A Faithful Account of Where I Live: The Letters of Cid Corman and William Bronk

15 May 63

Dear Cid

I was pleased to have your cordial note and to know that you are publishing some more poems in #10. Could you let me know which ones these are and also whether or not you have others that you plan to use? This, of course, is to avoid any conflict but anything I have sent you is yours to use if you want to use it.

I had not forgotten Conrad Aiken though I seldom thought of him or saw any notice taken of him so I was surprised to see him the subject of the front page article in the London TLS a week or so ago in which he was obviously being boomed as THE GREAT POET NOW Writing in the English Language. This is a change in fashion. The same article dismissed Eliot and Auden as passe.

I bought Creeley's new collection (For Love) which is quite a large one - a collected works, indeed - as you have perhaps seen and felt let down to discover that Creeley in large doses is much less effective than Creeley in small doses. I had accorded him a large stature and although I still admire certain poems very much I am surprised at how limited his range seems, how small his subject by means of this retrospective. There is so much more worth taking note of than what he means by "love" and what he means by love is not a door which opens onto these aspects of the world. My own limitations, surely more stringent than his, seem to me to have the virtue of doing just that-of serving as a door and an open one. But perhaps Creeley's view of Creeley is like that too.

Here, my garden is partly planted and growing, my lawn has had its first mowing, the fruit trees are in blossom and spring is entering its late flamboyance.

Shall you always stay in Japan? Someone told me so and that you were wearing a yellow robe. So?

Overleaf, just for you pleasure-I hope-a poem ["The Disproportions of Desire"].

Bill