiating with Laughlin about rights for quoting poems in
Kenneth Rexroth.
Called Laughlin who is tighter than a constipated pup &
persuaded him that the publicity was worth the fees - a
task worthy of C[larence] Darrow in his prime. A letter
from Jennie Orvino [a Milwaukee anti-war organizer]
saying there's no money for my transportation for the Viet
Nam read-in. Too bad. I can send you tapes of me doing
Daniel, & Shadrach Mesach & Abednego to music, and of
my workshop singing songs of their own. I strongly urge
you to get singers, light shows, rock groups, etc. and break
free of the literary poets - We got from that lady writress
at Goucher - Wm Stafford, Allan Brilliant, Galway
Kinnell, Robert Bly. Good God! Students want to hear
Joni Mitchell, Leonore Kandell, Charles Bukowski, and
Country Joe... Uhuru, Kenneth
Lt. Commander Uhuru in Star Trek--"Michelle"--now
that's who you need at a Viet Nam read & sing in.
On 9 October 1969 Rexroth asked me to help him locate some
revolutionary literature:
Are you back at UWM? I am writing to
ask all sorts of favors.
One - the IWW seems to have
vanished at last. I would like to get copies of the
Songbook and the record of the songs but I don't
know where to write. The paper no longer comes.
Two - I am still trying to get that
Indignant Heart--3 copies.
I wrote Raya Dunayevskaya in Detroit to send her copies of
Indignant Heart, the autobiography of Matthew Ward, the
black Marxist auto-worker, which he had praised in his first letter to
me and which was eventually reissued under the pen-name of Charles
Denby in 1978 (Boston: South End Press). The copies must have
been slow in reaching him, for he asked for them again in an undated
letter in which he also appreciated my poems.
Thanks for the booklets c with the beautiful poems.
It's always lovely to get reports that B & M Gibson are
still fucking along. Have a good time in the woods.
I am still hunting for that novel by
that Negro disciple of that... Detroit woman with the
forgettable name. If you correspond c any of them, could
you try to get it for me? I think I can get a bourgeois
publisher to take it. Anyway it deserves reissue. Love to
all Gibsons from Kenneth Mary
Carol.
On 4 November 1969 he called my Stones Glow Like
Lovers' Eyes, published the next year by Morgan Press, "a very
beautiful book of poems," adding: "The problem c publishing poetry
is that there's so many pretty good poets running around everybody is
booked for years in advance... My serious advice to you is to set up a
fine hand press publishing thing in Milwaukee. Funny thing is, these
ventures now make money." I did not take his advice. Morgan Press
has always been owned and fully controlled by Ed and Vicki Burton
in Milwaukee. The name of the press is derived from his family, not
from me. Rexroth also inquired about sending books to prisoners and
again about the IWW:
I do wish I could locate the Eye
Doublblew Doubleblew. What I really want is not just the
Song Book but the record album now pretty old.
Did you ever hear Fred Akerstrom, one of Sweden's most
popular café chantant singers singing the
IWW songs in Swedish? A real gas. They become quite
respectable poetry in translation, not unlike E. A.
Poe.
DONT - use that page [50] of the
long poem [The Best-Browne Cottage]... The last two
lines on 49 are "progressive" corn too. Ellen Key is a half
a century or more dead.
I'm sending you a bit on People
Poetry etc. for Arts in Society - it is sort of a
sequel to the Alienation thing. Greatly abridged and
altered the same subject will be a short Look magazine
article. Love to you both Kenneth
Carol will write you & Dianne [Jarreau] about readings.
Lightshows, rock, plus pomes are fine c me. That's what I
do at UCSB
My long poem, "The Best-Browne Cottage," was revised and
published in Cronopius 3 (August 1967): 3-11. I asked my
friend Carlos Cortez, an editor of the IWW's Industrial
Worker in Chicago, to send him The Little Red
Songbook. After I had informed Rexroth how to send books to
some of the Milwaukee 14 Catholic War Resisters in prison for
burning draft files, he wrote me on 29 November 1969:
Thanks for the information about sending books to
Wisconsin prisoners. I'll have JL [James Laughlin] send
him some things. And thanks for the IWW address. But
I'm not sure that is still correct. Halsted Street like W
Madison is being Urban Renewed. I think they moved the
tiny remnant to Deluth. Anyway, thanks and I will write
soon.
Don't get all wrought up about me
coming to UWM. It would have to be a very good offer
[for a professorship]. After all, Milwaukee is Milwaukee
and Santa Barbara is Santa Barbara.
Now that the Holy Father says the
original saint never existed, you should come here and
install Mrs. Gibson [Barbara]. She might save the
community.
Nothing has happened c the
Unicorn [Press, concerning my poetry]. I think like
everybody else, they are overloaded and so insensibly
drift into publishing their own clique. Don't forget it took
me 15 years to get Denise [Levertov] published by
Laughlin! (He said, it was just "lady poetry.") Maybe he
was right. She has sure turned square. He also said Dylan
Thomas was just gush like Hart Crane, but he'd be a craze
for a generation.
Dianne should become 1) a poetry
reading agent 2) a professional horoscoper. She needs
money - and work she likes.
Academia as Refuge
After I had proposed to the University of Wisconsin--
Milwaukee English Department that Rexroth be invited as a regular
professor, and after he had been invited for a poetry reading and
interview, he wrote me on 12 February 1970:
A friend who was there recently
says there is powerful opposition to any appointment for
me from the junior faculty especially, and that I may find
even the visit coming up unpleasant.
Meanwhile I have a similar offer
from San Diego State College and UCSB wants to settle
for a poet's fellowship for which I would have to do
nothing except just be around - if that is what I wanted.
Actually - I do an awful lot of work. 200 in my Poetry &
Song - I'm hired for a seminar of 12 - and many tutorials
& individual projects. Love to all
Kenneth
Much to my surprise, Rexroth was offered a professorship in
Milwaukee, but declined in the following letter of 17 April 1970.
Ironically, the English chairman who had approved the offer tried to
get me fired a month later because of my role in the anti-war strike on
campus against the U. S. invasion of Cambodia and Laos, and the
killing of students at Kent State University. The administration and
regents did not fire me, but canceled my promotion to Full Professor
and stripped me of tenure which I had held as Associate Professor.
Later, thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, I learned from FBI
files that COINTELPRO had planned a campaign to get me fired.
Rexroth's letter (a copy of which he sent me) shows his polite side
towards an academic system that he did not trust or approve of,
though he could be friends with civilized people in it, and a
conscientious mentor to serious students.
Dear Dean Pincus:
Monday, April 13, at the absolute
deadline, I called Robert Turner and told him that I would
be unable to accept the appointment at Milwaukee for the
Fall term, 1970, and asked him to pass the word on to you,
as I imagine he has done. Perhaps he also told you my
reasons.
As you know from the newspapers,
this is a very troubled campus. I have become something
of a student cause. I have no relish whatever for the role
of a Scottsboro Boy. I do feel a moral responsibility to the
students who have gone to an immense amount of trouble
very quietly and non-violently to make sure that I was
reappointed. While I was away at the Lonergan
Conference [on Roman Catholic Theology] during Easter
Week, small committees of students visited all the
responsible people in the administration and most of the
tenured English faculty, without my knowledge, and the
vote for my reappointment was practically unanimous.
There was nothing intimidating about this, just quiet
persuasion. I think the students were surprised that there
was no real opposition, although the California system as
you know is deep in grave budgetary difficulties. For my
first class of the new quarter over four hundred fifty
people showed up, and I am now conducting two sessions
-- really, an additional unpaid class, which the students
want to pay for themselves -- an illegal proceeding in
California and something I don't want anyway.
I am telling you all this in some
detail because it represents a kind of crisis of conscience.
The position in Milwaukee is more attractive in almost
every way. Not least is the enormous difference in salary -
- here I teach what was supposed to be one three hour
seminar of fifteen people once a week, at slightly more
than 1/2 a beginning salary for full professor. When you
are past sixty years old, money beyond a competence
doesn't mean much anymore. I do think that both faculty
and students at Milwaukee would be more stimulating
than this Shangri-la. However, like it or not, I feel it is
here that I am involved in responsibilities to a vast number
of students. So here I had better stay, at least for now. I
hate to close all options at Milwaukee. If you were only
on the quarter system, as we are, I would have liked to
come for the spring Quarter, as Eliade and Gilkey come to
UCSB from Chicago.
I want to thank you very much for
the courtesy and consideration you have shown me. I want
to apologize for all the trouble I've put you to. Believe me
I feel very honored by your offer.
Faithfully, Kenneth Rexroth
How different my life at UWM would have been if he had been
installed as a professor there, how different for everyone there!
Probably it would have been even stormier than it turned out to be.
When the University Administration, Regents, and Wisconsin
Attorney General threatened to fire me, I considered just leaving
instead of putting up the expensive, exhausting, and demoralizing
defense which I mounted, largely because of his encouragement to
"hang on." So I was put on academic probation, without tenure or
salary increase; my first wife was not rehired; and we were divorced,
partly because of the stresses involved in the struggle. Kenneth's
letter of 3 June 1970 is an evocative, penetrating, and prophetic
analysis of the conflicts sweeping the country at that time:
Dear Morgan -
Better hang on. I think it unlikely
that either of you will be fired. I can't imagine a worse
place to try to find a job than Santa Barbara, town or
college. As the world economic crisis II shuts down
radical melodrama, massive confrontation, calls for
"general strikes" observed only by tiny minorities, all this
will have to change to infiltration, organization, long term
planning. The past decade of adventurism was purely a
function of the affluent society. Jerry Rubin is Hugh
Hefner in dirty whiskers. Eventually of course we will
have new armies of unemployed, dispossessed and
starving. But now is the time for the cadres to consolidate
and hang on to any strategic positions they've gained.
Nobody knows now how to plan, organize, train -- or what
for. So don't quit!
I think the "crisis program" here
was a fine idea. A "hard strike" would not have been
pulled off. There'd have been a mass picket line for a
couple of days, arrests, clubbings, gas, shootings, and then
it would have been over. As it is students are getting credit
for "crisis classes" in the theory and practice of social
conflict, the economics of the war economy, the history of
revolutions, etc etc and more credit for canvassing door to
door in Santa Barbara, and union to union, and lunch hour
factory to factory, and store to store.
[Jerry] Rubin was just here -- He
screamed "Kill your parents! Kill your parents! Kill your
parents!" and the whole stadium booed. By the time he
was through over half of his audience had walked out,
leaving elderly teenyboppers screaming as they used to for
Benny Goodman. I am, and always have been, convinced
he is an agent provocateur. Hayden follows next week.
What a contrast!
Love to all faithfully
Kenneth
Satori?
As disillusionment with activism spread in the early 1970's, the
wisdom that Rexroth had attained through earlier tragedies,
international and personal, as well as his vast comprehension of
classics from east and west, sustained those of us who cherished him
and his books. I am especially grateful for his creative interpretation
of Buddhism, and for his help that changed my life. Despairing of
activism, marriage, life itself, I sank into Buddhist meditation. After
asking him about an experience that I thought might be satori, he
explained to me on 23 September 1970 the difference between
Buddhist and Christian realization:
My. My. First time? I've always thought that's what part
of the mind is always doing anyway - you just get a sharp
focusing of attention on that level and a kind of
hypertrophy of importance. It's the opposite of the
mystical experience where there is a gradual dying out of
any "importance" into IMPORTANCE and a sense of
peace and contentless where you occupy CONTENT--the
"meaning of meaning." What a disappointment that title
[of I. A. Richard's book on language] was in the 20's
when we expected something quite different. Of course in
completion all polarities and antitheses merge. Love to all
Kenneth
As my first marriage was breaking up, Rexroth wrote on 7
November 1970: "Sad about Barbara... It seems late in life to start
over - but I managed twice... Let's hope you keep your job - you've
become a part of Milwaukee. But again, I left SF when past 60... You
know, I've forgotten that girl's name who got the mad crush on me
last time. What was it?" In non-feminist terms he then praised Ling
Chung, at that time a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin,
as "a lovely little girl who is writing her PhD on me... She's a dream
come true."
Communalism
Exploring the origins and history of revolutionary thought as
the Movement disintegrated, he saw little hope in communes, unlike
his close friend Gary Snyder and many other radicals at that time. In
the following undated letter of 15 August 1971 he discussed on-going
work for Communalism: from Its Origin to the Twentieth
Century (1974, recently posted on Ken Knabb's homepage). My
prose poems, mentioned, were published as The Great Brook
Book (Boston: Four Zoas, 1980).But first he dealt with another
garbled interview:
You must be referring to that spurious interview in San
Francisco Book Review. The editor claims it is a
direct transcription from tape. Carol & Barbara [?] who
sat in on it say although the subjects are roughly mine the
hip talk, the constant use of "shit" & words like "chick"
& "spade" are put in to give color by the interviewer and
the latter part, about [Paul] Goodman & homosexuality is
completely garbled. I wrote a letter repudiating it - and he
[the editor] printed one repudiating my repudiation. I
haven't used "spade" since local blacks stopped using it -
it was common in bop days. "Chick" I detest and often
call my students on it.
Your domestic life sounds back on
a more stable basis. Me - what I want is peace and quiet to
write. I'm glad you've still got your job. Jobs are getting
scarcer and scarcer. I'm sure you couldn't connect c one
of the California group grope emporia [encounter groups]
- they are very much in-group and in-grope set ups.
I'm doing a book - quite big -on the
history of Anarchism - Communalism - Free Communism
etc from the neolithic village to present day. I'm still back
in the Reformation - just did Munster, first days of
Hutterites, and Winstanley - each a chapter. But I do need
to find out about US communes from 1945 to 1960, and to
discover, if there are any contemporary ones that are not
parasitic an disorderly but yet not religious-authoritarian.
Are there any? The best seem to be in fact urban
cooperative flats & houses of professional people not
unlike 201 W 13th St Rye [New York] in my early youth.
We just weren't self-conscious about it. Most of the
country ones sound like Wheeler's ranch, shit on the
ground, crash pads of an unrelieved nightmare of drugs &
disorder - essentially a phenomenon of breakdown not
revolution--and totally upper middle-class. Faithfully
Kenneth
I think the prose poems are fine. "Outasight" as the
interviewers [of] KR would say.
"Reagan's Bloodbath"
In a undated letter written in 1971, Rexroth condemns Governor
Reagan's political repression:
Forgive the long delay. I've been kinda inert all Spring. I
inquired around about connexions for your program. As
you know there's no job at all in the University of State
College systems. California is in the midst of a war of
extermination against the mind. I am sending you some
brochures of group grope outfits [encounter groups],
including the famous Esalen. The free universities
financed by Associated Students etc. funds have dried up.
This has been a year of retreat. Everybody is scared after
the 69-70 pogroms against students & blacks. Reagan's
bloodbath policy has worked so far. My advice to you is
to hang on at UWM at least 'til (if) the firestorm is over,
and c it the depression. The unemployment rate in LA's
actually as high as 1930 and in Seattle it is higher...
All goes along c my family. Carol
is well & busy/ Mary is in SF going to the Art Institute
and making a movie of Wedekind's Spring's
Awakening. She has a booklet of poems due out.
I've done 2 books recently,
With Eye & Ear essays on arts & letters, and
American Poetry in the 20th Century, actually the
introduction to my anthology but published first
separately. When it goes in the book it will have another
chapter and headnotes for each poet. Now I am doing a
similar book on the Libertarian Tradition. I think I will
write not just about anarchism but also about
communalism and left communism, to sort of culminate in
Sasha Berkman and descendants. Ling Chung and I are
going to do an anthology of Chinese women poets and
another of Sung dynasty poets.
Herder and Herder published With Eye and Ear in 1970,
American Poetry in the 20th Century in 1971, and The
Orchid Boat: Women Poets of China (with Ling Chung) in 1972.
Rexroth on Gibson on Rexroth
In the same letter Rexroth commented on a typescript of my
first book about him:
I hesitate to write you any criticism
of your book on Rexroth. It does seem to me to portray
me primarily as an anarchist and give less emphasis to the
religious and nature mysticism and to the erotic
mysticism. Mostly I am just plain flattered. If Twayne
doesn't publish it I think Herder & Herder might. You
should really meet Justus George Lawler - he's not far
away - Geneva is a few hours drive.
Maybe you can come to California
during the summer? Normally we have lots of room. Love
Kenneth
On 15 September 1971, he sent a postcard:
I'm doing a history of communalism and anarchism -
down to Winstanley, Bellers & Plockhoy--done 200
pages. Also doing - "Literature, Art of," 11,000 words for
Enc. Brit. Will write letter very soon. Faithfully
Kenneth
I [will] also send few corrections for the Twayne book.
His article on literature appeared in the 15th Edition of the
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1974. Two pages of his minor
corrections of my typescript of Kenneth Rexroth are not
reproduced here. On 1 March 1972 he wrote:
How's your extended family going? Have you thought of
a possible book for Herder & Herder? Now that McGraw
Hill has taken over their promotion & distribution they
should sell some books. Did you get my American
Poetry in the 20th Century from them? ...As I told
you I really know nothing about these group grope camps
[encounter groups]. Did you get the packet of fliers from
assorted ones in California? Frankly I think they are
absurd and strictly for the mobile suburbanites. Whatever
happened to the Twayne book, Morgan on Kenneth? [The
actual title was Kenneth Rexroth.] What was the
name of the pretty groupie who took after me last time in
Milwaukee? ... I suspect something is wrong with our mail
which is why all the questions. Love to all
Kenneth
After I had moved to Goddard College in Vermont, to join the
graduate faculty in the summer of 1972, Rexroth wrote me the
following undated letter:
Thanks so much for your card, and thanks for writing
Saito [Professor George Saito of International Christian
University in Tokyo]. He also once planned to do my
autobiography [translate it into Japanese]. I just saw him -
quite unchanged. More even than most Orientals he never
seems to age. I had a wonderful time in Japan. Met a
wonderful girl. I'll tell you about her. YES of course. It
will be great if you can visit us. No I am not married... My
daughter Katherine is at Middlebury and doesn't like it
much. She would like to visit you at Goddard if you'd ask
her. See you soon. Love Kenneth
After Kenneth Rexroth was published by Twayne in
1972, Rexroth wrote on an undated postcard from Santa Barbara:
Gibson on Rexroth just came & is great - very
conscientious & very complimentary. I am deeply
grateful. Just a card - I am off to Japanologists
International Conference, Kyoto, paid for by PEN Japan,
& UCSB. Very Proud here. Will write when I return, lots
to say. Do come to see us & stay here Feb. No bread for
read, I think. For an anarchist you seem remarkably
disturbed by which fraud got perpetrated Nov. 7. Also -
cheer up! In 1000 years it will all be the same. Love,
Kenneth
UCSB=University of California at Santa Barbara. "No bread for
read" = no money for a reading at the university. Nov. 7 =
presidential elections. I had learned basic critiques of authoritarian
government and coercive society from such anarchists as Rexroth and
Paul Goodman; but being strictly non-violent, I shied from the
anarchist label. Since leaving Wisconsin in 1972 I had become
politically inactive and increasingly involved in the study and
practice of Buddhism.
After visiting Rexroth and Carol Tinker in Santa Barbara, 7-14
February 1973, I explored possibilities of his teaching in one of
Goddard's off-campus programs. On 12 May 1973 he wrote:
I presume your trip is long over &
you are back at Goddard. Do ask Katherine Rexroth over
from Middlebury. She feels very isolated there. What has
happened to the Goddard non-resident tutorial program?
There is a good possibility you could get a mansion in
Montecito. I have an offer from something calling itself
the "International Community College" in Westwood (L.
A.) offering $1520 per student to the tutor! What is this?
If I don't hear from Goddard or Antioch I think I will
accept. Let me know...
It doesn't look as though I will be
reappointed at UCSB. Otherwise all is well. Very busy. 4
books lined up this year. Pity they none of them pay real
money. I should be Kurt Vonnegut or Rod McKuen.
Love to all Kenneth
On 27 April 1974, after his reading at Middlebury, I talked with
him, his daughter Katherine, and Ling Chung. That was the last time
I saw him before I moved to Osaka University at the beginning of
September, 1975--thanks to his efforts to find me a professorship in
Japan. Meanwhile, he and Carol Tinker had been married in Santa
Barbara on 7 September 1974 before going on a year's honeymoon in
Japan, where I met them just before they returned home.
Since 1957, our correspondence had pointed up a shared
outlook of humanistic revolutionary change reflected in some aspects
of the counterculture of the 1960's, with emphasis on opposition to
the war, contemplation, and a devotion to poetry as interpersonal
realization. With the collapse of a constructive movement for social
and cultural change in the early 1970's, we looked to Japan for the
enduring values of Buddhism.
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Copyright © 2000 by Morgan Gibson
Light and Dust Anthology of Poetry
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