January 10, 1973

Dear Bernadette,

You asked about the sources for Bunting Ideas last night
and in my excitement about what was going on I didn't really
get it together to remember it all after I came home from
my office where I typed up Bunting Ideas during my lunch hour
(it was a long one!) i wrote out a list of sources- the
world of silence is the book by max picard that ron padgett
read from at the recent poetry reading in the greene street
loft ive had that book around for years and never have been
able to decide whether i liked it or not it is a very strange
and interesting book ... the table of contents goes the ego
and silence knowledge and silence things and silence history and
silence world of myth images and silence love and silence and
so on...at the workshop ron padgett told us that he hadnt been
writing i think for 6 months (i think he meant poetry) so that
fitted in nicely...when I have times that i cant
write sometimes i have trouble haring what people say and
it really feels like a world of silence...i don't like it so
much and once wrote a poem against silence...for a long time it was
my favorite word...X once sent me a book by john cage
titled silence and he sent it anonymously...also sonnet xivii
by Ted Berrigan...ideas of order at key west by Wallace Stevens
you asked about the war image coming from another poem and I
looked at the list when I came home and saw the hollow men by
TS Eliot...but i changed in my mind "not with a bang but a
whimper" to "whisper" also as I said last night ron padgetts
spontaneous poem about the anonymous poets poem b52s bomb people
b83s bomb pretzels he said if he were to write it it would
go something like that...also as i was writing i thought about
a poem by Jack Foss in Locus Solus iii-iv

The Categorical Avoidance

To say you are like this
or this is like you
is to begin the comparison
and you would become
less like any other thing;
and would become relatively pale
and absolutely die,
belonging finally everywhere
metaphorically (p242)

[correction: this poem is by
Musa McKim]

there was someting else...oh yes...i appreciate your encouragement
to write prose as I have been planning to drop out (from social
work) for awhile and write poetry and a book about psychoanalysis
and poetry...X has been encouraging me for a year now to write
about poetry and i think i can work it into a sort of fictional
literary journal (did you ever read *The Burning Brand* by Cesar Pavese?)
im so excited about publishing the basil poems with you...I wrote
to my analyst (alan grossman) yesterday morning saying that if it
were to be published i might want to dedicate Bunting Ideas
to the memory of my father who was a career soldier and fought
in africa and italy during world war II... he died of a heart
attack on October 2, 1972 During the war
he received the Bronze Star

Well I dont know how to express my gratitude for
your encouragement except to say that Bunting Ideas is especially a
gift from me and you to you and everyone