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

28 June 68

Dear Cid,

Up early this morning to pick peas in my soggy garden because Jane, who had been here is leaving and I wanted her to have the peas to take to Betty's where she would be tonight.

It has rained almost continually for three weeks. In a respite tonight after dinner I walked by the canal and the railroad. Hogan's field at the bottom of the hill was under water and churned to mud where he had tried to chop hay for the silo. I thought I could get by by walking through the part not cut but found it under water also and the grass half water so that I came out on the road again wet to the crotch, and mud in my shoes. Coming up the hill, the brown-eyed susans were just freshly out with that transparent thin red glaze still on their yellow petals like omens of fire to come which is here already so that one turns away not wanting or needing a reminder. If people talk of violence because a few are murdered what world had they thought it was?

Your friend the Australian poet [Clive Faust] must be a rational man who believes in what he knows: man, say, and well enough known that he can assess the types, as historical and mythical. If I knew so much I needn't have written. I work from deeper ignorance.

I hadn't meant you to publish the last two poems ["Writing You" and "I Thought It was Harry"] though if you want to, why not? Give me a little notice before you sent them in type. They are new and I'll clip away at them a little more still so a word or two may be different.

Nothing from . . . anyone, indeed, but you?

Affectionately,

Bill