9/30/82

A poem beginning with the line or title
Solitary Pursuits

When the excitement gives way to depression
excitement/ depression/ assertion

You, who have mastered fending people
off. Have fended me off. And so
again and again I return to my
solitary pursuits. I have proceeded honestly.
But mostly it is a ----. I am no
longer angry. Now I do have a direction.
It is *away* from my anger. All my
last ten years have been devoted to
anger. I wish to retire from anger.
And on and on into the psychotherapist's
journal. But where will be the
room with all my ravings? Where
will I go to shout?

My anger has been *no help*.

I can feel the anger.

March 17, 1984

I ran into numerous friends today.
Some you know, some you don't.
But listening to Philip Whalen's poetry
and thinking about why I like it so much
I'm connecting to your question
"What is the border of a work as such?"
Or something like that.

The idea of a formal work
like a song or a poem
implies an occasion like a reading or a singing
so a distinction develops between the formal pronouncing
of beliefs and the intimate revelation of a feeling
or- is it that conversation must be witty
but the writer allows more time for the
wit to be displayed?

We don't go back to conversations
they are largely forgotten
but poetry is remembered and repeated
read and reread
and therefore must stand the test of time
conversation- time=minutes
poetry-time=centuries

----------------------------------------------------

All you ever had to do to be so fair was to
note the situation of the writing and the
feelings which are accompanying it- this
would give a record of why you would be
so willing to make such an asshole out
of yourself to say those things-

today

wrote a card to Marty-my friend who
I've not been in touch with for years who is
*very* overweight

I go to a meeting- my name was listed
as the central person for my agency among
a listing of all the agencies on the Upper West
Side - Mildred Lopez was there- the
supervisor at the job I left in 1973 to
spend a year writing (I wound up falling in
love with B)- the last day
I walked into a bookstore and bought a copy
of "Severance Pay"
After the meeting I run into Dan Prior-
who is working on a play-
Then I leave and run into the Director of the
Teacher's College Therapy Agency- the one who supervises the
case that I lost around the fees (the one
who left before completing his degree and again
can't complete his degree)- then the Whalen
reading seeing Peter, James, Charles, John, Eileen,
Bernadette, Lewis, Alice, Allen Ginsberg,
Jack Collum, Bob Holman- a very special
and nice and warm and strange, different day-

Phillip Wailin' for R.S. (Ron Silliman) 3/17/84