Archives and Special Collections Mansfield Library, University of Montana Missoula MT 59812-9936 Email: [email protected] Telephone: (406) 243-2053

This transcript represents the nearly verbatim record of an unrehearsed interview. Please bear in mind that you are reading the spoken word rather than the written word.

Oral History Number: 438-005 Interviewee: Jack Waller Interviewer: Mark Gibbons Date of Interview: March 28, 2013 Project: Ed Lahey Oral History Project

Mark Gibbons: This is Mark Gibbons and I'm in Twin Bridges, Montana. It's March 28, 2013, and I'm interviewing Jack Waller about Ed Lahey. So Jack...our second run, actually we did a dress rehearsal. We're ready now. Where did your relationship begin with Ed?

Jack Waller: I found out last night in talking with Roger Dunsmore it was actually 1991. I had moved to Rumsey, Montana, a little area outside of Phillipsburg, in 1989 and had just completed a master's degree in English and Creative Writing and decided to retreat to a cabin in Montana to live the life of a poet.

In the process I found out about a Copper Village Art Museum and Cultural Center in Anaconda. So I contacted them and they told me about a new program originating in Billings called "Tumble Words". It was a program that brought poets from so-called "underserved areas", and I was told there was a showcase happening in Helena with a roster of poets to listen to and to make decisions about inviting them to Anaconda.

In that showcase in Helena I heard several poets and was interested, I thought it was a great program. But then I was told, "If you haven't heard Ed Lahey, he's the poet you should definitely listen to." So I checked the schedule and there was a reading by Ed Lahey and I went and I was blown away. His voice, his speaking voice, was so powerful and the content of his poetry so impressive that I immediately knew this was a man, a poet I wanted to get to know, and definitely bring to Anaconda for the reading series. So it was that year that Roger Dunsmore and Ed Lahey came to Anaconda. I didn't know Ed much at all so I asked Roger if he would introduce Ed. He gave a great introduction and Ed followed with probably the best poetry reading I've ever attended. It's a mix not only of how he delivered his poems but his ad­ libs in between and the way he would put them in context. Such a gifted speaker. And by gifted I mean, it flowed, once he got going the flow was truly amazing. As result of that I found out more about Missoula and the literary scene there.

He invited me to come and attend some of the literary events in Missoula. I was somewhat aware of Missoula because I had a friend who lived in Arlee. So I made a trip there that became almost a routine for years. Spending the night with Ed, attending a poetry reading and many times it was not Ed, it was other readers. But those evenings and the days following introduced me to Ed as the most gifted conversationalist I'd ever known. We could discuss poetry and life and discuss our similarities. I have in front of me a list that I made this morning of some of the things that we shared. That became almost a pilgrimage to the literary mecca that Missoula was considered to be. It was also deeply fascinating to me that Ed, being in Missoula, was almost as

1 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. the biblical saying goes, "A profit without honor in his own country." I thought it was remarkable that...I know his background in Butte and I learned about that. But he had a long history in Missoula with the university and Dick Hugo of course, and all of the great moments and the really challenging times he had there.

As I learned more about those I realized we shared a common reaction to the Vietnam War. We approached it differently. Ed was very protest oriented, very public, and involved in the demonstrations and the things that eventually got him into trouble with the university. I had become a conscientious objector and I was not given to public protests. Even though I was out in the Bay Area in California at the start of the Vietnam War and during my college time, we shared a reaction to the Vietnam War, to government and a number of things. I also found out that we shared a blue collar family history. My father was a steel fabricator and a welder and we had that history in common. We definitely shared a life centered...as the poet Rilke advised—I more so then than in recent times—we shared that concern for a life centered around poetry, especially around writing and written poetry and spoken poetry and we came to consider each other brothers in the art. We used that expression in our correspondence and that's another really key part of my appreciation of Ed.

In the boxes that I'll be sending with Mark to the archives in Missoula are countless letters. He was a truly gifted correspondent, and that was pre e-mail days. Later in our relationship, he tried e-mail a little bit but it didn't work, (laughs) He just wrote so fluently and he was truly a correspondent, it was a dialogue through the mail. A lot of it focused on poetry, a lot of it focused on the life that I was living at that time. He had an appreciation that poetry is more than just writing, it's more than just language; it's the life of a maker. We shared an interest in the outdoors and nature walks. When I was in Missoula we'd go to Greenough Park and stroll along and chat about things. We'd go to Council Grove along the river and stroll and chat about things.

He had a focus on the life that I greatly admired. I tended to be more scattered than that. He would comment, especially when we talked about poetry, he would talk about my writing practice and how it amazed him that I had so many scattered poems in progress. Hundreds of them, most of them are still unfinished. It was hard for him to comprehend because his practice was one poem at a time. He said, "I focus on it, I write it, and I don't move on until it seems finished to me." He would go back later and make slight revisions but he was a one poem at a time writer. That was his approach. We also shared an enjoyment of hot springs. I'm trying to think of the one he liked so much...down south of Missoula...Lolo Hot Springs. We went to Sleeping Child hot springs. And all of those we would soak and chat. He thoroughly enjoyed that. After that, well every time we were together, we shared our tastes for good Irish whiskey. That was a key part of our...I jokingly called them a two man symposium, our drinking parties. We'd enjoy the whiskey and enjoy the conversation. It was something that eventually became a problem for me as well as for Ed. The whiskey—

2 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MG: Didn't he have a good capacity? That's generally what happens, you have that kind of capacity, eventually when it catches up it's like somebody turns a switch.

JW: The word I used for that is tolerance. His body, it's such a physical tolerance. There were times I'd bring a bottle and between the two of us we'd finish it off. I was going to add too that we shared an appreciation for fine women as well. I tried this morning to find a copy of this poem, and I can't even remember who wrote it now. I think I can find it and I'd like to. The poem's entitled, "The Sweaty Old Bull." It's about a story of a chief who's given a young bride. The poem is very sensual, it's a beautiful story. But the sweaty old bull was a very old man. The poem describes a young woman coming to his teepee and undressing and sliding under the buffalo robe while the chief sat and stared into the teepee fire. Ed loved that poem for its sensuality and also for the way it ended. The young woman was very shy and very beautiful and in the morning she awoke (pause, slight noise of crying) and the sweaty old bull was still sitting there dead. Ed loved that because I think to him it spoke not only to the sensuality and the old bull's appreciation but that that was his last vision.

One of the other things, in my notes here that I really wanted to emphasize, were that there were years, I would say, oh, maybe seven, eight years, with Ed that were really special. Really valuable for all the reasons that I'm talking about. Then there was a transition time brought on largely by alcohol and drugs and other factors where I —

MG: When you said drugs, like—

JW: Prescription drugs, medications. I never knew Ed to take any psychedelic drugs. I don't have a date on it when it really began to happen but there were episodes where he would become deranged. Literally, psychologically deranged. It made it really difficult to communicate. There were reports that came back to me of things that he had said about me and my life that were utter fabrications. Also happened to be a little scary because what he was claiming to know was definitely illegal. Weren't true, but that caused a strain. Then there were other episodes where he got in trouble in his neighborhood. Romantic fantasies that proved to be a problem with the law.

MG: Could you elaborate and just explain what that was?

JW: Yeah, he lived in a neighborhood that had a supermarket down the road a ways. He used to say he would toddle down to the market. He became very infatuated with a clerk there, a young woman. She was friendly but he misconstrued her friendliness as being something that he would like to pursue so on one occasion he brought her an envelope with the key to his apartment and invited her to come use the key and come visit him at anytime. She was very alarmed and she called the store security people and that resulted in a ruckus. Ed didn't take kindly to authority and especially policemen or other security guards or people like that.

3 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MG: Just as an outside listener, not necessarily involving Ed or anybody else, but it does seem to me that may have been a bit of an overreaction. I would not perceive that exactly as a threat. It's something you would want to note, and keep an eye on just in case because that's not a normal thing. But it's not exactly what I call an overt sexual harassment. Just offering a key to someone. I can see why he might be kind of agitated too.

JW: You know, given his long history of conflict with authority and especially the years of his protest and when he was arrested and confined in Warm Springs, he was definitely pre­ disposed. On Ed's side he was pre-disposed to over-react. I think when that security person showed up, that triggered something in Ed like, "What the fuck are you doing here? This is none of your business, I'm not doing anything." Which then escalated.

MG: We also have the issues of what you're talking about, the mental instability.

JW: Right, the tim e where he was misdiagnosed and you made mention of it last night, as having Parkinson's syndrome when it was really manganese poisoning. The prescription that the doctor gave him was absolutely wrong and it caused all sorts of...

MG: The prescription for the Parkinson's?

JW: Yeah, and it was totally inappropriate for what Ed actually had. That led to a number of mental crises. During that time I was living in Virginia City and I was at a distance. We would talk on the phone and I would drive over as much as I could and I was available to him a lot during that time. It became clear to me that there was deterioration, physically as well. He didn't want to go for walks anymore. He preferred to just sit in his apartment and smoke cigarettes and depending on the time of the day drink beer or whiskey or whatever. Then there came a time after my years of making the drive over to spend time with him in his various apartments, he just decided that didn't work for him anymore. That was a surprise and a concern for me. As his problems worsened I also, I've admitted, I felt that I was beginning to withdraw and abandon the friendship. That's in fact what did happen. It didn't happen really until I met my current wife and my life changed drastically then. Even though she met Ed, and liked him a lot, she felt he was a very tragic figure. I think that's the first time I ever really started putting all the pieces of his personal tragedy, going back to his childhood, and things that happened. I had been so taken by his great poetic heart—to use Tennyson's phrase—that I overlooked a lot of what was happening. Once I realized the tragedy of his life and how much of it was self-inflicted, that put our relationship in a different light as well. His...I don't know if it's obstinacy, or his grumpiness, his short tempered...began to dominate, basically.

Even after the governor's award in 2008 we had enough of a relationship that Kristin, my wife, and our daughter, Ruby, and I went to Helena and attended that and then came to Missoula when there was a follow up celebration at the museum. Even at that point I was concerned enough to interview him, a tape recorded interview...his winning the governor's award, his review of his work, his self assessment. That's when it really, finally, settled in how much had

4 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. been lost. The questions I asked, and the answers that he gave—those are all in tape recordings, the audio recordings there—he was a cliche. He was a shadow of the Ed I had so admired. Of course by that time physically, he was greatly deteriorated and slovenly in appearance. I wasn't real pleased when Kristin and our daughter visited and he was in boxer shorts with a gaping crotch and smoking cigarettes.

At that point I realized our lives had diverged so much that the best I could do maybe was put together some sort of tribute to him. I was involved with the Elling House Arts and Humanities Center. It hadn't actually been formed yet but I was involved with those people and had suggested putting together an archive. That's the materials going to Missoula now, originally gathered up to go in that archive.

Because Ed, in addition to the times I spent with him in Missoula, he came a number of times to Phillipsburg, that area, Anaconda. He loved Virginia City. He had a history as a child and had some great memories and he made some friends there in Virginia City. When we formed the Sanders-Vanderbeck Center there in 1998 or 1999 Ed was one of the first people we invited there to read. He actually gave, he didn't want to, but it was part of the Committee for the Humanities requirement that he also do a workshop. It was quite an experience, because he did not like workshops, he didn't suffer the amateurs easily, and he didn't have an agenda for a work shop. It was basically just, there were half a dozen people, eight people maybe, and it ended up just being a conversation about poetry. He warmed up to that, but it was a stretch to call it a workshop. His visits, especially to Virginia City, started when I was living in a teepee, and that's another connection with the sweaty old bull story. He was very eager to hear any tidbits I'd tell him about how the teepee was a chick magnet (laughs). By the way I wouldn't be saying this if Kristin were at this interview (laughs). He loved to hear the stories, the various women who came and spent the night at the teepee.

Usually when he came, he'd give a reading, and he'd wander around town and chat with people and he just thoroughly enjoyed it. That was back in the late '90s, maybe early 2000. As part of that process that's where I began to see how heavily he was drinking. I had a couple bottles that I would...I didn't have a lot of money so I was kind of frugal in my drinking. There was never a drop when Ed left. I never complained about it, but it made it really clear to me, he wouldn't wait till we could have a drink together. If it was there, he would drink it. Those visits, I also really appreciated how much Ed enjoyed what I called the "tree art" that I make. Back then, he loved to get out in the woods. He actually took a couple really good photos of me out with a very special tree. I made him a cane that he used right up until he died, I think. He had a poet's way of glamorizing what I was doing that made it a combination of a Tolkien character and wizard and such.

I still, it was about a month ago I guess, I came across his introduction to me at that Union Club—that was in February 1996 where you and I met. I had real misgivings about coming to Missoula and doing that partly because of the literary status of town and the people who would be there, but also a self-consciousness because my writings were almost entirely about process,

5 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. they weren't about product. Ed was constantly urging me to finish. So when I came to that reading at the Union Club I told Ed, all I can really do is share some of the fragments, share some of the stories, and some of my own sense of the poetic life. I remember, and just read about a month ago, his introduction. To this day I really value that. It wasn't about me being a polished literary poet, just his admiration for the life and for the fact that writing was central to it but in a very different way. I think that, that was something given his love of the concrete world, the Butte world, the mines or the world of nature, just the concreteness of his poetry, he was not interested in great abstractions and flights of philosophy. I remembered him, one time I was telling him about my grandmother and her statement that in the Waller family in England there was Edmond Waller, wrote the famous "The Lovely Rose," it's about all he's remembered for now; and Colonel John Waller, they were both poet laureates of England and my grandmother was convinced that they were direct ancestors. She was into genealogy and that kind of thing. I made a point of sharing that with Ed and his response was blunt. It was, "Poet laureate? Poets nauseate." He had that tendency when there was pretention, whether it was intellectual, artistic, whatever, he didn't like it. He had a feeling that the strength of his poetry was how rooted it was, is, in the concrete world. Real places, real people, real activities. It's not that he wouldn't venture into abstraction or anything. He would. He got a letter from Leslie Fiedler, complimenting him, Ed, on the fact that he had something real to write about. Ed, that just thrilled him. He felt that that was the strength of his writing.

I remember one time, I played guitar for years and years and years. Ed really enjoyed my guitar playing and folk singing, including having his daughter and granddaughter over and have me serenade little Gracie when she was five years old, six maybe. At one point he mentioned putting one of his poems to music. He has another good friend who eventually did that with another one of his poems, Jenny Faleen (?). True to form I never got around to doing it, but I picked the poem and started fiddling around with chord progressions and all that. I never felt ready to even demonstrate anything to Ed. But the poem I picked was "Confederate Shacks" and that was always, to me that was a motion picture, a drama, a story that to me showed how deep Ed could go while seemingly being just descriptive. I love that poem, I told him I was working on doing it, and he was quite pleased with that. Once it became apparent it wasn't...again that was one of his...I would say heartfelt concerns, that he felt I had real promise but an inability to focus. I was just too scattered. In fact that's true.

MG: To add something to that, the whole point that you're making about yourself and Ed on an artistic level, a lot of, I mean he was driven to product. He was driven to completing things, like you said. Because he really coveted that book, he really coveted the recognition and the admiration that he never really got enough of. I think those were things that were so strong, and a drive, that that is why he was so...his art was so product oriented. I mean life is an artistic, creative journey. That's what you're saying; you expressed that on a daily basis.

JW: Yeah, and the other element with Ed, in reviewing, just glancing through some of the letters this morning, right away I found it again. He had one way that he could make money, and that was through his writing. That's what he saw. I don't know how to characterize it. I

6 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. think you could call it ambition but I think it had a higher motive than that. Especially when he went to work on the novels he made a real point of saying, and he quoted Dostoyevsky "Only the book can save me now." Because Dostoyevsky had gone into exile because he had creditors chasing him and all that and he was in a real economic crisis and Ed made that analogous to his own situation. I think that was...I think he deeply considered himself a professional writer. Given that goal, and that sense of who he was, that made it really necessary for him to make products and take them to the marketplace. I remember even when he talked about, I forget what...was it a fellowship or something he got early on?

MG: Maybe so—

JW: Yeah...and how much that just thrilled him. How much that meant to him, to actually have money as a result of—

MG: Money, and from a working class background, money defines us in so many ways. It's the reality of our existence. So you measure your success on money, so he wanted that. And of course, in that world you've got that old publish or perish mentality, so all of that was driven towards some sort of success as being w orthy—

JW: Yes. I have a note here and it's the perfect time to bring it in. One of the last things I did for Ed, at his request, was draft his last will with his daughters. I'm not an attorney and I wasn't representing him but I had the ability to do that as a gift to him. Which I did, and it was executed and all. The reason that comes up now is that, in bequeathing his assets, his top priorities were his intellectual properties. His writings, especially after Russ Chatham published Birds o f a Feather, he was very concerned that that be acknowledged as his legacy, that that was set up. He had very few material possessions. He had very few assets at all. There were a few financial assets, and he was concerned about that. In discussing that with him, it made it very clear, that he looked back over a long life of, it'd be a tough one to know because I wouldn't want to put words in his mouth, of struggle. Economical, interpersonal, political. His review of his life, especially at that time when we were working on his will, was a history of a lot of pain. He used the word over, and over and over again, how haunted he was by regrets. Regrets of things that happened way, way, way back. That's part of the way I came to understand Ed's life in the big picture is the undercurrents that originated even in childhood. I remember him showing me a picture, I think it was a high school picture, and him just looking at it and admiring it. You could just tell, he turned it around and he pointed it at me and he said, "I was god damn good looking, wasn't I?" (Laughter).

MG: And he had promise. He was a young intellectual. In the dress rehearsal for this interview I think I recall you using the word "genius" in referring to him.

JW: Yeah I do. What's that line in Roethke? He loved that line in Roethke. It's about what is madness but genius at odds with circumstance. That's a paraphrase of it, but it's pretty close.

7 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. He loved that, he felt that that was a key part of understanding his life. He had been at odds and sometimes ventured into madness in his circumstances.

MG: That., madness is stepping totally outside of the culture and what's appropriate. Whether that's thrust upon you, or self-inflicted, or any of that doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is if you go through that, you come out on the other side and you write about it. Somehow you're operating from a different place. What you bring back from that place is what your gift is to us trying to go through the business to live together in this world.

JW: That's right. Once again that phrase, I might've mentioned it earlier in this session, we talked a lot about what the Greeks called "furor poeticus," a poetic madness. Then there was also the Roman poet Juvenal had a saying, "furor scribendi," a rage for writing. I think in large part, from the very beginning I felt that that was the character of the Irish gene, the Irish blood. The ancestry, the more I listened to him, the more I put it all together. I remember talking with him and his sense of justice, his sense of indignation. His sense of the wrongs. God I remember one time he was telling me about the potato famine in Ireland and the horror of that. He went into a rage just talking about that. It was a little intimidating, I mean he was a big guy, and my father was English (laughter). That was another reason it didn't impress Ed to talk about any poet laureate from England. He was not impressed with that. He liked the fact that my mother was full-blooded German, he was okay with that. I think the time, I don't remember if it...it was at the governor's award, I happened to sit with Pat Williams. And we talked about Butte, and about Pat Williams and Ed and the bond that Butte gave them. The more Pat Williams talked, the more I could see that Irish, that Butte, that hard scrabble, all that was there in Ed. I think I mentioned too, years after I had met Ed, I heard a tape recording of W.B. Yeats, and I think Ed's a much better reader than Yeats, but Yeats had that same kind of oracular thing. I had never...I came from the Bay Area and the poetry scene out there to me was a continuation, a lot of the poetry that happened there, they even called it the language poets. It was the stuff that, to me, it was all up here and it didn't—

MG: Robert Graves and the Berkeley renaissance—

JW: Yeah and I liked the confessional poets. From Roethke to Wright to Lowell to Plath, that was my area of interest. When I would attend readings there in the Bay Area they were almost lifeless. By the way, I really enjoyed your final performance poem last night. That was very well done. But that was part of the reason I was so blown away by Ed, because to sit down and have this very large figure, and he was in pretty good shape then, come up to the podium and just start... it's like that commercial of the sound sonic wave (laughter)

MG: Your hair blowing back (laughter).

JW: Yeah! And my first thought was, instantly I thought, "Is this guy for real?!"

8 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MG: (Deep booming voice) "The old man in the hospital bed with his thorny foot stuck between..." (laughs)

JW: (laughs) Boy I...that was a first for me. I'm trying to remember how it happened. I'm sure it happened right there, because there were people signing up...I was there to represent the Copper Village Art Museum and Center or something like that. So I just went up and the first name I wrote down was Ed Lahey and then...there were a couple...oh, Lowell Jaeger. That's where I met Lowell. And there's one other I can't remember right now. But Ed was very different away from the podium. Very interesting and all that. But I just thought, "I don't know how to tell you this, but you're amazing. That was really powerful." I think following that, it wasn't that long afterwards, that Roger Dunsmore and Ed came to the Copper Village and did that reading that I still consider the best I've ever heard, and deeply regretted there was no tape recorder there for it.

MG: It's a shame that there aren't more tape recordings of him in the height of his power. In the height of his power he was shiver me timbers, kind of.

JW: Yeah. I came to Missoula, it was in the early '90s. And he gave a reading and I brought a tape recorder that malfunctioned. It was recorded but it was as if the tape was sloppy and it would jump and it would skip and you could hear a little. I was really disappointed in that. I don't remember the exact—

MG: Location?

JW: Yeah I think it was in the art museum, the one downtown?

MG: The old Carnegie museum, the old Carnegie library they turned into the art museum.

JW: Yeah I'm sure that's where it was. I think Sheryl Noethe read with him that night. By the way, I came across the tidbit in one of the letters last week. He was bemoaning the fact he was alone for the holidays, but he said, "I do have the good fortune of keeping good company with a lovely young poet, Sheryl Noethe." And then there was another artist, writer, who he had a brief affair with. Very talented writer, I'm trying to remember...I think she lived in Missoula. They would go down to Lolo Hot Springs together. It was pretty lively when they were together. I can't remember her name but she was a very skilled writer. She wrote mostly short stories and some...Susan Barnes, there it is! Susan Barnes. He was very smitten with her. I think because of all the women he was intimate with, she more than any of them could match, and she was right there with him. I think they even co-wrote some things, and experimented with exchanging lines and things like that. I think what happened she had an ex who returned and that ended. Susan Barnes, yeah.

Ed was definitely...I told him one time I had worked in a cannery out in Oakland, California and I worked the graveyard shift with this black man. Actually it was not, it was the mornings, seven

9 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. to three shift. And I worked with this black guy, at that time I was in my early twenties and he was in his mid-thirties, and I told Ed this story. There were mornings where you could tell he came in and had been out all night. You could smell it, everything. The reason I'm telling this story is because Ed loved this line that the guy told me one day, and it stuck in my mind, I've tried for years to make a blues song out of it. He said, "I loves the women, I loves them, but they's killing me." (Laughter) Ed howled at that one, he thought, he said, "Boy, I know." That was, if the word romantic applies to Ed, it certainly applies that way. In a way it was one of his biggest sources of difficulty as well.

MG: I don't know if you're aware, it's something I discovered, I wasn't aware. I talked to Hal Waldrup, he informed me that that's why. Do you know exactly why Ed decided...I mean obviously his mother had passed away, he had her place and he sold it, he bought a house, he got married, then that marriage dissolved and he was in Butte...Do you remember why he left Butte and went to Missoula? And Hal told me, he said yeah he had to he pretty much he got into trouble by sort of harassing women. Kind of like the supermarket story...

JW: That's a new one for me. I hadn't heard that.

MG: Yeah I didn't know if you'd heard that. Yeah, he'd been down that road before...

JW: Hmm...There was a woman there, an artist, I don't think she did much writing, once again I can't remember her name. But he was quite taken with her. She lived up on one the upper floors of the building there in Butte. She was a painter and I think she was involved with dance and maybe some other things. This one's not going to pop into my head I don't think. She could well have been one of those women who didn't take kindly to Ed.

MG: His insistence (chuckles).

JW: I think part of that move to Missoula always did interest me because I went back to Butte several times with Ed and James Dorr Johnson and we'd get together with some of those other people. Ed seemed to still have good connections there. And he gave several readings there that I went to. I never really did understand the Missoula...

MG: Why he left. And Hal kind of shed some light on that. It's a shame that...Did you hear about James Dorr Johnson?

JW: No.

MG: Yeah he passed away.

JW: Oh I didn't know that.

10 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. MG: Yeah rather suddenly and unexpectedly. It was an embolism. He'd been to China with his wife. They'd had a long flight and then a long drive and it just happened. So we lost a great source there for information on Ed. Especially in the '80s and '90s in Butte. But everything that James Dorr Johnson had he contributed to the archive in Butte. So there's also an archive in Butte.

JW: Oh, I didn't know that. For what I have, I think the Missoula is much more appropriate because so much of our relationship was centered there. The other longer term...I was surprised last night to find out that there is another novel. I vaguely remember there being something else that Ed was working on. I saw a manuscript copyThe ofThin Air Gang as it progressed but I don't remember ever seeing the other one. I can't even put a date on it, when he would've been working on that.

MG: I don't either, but Rick DeMarinis, you know Rick has moved out to Washington now so I've had some contact with him via like e-mail and mail. I talked to him asking him if he'd be willing to do something over the phone or what not. He said he would probably write something. "I'm much better at that, give me a chance to think." He's still writing of course so I'm sure that one of these days I'm going to receive this big, rather lengthy sort of memoir, recollections, of his relationship with Ed. So some of that could be cleared up. Because he would know those things.

JW: Right, right...and one of the things I did earlier this morning kind of out of curiosity, but also to be a little better prepared for this conversation. I went back through, I don't have everything on my hard drive, but I went back through writings that go back to 1989 and started searching for Ed and excerpting stuff and I found a number of poems in progress. One of them that we actually discussed in the correspondence a lot was something I was working on entitled, "Gospel in a Pill" and it had to do with...Ed and I had lengthy discussions about depression and I think that's part of what I was moving away from. Especially when I met Kristin and my life had such a positive sense of direction. I think a lot of our relation, Ed and mine, was a kindred spirit in depression.

MG: The dark doors—

JW: The dark, yeah....So this Gospel Pill thing I came across was interesting because it was triggered by a book calledThe Good News about Depression, and that was a book about this new medication. I don't even remember what the medication was but that was in the early to mid '90s. So we would exchange these tidbits back in forth. Reading the stuff today, I didn't like it, it made me feel really uneasy to return, because of what I writing then, to return to that. I stayed with it but it really did make me aware that my life, especially life there in Rumsey, was very reclusive, very introverted. And Ed and that was the best there was. I really looked forward to those journeys to go and visit with him.

MG: At the same time he fed that.

11 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. JW: Oh yeah.

MG: I had the similar sort of connection with him. I have an affinity for the darkness and of course he fed that.

JW: It was definitely uncomfortable for me to see that.

MG: Want to take a break here for a second?

JW: Or we can wind it up if you think you're good with it.

MG: If you think you're good, we've covered a lot of ground.

JW: I'm very good with it. Yeah, I'm surprised Kristin's back!

MG: Well I'll end it. We're done with this thing. Thank you, Jack!

JW: Thank you, Mark.

[End of Interview]

12 Jack Waller Interview, OH 438-005, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.