As I had come back to town, though really for the first time to stay, and not really town either, living in Oakland, not in Berkeley, where I had intended, but only a few blocks south on Telly, Simon had brought out the first of the Aldeberan Review's. Then as March began Litmus 8 was out but selling it was so hard on my head, having not the graces for that that Krech and Simon had, and Vanish who was supposed to have been there to take that aspect of it off my hands, continued to string me out. I wanted something to hand to somebody who might be interested in poetry, but not so interested that they had not the money, the quickness poor mouth is the original excuse, or perhaps genuine one, that they did not care for it, and I'd feel better if I had something to hand to them. Berkeley was the leaflet capitol of the western world.
Sad to relate the column called appropriately enough, "The Roving Rat Fink" in the Barb, written by an old and to all internal evidence, used up fellow traveling beatnik, took it upon himself to lament without any evidence that Hippys were readers not writers, and to heap all that vomit of the good old days nostalgia for Kerouac and the boys in that band. Being somewhat of a belligerent Hippy and knowing extremely better and having run a $35 ad in the previous Barb, I went to see Max Sheer to see if anything could be done about this ignorant columnist. I wanted to write a column. He said to write up some samples and he would see what he thought. I wrote one thing called "Back Talk" for Le Roi Jones as of his bullshit poetry in the December Evergreen Review. It got me into a flap with Ed Dorn, who asked me in his most piercing tone as an "innocent abroad," exactly how had Jones gone wrong, without getting any help, and I had to say the gist of my article was, that if he really wanted us, whoever we are, to leave his bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone, why be so persistent in exhibiting them. That particular article, even though Max said he liked it, was sat on by the Barb until it was too late to run it and local politics had in a great measure eclipsed its content. The other article started with the uncool phrase, "I am one of several thousand poets who are slowly starving to death," essentially a get out the poets rap and review of the Nightown reading, chiefly Pat Parker's part of it. The Barb actually published it under the headline, HEY LISTEN ROVER, why not even in Barbese, MOVE OVER ROVER, but there was to be no column, and no poetry, though I tried to get them to run some. Max didn't really like poetry and didn't care to believe me that I did, though he told me to do up some sheets and sometime when he had nothing to run, he will run them, he says. But I never got them done for him because of all the other things I was doing, I left some poems by Edward Smith for him to read, but he refused so I put my time in on something a little more likely. Not of course, without feeling putdown and strungout and suspicious of the sensationalist motives of the Barb's proclivities for the reactionary ravings of Jerry Rubin.
In the midst of this need for something regular of our own, Richard had been talking of this periodical he had a fantasy for doing, to be called, The grass Prophet Review. Like maybe we could do free sheets, maybe 2 sides of an 81/2 by 11 page, once a week and we could put in this that and the other. Simon had come with a poem for possible inclusion in the first issue at the Nightown reading and later said, "Charlie doesn't say anything about it, which must mean he doesn't like it," though actually I preferred another poem of his ending with "the grass was the darkest green."
I had written a riff about Seattle. Krech, Simon and myself talked up what it should look like. A letterhead had been designed and printed on many colors of paper, the different colors were to give the clues as to which issue each was to be, to keep them separate in the minds of the people. Malcolm queered the riff I had written, but it was true that it was to some extent a patronizing smaltz and I agreed that we should deal with local questions and issues. A poem of Richard's called "White Man's Song for Huey Newton" was on the back. Simon's poem "inside her kingdom she tells the wasp to sting the flowers... " and the Altimeter, a business review written by the Grass Prophet himself. Krech's idea, it resembled the Wall Street report of the drugs prices and availability. And we rounded off the first issue with my complete riff: The police are here to protect the crime, why didn't anybody say that during the convict strike at San Quentin. The government of the United States steals more money and kills more people in one day than all the people who have passed, or will pass thru its prison system. "Vote for the criminal of your choice". That's Henry Miller. Who are you. Where are you. Registered.
Alta's haiku for Doug Blazek, to wit: I got hair down there, topped it off and it contained a schedule of all the poetry readings that were coming down recently. Simon printed it at Holmes' Bookstore in Oakland on whose multilith he also did the Aldeberan Review, and we passed it out to people as they went by. For five consecutive weeks it came out wham bam thank you sir, and then it hiatused until the Rolling Renaissance in June. I took to passing mine out by osmosis, leaving them in Daily boxes, where people could pick them up themselves, leaving them in laundromats, putting them up on bulletin boards.
Alta had taken a dim view of the article I had published in the Barb, though Martha Krech had said it was the only thing readable in the whole issue. Alta thought that I was not really, literally starving, and that since she knew people who were, it was not fair to be metaphorically. But I had said slowly, remember, and I had begun to lose weight as Litmus was eating my bank account. I had given Dawn a hundred when I first went to Mexico, got boosted of $175 in Los Angeles to the maintenance of the system, and I had started eating less to keep my money together. When Alta confronted me about the article, I came rite back and then she said I could eat with them. She made some bread and soup, I joked that I wanted steak, I mean if you're going to say I'm not starving, I want to be eating nothing but the best.
"You can always eat here," she said, and I became a regular of some irregularity, eating there as much as I could without feeling guilty about it. I saw Pat Parker over to their house once again and noticed some weird shit between her and Alta. Hadn't seen her since she had helped collate number eight, except for the Nightown reading, and I borrowed her umbrella to walk home with in the rain. Later she came by my runway and I made tea for her and served it in the cheap pottery cups from Toluca.
The rascal Simon was getting another issue of poems together and had copped the marvelous poem of Koch: "I feel I'm going to be here / forty more years. / This day has just begun." Alta was in a class of contemporary issues at Merritt College, the black junior college in Oakland and she had to have a project to complete the requirements for the course. Her first project had been the initial number of Aldeberan Review, which she had taken to class and remembered that the people dug my poems, so she asked me if I would like to go to Merritt to the class to be her project. It sounded simple enough, maybe read some poems, so we went. All bleary eyed that morning listening to Amad Jamal who was somebody else's project, and I had to tell them I just remembered why I dropped out of college, it was held too early in the morning. 9 o'clock, but a pleasure to hear Jamal at any hour. I read some poems, one of them Alta thought they mite like for the magazine, but Pat didn't like it which caused a simple riff on opinion to go down. I had to say I'm not interested in opinion, yours, mine, or ours, unless it subscribes to the facts as they are all known in any case. So the poem was out as it deserved to be. After the class in a jammed up room that passed for a lounge, we talked to Delio, and I tried to get him to look at my article on Jones, but he passed it back to me without reading it saying, "you're not angry enough,"to which I tried to say I wasn't angry at all, that anger was a liability, but couldn't get him to take it seriously, who wrote poems with the heart lifted out of Shakespeare.
The grass Prophet Review rolled along with poems and riffs anonymously, Simon in two "him and Judas were trying to bring off a Chicago in August." A think and do issue for three, with John Thomson's letter from Venice about Hippy hassles there, backed up with some hi brow shit from Malcolm, poems from Edward Smith, D. R. Wagner. Passing out the happiest one came at the University of California. The Rimers Club presented a reading by Robert Creeley, and I talked everybody into going and sat in the back near the top of this auditorium and couldn't believe it when a huge grey haired man came in too. Little knot of hair on the back of his neck. I couldn't wait for the reading to be over, much tendentious explanation, quote unquote to heighten nuances that were no longer mostly there. At the end Creeley asked if there were any requests and believe it or not there were, a lot even, mostly for old famous poems which had somewhat dried up on the roof of his mouth.
Afterward, I'm down the stair regaling Olson with our first GPR, feeling like a dwarf as I had once dreamed that I had been standing on a table when we were introduced, in order to shake hands. Huge hands, and though he was sitting on a stool, a walrus poet, someone said, he said, "afternoon manatee" of his mind. I felt electric pumping on his hand. "I knew Dorn in Pocatello."
"There was a guy there who used to do one of these," he said waving the yellow paper, "one of these marvelous free things that just come out fast. . ."
"Drew Wagnon," I offered.
"No, no some-body else."
"There was Wild Dog. "
"Yeah, Wild Dog, that's it, but what was that cat's name?"
"You mean, Gino, Gino Clays?"
"Geenoh, Geenoh," he said rocking back and forth on the stool with pleasure. I could have stayed and talked for much longer but there were many others up to see and touch the oracle, and I went over to Creeley, intent on re-introducing myself.
"I know you," he said.
"You remember me?"
"Yeah, I got the things you sent."
"You did, I never knew if they were reaching you or not."
"Yeah, I got them, keep in touch," he said again as he had said before as Gino had once said in Brighton, "everybody says Olson used to say, tell Gino to keep writing, his last letter was fantastic, but whenever I do, I never get an answer, fuck it man, that's like masturbation." One way touch. On the way out I saw Covici with his $75 copy of Le Fou in a little box, he was holding it up like a ring bearer with a samovar, hoping Creeley would sign.
Supposedly an important source of funding for little magazines comes from university libraries as I got a card from Cal, asking for back issues and continuation, and went in to see Covici about it. What I hoped for was to sell them a lifetime subscription and back issues for a hundred dollars. Not much, but Covici balked, and said he'd have to go over it with Robert Duncan who traipsed over once a week when he was in town to help keep them advised on what to library and what to pass on. "I don't dig these triplicate forms any better than you do," Covici said, buddying up.
"Then why do you put up with them?"
"Somebody has got to do it, and it's necessary for bookkeeping."
"I suppose you know poets always dig a library burn?"
"Yes, but you might consider for a moment that maybe libraries will be thought of as hastening change rather than retarding it."
"Fat chance, look you can't buy these?"
"No, not until Duncan has a chance to ok it, but I can tell you that we'll probably end up doing is taking a regular $5 subscription, $100 is too much."
"But you get a complete backfire and who knows how many others I will do, it might be cheaper in the long run."
"I can pick up the back issues one at a time, see if I could just talk the library into giving me a slush fund, and then when I see them in the stores, I can pick them up."
"But you don't think you'll be interested in buying a lifetime subscription?"
"No, I told you."
"Listen, when is Duncan supposed to ok your pending purchases?"
"He usually comes over on Thursday, but he's been out of town, he should be back in a week or so."
"Could I meet him?"
"Yeah, just come up in the afternoon."
"Krech has a whole drawer full of those handouts, leaflets, what not, you want I should tell him that you mite be interested in acquiring them?"
"Yes, I'd appreciate that, you also said you had some letters and holographs, one of the things hard about giving you a hundred dollars for Litmus is none of these poets you publish are well known."
"Well, it's not hard to publish well known poets, in fact it's easy, the hard thing is to get the best of the unknown out where people can know it and you can't do that if you publish people who are known. I realize the hardness of the sell, but if I was interested in money, I'd get into heroin, or diamonds or something. Money is just a big drag."
"Unless you don't have any."
"Unless you don't have any, then it's a big drag both ways, getting and spending."
"Shall I come over to your house some night this week and look at the letters and holographs?"
"Yeah, why not tomorrow night," to which he agreed and when he arrived, he entered with the courteous lie.
"This is a nice little apartment."
"Thanks, it's little all rite, can I get you some tea?"
"Thanks, yes, how old is this guy Smith?"
"Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, I don't know."
"That's usually old enough for seriousness to set in."
"O, he's serious enough, you don't know anybody as serious as he is, or any more."
"Yeah, but have you got copies of your replies?"
"Replies?"
"Yes, replies to the letters, you should make copies of your replies."
"Well..."
"I mean what good is half a correspondence? I could maybe use these letters from Dorn and Bukowski, if they only had the replies."
"They're not for sale."
"But what you should do is make copies."
"That's such a big pain in the ass."
"But a complete file would contain both initial letter and response."
"Any news yet on the Litmus subscription?"
"Duncan is back and he's coming over this Thursday, Why don't you come on then."
"Great, I'll be there." Saw him walking. Knew him by the eyes. Saw him walking in the warehouse Bancroft Library is, several stories off the ground, with a young man with a beard, one eye ahead, and one eye aslant, he says crossed but I hold out for cocked, saw him walking and watched him and Covici go upstairs.
"Ah, oh Robert, this is Mr. Potts."
"Hello."
"We have his magazine here among the ones we need to consider today, he wants a $100 lifetime subscription and to include a back file."
"That's quite a bit, I think I've seen this before, others of it, will the library go for it?"
"I doubt it, even if you recommend it, but do you think we should get a regular subscription?"
"By all means, this is, you can tell, some care was expended on it."
"Well, we have got a lot of things to talk about Mr. Potts, why don't you wait down by my office, if there's anything you want to ask Mr. Duncan about," he said turning to Duncan, "He's been waiting to meet you."
"There are about a million things I'd like to ask Mr. Duncan."
"It looks like a nice magazine, I've seen it before."
"I sent some to Oregon, La Grande, with some friends of mine when you were reading there, I asked Ben Hiatt to give them to you."
"You were in La Grande then?"
"No, I was in Seattle, just passing through, where I did these."
"Bayes, Bayes, that's the guy who had me there to read, is he a friend of yours?"
"Yes, I've got some copies of the last two or three issues, I can give you when we get down to the bus stop. Once Dorn was playing a tape and looking for some poetry on it, I don't remember what, but he flashed past 'The light foot hears you and the brightness begins', and I said, go back, go back, and he said to what, and I said to that line, I just wanna hear that line again, and he did."
"That's an old poem."
"Yeah, but still great."
"You know Dorn then?"
"Yeah, they used to publish me in Wild Dog.
"But wasn't that in Pocatello, I thought you were from Seattle?"
"I used to be in Pocatello too. Gawd that library is a pain in the ass."
"Yeah, I advise them."
"I'd almost rather they didn't ever even see the shit than go thru the hassle."
"It's their problem all rite, gathering the material, are you going to publish any more?"
"Yeah, we got a couple issues planned, I'm doing a book of Bukowski's."
"How is he?"
"Wrecked."
"Oh?"
"He's doing this thing with Penguin, and I got this incredible letter about how they sent him a tax exemption, so they could send him his hundred pounds without paying the taxes, and like the forms didn't make any sense, but he fills them out and then months later they write and say we sent you the wrong forms, here are the right forms, please fill them out . . . "
"Jesus, it's so typical that would happen to him."
"Really, he deserves better."
"I'm going to Illinois next week, then I'll be back. Then I'm going to New York in June."
"You get a lot of readings these days."
"Yeah."
"We do a lot of readings all over town."
"Here's my bus."
"Here's the other Litmus, goodbye."
"Oh, Mr. Potts, I went home and read all my Litmus," he said after many weeks hiatus, after his reading and autograph party on the second floor of Cody's Bookstore, throwing his arms around me in a bear hug. I had approached him hoping that he would remember me. On the way into that reading the Rabbi Simon had introduced me to Gene Fowler. Simon had been on uneasy feet since discovering inadvertently that there was a tiff in the air between me and Fowler, and he had both of us in his first issue. He was worried that there would be smoke, but I wasn't worried, nor did I have any powerful feelings one way or the other. Fowler didn't seem to write well enough to account for all the deference showed him by others.
It was Waldman who had interested me since the tremendous presentation he had made at the open reading at The Hearth. It was a relief to me to see him sitting in the Mediterranean one day talking with some people, since it meant I wouldn't have a completely dry run, lugging around town as I was then this canvas bag of magazines and barely selling any, going home each night with a heavy head and promises to myself to do better the next day. I breezed rite up to him in the Med, and said, "Here, this is for you," handing him a Litmus.
"For me?"
"Yeah, you're a poet aren't you, I'm supposed to be selling them but you should get one free."
"Why me."
"For that terrific reading you gave at The Hearth."
"Thanks man," he said waving the little black and white book. I had wanted to talk to him but it seemed I was destined to just go on walking. I made some more rounds up to the Cal plaza and then back down the other side of Telly, there he was in the gutter just across Dwight, hitchhiking in his heavy sweater and whisps of hair.
I went up to him again, "Hi, how are you, what's happening?"
"I'm hitching over to the city."
"Did you get a job?"
"Yeah."
"Listen man, you should give me some poems for Litmus."
"For this?" he said, again waving the magazine.
"Yeah, my address is in there, why don't you just bring some by for me to look at, ok?"
"Ok man, in a few days. I've never done anything with my poems, perhaps it's time."
"You should man, they are great."
"What is the best time to catch you at home?"
"I'm usually there in the mornings," which was true. At first I had been getting up really early, as Calvin would approve, but now I was just lying in bed, working very late at night and not getting up until noon. Joel came over with a valise full of poems and hauled a few out.
"Look at these." I went shuffling through them a bit, recognized the couple I had dug so much at the Hearth reading.
"Do you have any more?"
"Well I can leave this whole bundle with you if you want to look at them, there's some from a book I'm working on called Carole, and other poems, you can publish any of them you like."
"Ok, that's fine, I'll just bring them back to you when I'm finished with them."
"When will these be out?"
"Well I'm doing two more issues, I've got these four long poems I want to put in number 10, and your poems will be in number 9. I hope to get it out in a month or two."
"Sounds great man, look I live on Essex," he said and gave me the address. When I returned the poems a few days later, his girlfriend Susan was there and he was writing a new poem. He had written one for her that ended, "by the way lady, / welcome to immortality," which I thought had been a little strong, and even if true better off unvoiced. It was not one of the ones I wanted for the magazine, although the rest of the poem was fine, and I suggested that I would take it if you delete that line.
"Let's ask Susan what she thinks."
"Ok," I said without really meaning it, I didn't care what she thought really, she could like the poem or not like the poem, that didn't make it any better. She picked up the piece of paper and read it over, occasionally looking at Joel.
"I don't know," she said, "I'm not sure if it belongs in the poem or not."
"It stays," Joel said.
"Fine," I said, "but I can't publish it with that line."
"Oh, man, what difference does it make?"
"Doesn't make any difference, I just think it ruins everything that went before it." I didn't want to make it a hassle, I had just thought I would mention it.
"Joel tells me that you're selling these magazines," Susan said, lifting one of them up.
"Yeah, I'm trying to, but it isn't going very well."
"Why not?"
"I just don't have the knack, is all, or enough time, I mean I've got to edit the thing, and there's lots of correspondence, a lot of people are offended by the cover, this poet named Vanish…"
"Vanish?"
"Yeah, Vanish, he was supposed to be here to help me sell them but I haven't seen anything of him."
"Where is he?"
"Portland I think."
"I could sell some of them for you."
"Really?"
"Why not? I could just take some of them up on the Avenue, or onto the campus with a sign of some kind."
"Gawd if you would it would really help me."
"Sure, I can do it."
"How many do you want?"
"Maybe a hundred."
"Do you think you can sell that many?"
"I can try."
"Great, I'll just bring them over, maybe tonight." That was a great move I thought, at least somebody else is willing to help me, I told her that I would give her forty percent of whatever she sold, which seemed to be all right with her.
A few weeks before I had gone down to Oakland to file for my unemployment. It seemed everybody I knew had at one time or other been on unemployment except me, and since I had been working for over a year in Seattle before I came to California to stay, that I should have unemployment coming. The first mistake was in going to the unemployment office in Berkeley, which was way to hell and gone down on University. After I got there they said, "We don't take applications for unemployment here, we're only a place where you can get jobs or get lined up for jobs, but you have to have a job application on file here before you can file for unemployment." So I filled out one of those "what have you done all your life" forms. I didn't want a job, I had a job, I didn't even want to b.s. them, unless I had to.
I caught the bus and went thru Oakland and over to the unemployment office, and there were huge lines of people. I told them there that the only work I would consider was that of a poet.
"There are no job classifications for poet."
"Great, then you have to give me unemployment."
"No, not exactly, what you have to do is seek the kind of work you have been doing."
"But I don't want to do that kind of work."
"Well, it is the only basis on which you can file for unemployment."
"Why should I have to take the fall, just because your civilization doesn't have enough imagination to provide jobs for poets."
"I served in the military for twenty-four years."
"So what?"
"So people like you could make arguments like this."
"No man, I'm making this argument on my own. You may think you were keeping me free, but you were just keeping yourself in tow."
"Look at all these people out there just waiting for a handout," he said with a sweeping gesture toward the lines of waiting victims.
"You don't seriously think they enjoy coming down here do you?"
"They come down here, week after week, the same people."
"So?"
"So they must enjoy it."
"No man, they're just coming down here because that's easier than blowing it all up."
"Hummff!"
"You think they enjoy standing in these lines, and putting up with the likes of you?"
"They don't have any choice."
"Exactly, and that's why your system is failing."
"But we won the war."
"No, you mean you postponed the final outcome, by winning the battle."
"We could argue all day."
"Fine with me."
"But we have to get on with your case, you can do warehousing work, bartending, and listen when it says something here, it means it, you comply, you have to be actively seeking work in one or more areas of which you are qualified."
"How many a week?"
"It's not how many, you just have to keep looking and you have to look in all the regular ways. You have to read and answer ads, in newspapers. You have to call employers up."
"I don't have a phone."
"You can call them from pay phones."
"That takes money, which I don't have."
"And you have to go see people in person."
"You make it sound harder than work."
"Well we don't want to encourage anybody to stay on unemployment if they are capable of working and looking for a job, they should find one. There are lots of jobs going begging."
"It would make more sense to go begging."
"Ok, now look at this, you worked from September until October of the following year. Now when people file these interstate claims, we just can't put you on the unemployment here, we have to have all this information verified from the state of Washington. And that sometimes takes time."
"How much time?"
"Oh, a week, maybe two, maybe longer."
"What takes so much time, all they have to do is get the information and run it through their computer?"
"Yeah, but they have a lot of cases to check out, and if they decide you're qualified, then you have to send us or bring us one of these forms, completely filled out."
"Completely filled out?"
"Yes, completely filled out as to what activities you have engaged in in the previous week to seek employment for yourself then they figure out on what quarters you are applying, how much money you should get per week."
I left them with my head in a daze. I didn't want these creeps to chip me out of what I had coming. But a couple weeks later they send me a letter saying that I was qualified for unemployment compensation. Based on the quarterly earning period that applied, I would be receiving a check for $18 a week. $18 a week! What horseshit. It seems as though they had run a number on the quarters and in spite of the fact that I had worked for a full year, they were assessing my earnings on less than half of the time I had worked, which made my check so small. If I applied again after the first of July it seemed to me, I would a been getting in the neighborhood of $50, just because that would set up the sliding wheel of unemployment to where they were then taking into consideration more of the work I had already done. Well I would just have to wait and do it then, it wasn't worth the hassle for $18 a week.
I went into the post office down town and signed up to take a test a few weeks later. My long range plans had come to include slipping in the back door of the post office when my funds ran out, which was one job I was sure I could get, because I could past the test high, and get a good rating and theoretically at least, they didn't have a shit thing to say about what you looked like. In fact there had been an article in the paper, asking rednecks in general, what interpretation they put on the facts that people with long hair generally scored higher on the post office tests, indicating hi levels of native ability. And since it was a meritocracy, they couldn't do much about it.
They gave me these sample type questions, and little route charts, which I laid right into, studying them for a while, and then when I went to Oakland to take the test, I felt pretty good about it. Kepley had said of me that I was more likely than he was to take out an insurance policy.
