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the city of hell
the city of hell,
4-20-24
heater on, out of smokes,
something on the radio...
Beethoven's 9th...
Hello Norman Moser:
Well, we've all come through our bits or we're
dead. Or we're living and dead--"this man's dead
life/that man's life dying/": Steven the Spender,
when he was going good... Now, hell, I've lost that
thing you sent me...
...Something was to be said about our lives, our
times. All our lives and times have been monstrous
and monumental, 1970, 1370, 1170... Of course, there's little doubt that the pitch has been stepped up. Although there is the same continuing war of Power against Less-Power, Money against Less-Money, Technology against Less-Technology, we also seem to be entering a war of color against color-- White, Black, Brown, Yellow, whatever, This brings the war everywhere and that isn't news. But each man or woman can feel more and more the fierceness in the streets, the hatred. A man isn't asked what he believes; the color of his skin is his only badge. For the first time in a lifetime, I carry steel if I go onto the streets after ten p.m.
I am white but I am not ashamed of my whiteness; I've handled it pretty well--meaning that I am poor. The trouble with the White Race is that too many of them hate each other. This is true of other races but not to our degree. We lack the cohesion of Brotherhood. The only thing we have is a certain terrible brain-power and cleverness and the ability to fight at the proper time; the ability to out-trick, out-think and even out-gut the opposition. No matter how much the White man may hate himself, he is simply gifted, but it may be ending for one reason or another... Spengler's DECLINE OF THE WEST... published in 1918, so long ago... although he gave it a 300-year time-table... the signs are showing... Either Whitey's got to get some soul or all his cleverness will be just so much spilled jism...
Perhaps this isn't what your sheaf was speaking
of anyhow. I've had too many drunken nights and
depressive days since I received it. And I always lose.
everything jobs, women, ballpoint pens, fistfights,
requests for grants from The National Foundation of the Arts, and so forth... where was I?
O, yes. I must say that it is dangerous for the
poet to pose as a prophet, a poet/writer to pose as a
prophet. Here in the U.S., most serious writers write for many years before they are heard from or recognized, if ever. Unfortunately, many damn fools are recognized because their minds are close to the Public Mind, ergo, sales. Generally, a writer of true
force/originality is anywhere from 20 years to 200
years ahead of his generation. So therefore he starves, goes mad, suicides, and is only recognized if portions of his work are somehow found later, much later, in a shoebox, say, or under the mattress of a whorehouse bed, you know. Hell, he could even be someone at WritCo, whose work will only get recognized if found long after he's dead, say, in the year 2147 A.D.
All right, then. Let's say a great U.S. writer
finally makes it... meaning that he will finally not
have to worry about paying the rent and will even
go to bed with a pretty fair-looking hunk or woman
now and then. Most of them have endured (the writer, not the woman) anywhere from 5 to 25 years of non-recognition. And when they finally get their bit of recognition, they can't control it. Ape? Hell yes! This T.V. station? O.K. Whatcha want me to talk about? Yeah, I'll talk... Whatta ya wanna know about? World History? The Meaning of Man Ecology? The Population Explosion? The Revolution? Whatcha wanna know? What's that? LIFE MAGAZINE photographer? Sure, let him in!
Here's a guy who'd been drinking cheap wine in a small room for 15 years. Had to walk down to the hall bathroom to take a crap. And when he typed, old ladies beat on their ceilings and floors with broom handles, scaring the hell out of him...
"Shut it up, you fool!"
Suddenly, out of some trick, he's known... His
work is banned, or he walked down Broadway with his pecker hanging out during the Santa Claus Parade, and after his arrest, they found out he wrote...poetry.
Anything will do. Talent helps but it's not always necessary. One of the best utterances of wisdom was spoken not by a philosopher but by a baseball player who always had trouble keeping his average near .250... Leo Durocher: "I'd rather be lucky than good..." A good glove (fielding talent) wasn't enough. This was because Durocher knew when he got his at-bats that ten or twelve lucky-bounce singles through the infield meant the difference between the minors and the majors.
So you've got the good old U.S.A. At this moment there are probably only a dozen writers who can write with verve and the grand fire. Of these, let's say that two have been recognized-- out of pure luck. 8 will go to their graves without ever being published anywhere. The other 2 will be found and dug up, out of some accident of chance.
So what happens when one of the dozen greats finally lucks it into the limelight? Easy. They kill him. He has lived in those small rooms and starved for so long that he believes he deserves everything that is coming to him-- so he sells out, trying to fill in the blanks of the lonely years.
"Dear Mr. Evans:
Will you write us something about
the Black-White question or Hippies
or Where Are We Going in America
Today? Something on that order,
or anything you choose. You may
be quite assured that anything you
write will be accepted. We will
pay you, upon acceptance, anywhere
from $1,000 to $5,000 per article,
depending upon length. We've always
been admirers of your work...
By the way, did you know that one
of our associate editors, Virginia
McAnally sat next to you in
English II at the University
of - - - - - - - - - ?"
So, the man who has kept his style and his energy and his truth strictly within the Art-form (which is the most powerful and dangerous of weapons) is suddenly visited by wealth. He is offered readings at colleges and universities at from $500 plus travel and expenses to over 2 grand plus. And a good chance to go to bed with a college girl after the reading, after the party. A college girl who merely wishes to fuck a name. Suddenly, everything is there!
It's most difficult for a man who has been
hated by his landlady in a 8 dollar a week room to
turn away from all of this. And the murderers know
this. Where before he had been a pure Artist, saying
it most effectively out of pain and madness and truth, he is now a drunken babbling little doll, drinking cocktail after cocktail in a rich man's house for a rich man's way. Sucking the bung-holes of the $$$$$-phonies. People giggle at his babble when he no longer has anything to say. But he's still a name. A name! So he can even puke on the rug and won't get spanked. They can buy another rug, they can buy another name... It's just one night, one time... There will be a new fool next week.
Pound and Jeffers held out. Pound was sensible
enough to get out. Jeffers put up a stone wall. In
Europe, they kicked Celine's ass good... made him so bitter he couldn't write anymore. Knut Hamsun outwaited them and kept going.
Two American names and one French name come particularly to mind of former fair writers who have leaped from the more dangerous Art-form to the pallid and ineffective form of "mouthing" it about everything. But name-calling proves nothing. They can't resist the spotlight and the flashbulbs, but it isn't any good. They've been tricked and trapped, and finally, although they don't realize it, they will be thrown away. Because it was their original energy and truth that enticed the sub-normal crowd anyhow...
I doubt that this is exactly what you wanted,
Norm. When and if the time comes, I'll probably
sell out as quickly as any of those typewriter cuties.
Probably suck turds for ten bucks an hour. When I'm hired to work as staff writer for the NEW YORKER, I'LL let you know. No, you write me. I'll probably forget you.
Anyhow, until whenever, balls away, bung-ho,
and I sit here with all these different colors of shoe
polish... whoever breaks in here first, I'm with
him... dab it on... I've got every color, every
shade... oh wait, there's one missing... oh, shit,
I've got that already...
Good luck with your guru issue. I think it's going to be very dull and pontifical, however. All those mouths saying anything and everything. Well, you asked for it.
hang in,
Frank Silvanski
© Frank Silvanski
4-20-24
heater on, out of smokes,
something on the radio...
Beethoven's 9th...
Hello Norman Moser:
Well, we've all come through our bits or we're
dead. Or we're living and dead--"this man's dead
life/that man's life dying/": Steven the Spender,
when he was going good... Now, hell, I've lost that
thing you sent me...
...Something was to be said about our lives, our
times. All our lives and times have been monstrous
and monumental, 1970, 1370, 1170... Of course, there's little doubt that the pitch has been stepped up. Although there is the same continuing war of Power against Less-Power, Money against Less-Money, Technology against Less-Technology, we also seem to be entering a war of color against color-- White, Black, Brown, Yellow, whatever, This brings the war everywhere and that isn't news. But each man or woman can feel more and more the fierceness in the streets, the hatred. A man isn't asked what he believes; the color of his skin is his only badge. For the first time in a lifetime, I carry steel if I go onto the streets after ten p.m.
I am white but I am not ashamed of my whiteness; I've handled it pretty well--meaning that I am poor. The trouble with the White Race is that too many of them hate each other. This is true of other races but not to our degree. We lack the cohesion of Brotherhood. The only thing we have is a certain terrible brain-power and cleverness and the ability to fight at the proper time; the ability to out-trick, out-think and even out-gut the opposition. No matter how much the White man may hate himself, he is simply gifted, but it may be ending for one reason or another... Spengler's DECLINE OF THE WEST... published in 1918, so long ago... although he gave it a 300-year time-table... the signs are showing... Either Whitey's got to get some soul or all his cleverness will be just so much spilled jism...
Perhaps this isn't what your sheaf was speaking
of anyhow. I've had too many drunken nights and
depressive days since I received it. And I always lose.
everything jobs, women, ballpoint pens, fistfights,
requests for grants from The National Foundation of the Arts, and so forth... where was I?
O, yes. I must say that it is dangerous for the
poet to pose as a prophet, a poet/writer to pose as a
prophet. Here in the U.S., most serious writers write for many years before they are heard from or recognized, if ever. Unfortunately, many damn fools are recognized because their minds are close to the Public Mind, ergo, sales. Generally, a writer of true
force/originality is anywhere from 20 years to 200
years ahead of his generation. So therefore he starves, goes mad, suicides, and is only recognized if portions of his work are somehow found later, much later, in a shoebox, say, or under the mattress of a whorehouse bed, you know. Hell, he could even be someone at WritCo, whose work will only get recognized if found long after he's dead, say, in the year 2147 A.D.
All right, then. Let's say a great U.S. writer
finally makes it... meaning that he will finally not
have to worry about paying the rent and will even
go to bed with a pretty fair-looking hunk or woman
now and then. Most of them have endured (the writer, not the woman) anywhere from 5 to 25 years of non-recognition. And when they finally get their bit of recognition, they can't control it. Ape? Hell yes! This T.V. station? O.K. Whatcha want me to talk about? Yeah, I'll talk... Whatta ya wanna know about? World History? The Meaning of Man Ecology? The Population Explosion? The Revolution? Whatcha wanna know? What's that? LIFE MAGAZINE photographer? Sure, let him in!
Here's a guy who'd been drinking cheap wine in a small room for 15 years. Had to walk down to the hall bathroom to take a crap. And when he typed, old ladies beat on their ceilings and floors with broom handles, scaring the hell out of him...
"Shut it up, you fool!"
Suddenly, out of some trick, he's known... His
work is banned, or he walked down Broadway with his pecker hanging out during the Santa Claus Parade, and after his arrest, they found out he wrote...poetry.
Anything will do. Talent helps but it's not always necessary. One of the best utterances of wisdom was spoken not by a philosopher but by a baseball player who always had trouble keeping his average near .250... Leo Durocher: "I'd rather be lucky than good..." A good glove (fielding talent) wasn't enough. This was because Durocher knew when he got his at-bats that ten or twelve lucky-bounce singles through the infield meant the difference between the minors and the majors.
So you've got the good old U.S.A. At this moment there are probably only a dozen writers who can write with verve and the grand fire. Of these, let's say that two have been recognized-- out of pure luck. 8 will go to their graves without ever being published anywhere. The other 2 will be found and dug up, out of some accident of chance.
So what happens when one of the dozen greats finally lucks it into the limelight? Easy. They kill him. He has lived in those small rooms and starved for so long that he believes he deserves everything that is coming to him-- so he sells out, trying to fill in the blanks of the lonely years.
"Dear Mr. Evans:
Will you write us something about
the Black-White question or Hippies
or Where Are We Going in America
Today? Something on that order,
or anything you choose. You may
be quite assured that anything you
write will be accepted. We will
pay you, upon acceptance, anywhere
from $1,000 to $5,000 per article,
depending upon length. We've always
been admirers of your work...
By the way, did you know that one
of our associate editors, Virginia
McAnally sat next to you in
English II at the University
of - - - - - - - - - ?"
So, the man who has kept his style and his energy and his truth strictly within the Art-form (which is the most powerful and dangerous of weapons) is suddenly visited by wealth. He is offered readings at colleges and universities at from $500 plus travel and expenses to over 2 grand plus. And a good chance to go to bed with a college girl after the reading, after the party. A college girl who merely wishes to fuck a name. Suddenly, everything is there!
It's most difficult for a man who has been
hated by his landlady in a 8 dollar a week room to
turn away from all of this. And the murderers know
this. Where before he had been a pure Artist, saying
it most effectively out of pain and madness and truth, he is now a drunken babbling little doll, drinking cocktail after cocktail in a rich man's house for a rich man's way. Sucking the bung-holes of the $$$$$-phonies. People giggle at his babble when he no longer has anything to say. But he's still a name. A name! So he can even puke on the rug and won't get spanked. They can buy another rug, they can buy another name... It's just one night, one time... There will be a new fool next week.
Pound and Jeffers held out. Pound was sensible
enough to get out. Jeffers put up a stone wall. In
Europe, they kicked Celine's ass good... made him so bitter he couldn't write anymore. Knut Hamsun outwaited them and kept going.
Two American names and one French name come particularly to mind of former fair writers who have leaped from the more dangerous Art-form to the pallid and ineffective form of "mouthing" it about everything. But name-calling proves nothing. They can't resist the spotlight and the flashbulbs, but it isn't any good. They've been tricked and trapped, and finally, although they don't realize it, they will be thrown away. Because it was their original energy and truth that enticed the sub-normal crowd anyhow...
I doubt that this is exactly what you wanted,
Norm. When and if the time comes, I'll probably
sell out as quickly as any of those typewriter cuties.
Probably suck turds for ten bucks an hour. When I'm hired to work as staff writer for the NEW YORKER, I'LL let you know. No, you write me. I'll probably forget you.
Anyhow, until whenever, balls away, bung-ho,
and I sit here with all these different colors of shoe
polish... whoever breaks in here first, I'm with
him... dab it on... I've got every color, every
shade... oh wait, there's one missing... oh, shit,
I've got that already...
Good luck with your guru issue. I think it's going to be very dull and pontifical, however. All those mouths saying anything and everything. Well, you asked for it.
hang in,
Frank Silvanski
© Frank Silvanski
