[ PMLA little-known documents

Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 larry eigner Introduction LARRY EIGNER (1927–96) WROTE OVER THREE THOUSAND POEMS, NOW introduction by george hart AVAILABLE IN THE FOUR- VOLUME COLLECTED POEMS OF LARRY EIGNER,

edited by Curtis Faville and . Although not as widely known as many of his fellow poets, Eigner was included in ’s seminal The New , 1945–1960. His early work appeared in Cid Cor- man’s Origin and in the Black Mountain Review, among other prominent journals that promoted postmodern poetry, and his first book, a small col- lection of poems titled From the Sustaining Air, was published by ’s Divers Press in 1953. Early advocates of his work included , , and , and he was embraced as a literary forebear by such as , Lyn He- ji nian, and , who dedicated the first anthology of language po- etry, In the American Tree, to Eigner. These associations—Black Mountain poetics and language poetry—indicate Eigner’s commitment to radical ex- perimentation with poetic form, and they place him directly in one of the significant lines of postmodern American poetry. Eigner’s adaptation of ’s projective verse has also attracted interest from the field of disability studies (Davidson; Hart; Luck). A forceps injury Eigner sustained during his birth left him with cerebral palsy, which af- fected his speech, mobility, and coordination. As a result, he typed his poems, stories, and letters on a manual typewriter (given to him as a bar mitzvah gift) with the thumb and index finger of his right hand. The combination of his projectivist poetics and his disability makes the typewriter central to his work. Eigner’s poems usually move down the page from the far left margin to the far right, creating a fluid, sinuous shape, in part because it was difficult for him to return the carriage to the left margin consistently but also because GEORGE HART , professor of English at projectivist poetics uses the page as a spatial field for composition. Most of his California State University, Long Beach, letters are densely typed and single-spaced, and Eigner often filled the mar- is the author of Inventing the Language to Tell It: Robinson Jeffers and the Biol- gins with additional comments and afterthoughts, and he sometimes inserted ogy of Consciousness (Fordham UP, 2013). poems into any blank space available. The Collected Poems of Larry Eigner He is completing a study of Larry Eig- includes a selection of facsimiles of Eigner’s typescripts so that readers may ner’s ecopoetics. see what Curtis Faville, in his appendix to the collection, calls “the text as an

© 2016 larry eigner 774 PMLA 131.3 (2016), published by the Modern Language Association of America 131.3 ] Larry Eigner 775

image of itself.” The typewriter, Faville explains, was I have personally hoped that the recently devel- documents little-known “the key ‘prosthetic’ link between Larry’s disabled oped oral pill, the first effective physiologic means body and the universe of print media, facilitating of fertility control, would be accepted by the Cath- his participation in it, while gratifying his hunger olic Church as a fully permissible method. The pill, for contact and intellectual discourse” (xxxii). a synthetic steroid, was developed by Drs. Gregory Pincus and M. C. Chang at the Worcester Founda- Although disability partially determines tion for Experimental Biology in Shrewsbury, Mas- Eigner’s compositional practice and is therefore sachusetts, before I became associated with the present in every text he created, it is not overtly clinical aspects of this investigation. (14) featured in the subject matter of his poetry. As observes, “Because Eigner him- The same year this column appeared, Rock pub- self seldom mentioned his disability during his lished The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Pro- lifetime, he poses a test case for thinking about posal to End the Battle over Birth Control. Whereas impairment when it is not represented” (xx). For Rock concentrates on Catholic doctrine and the Davidson the material condition of Eigner’s em- various positions held by clergy and theologians, bodiment produces a “poetics of disability” that situating the need for acceptable contraception in supplements the “politics of disability,” which re- the context of Catholic family life and the expand- quires representations of the experience of disabil- ing population, Eigner, instead of drawing on the ity. However, Eigner was explicit about his opinions Jewish tradition that he would have been familiar on various other political and social concerns in his with, responds ecologically, linking birth control poetry. Since he was largely housebound, he spent and population growth to hunger, waste, pollu- a lot of time listening to the radio, watching tele- tion, and animal rights. vision, and reading newspapers and magazines, The next letter, written to the editors of responding in his poems and letters to what he Harper’s in June 1963, is a remarkable document heard, watched, and read. The topics of his poems of Eigner’s ecological thinking. Responding to Carl range from weather and family life, art and music, Dreher’s article “Martyrs on the Moon?,” from the and American history and literature to specific con- March 1963 issue of Harper’s, Eigner not only com- temporary issues such as the civil rights movement ments on technology, population, and consump- and the war in Vietnam. One of his enduring con- tion but also integrates these ecological issues cerns was the environment, not only conservation with ideas about the role of the imagination and and pollution but also hunger, resource extrac- with quotations from Wordsworth, Frost, and Wil- tion, and global warming. As Benjamin Friedlander liams. Eigner reacts in particular to Dreher’s state- wrote in a note appended to a letter from Eigner ment that to Ina Forster, “His goal was always to strike the right balance—Larry’s poetics in a nutshell, and [t]he universe is man’s business. Especially the solar politics too. (His deeply felt response to the ecol- system, which is probably as far as man in the lesh ogy movement is a rarely noted key to the work.)” can ever go. Kipling’s lines, “For to admire an’ for to The four letters presented here document Eigner’s see / For to be’old this world so wide,” are outdated. deep engagement with environmental issues dur- The world is no longer wide. If he has the money a ing the 1960s, the decade that saw the birth of the man can traverse it in a matter of weeks or days, with no effort on his part and with airline steward- modern environmental movement. esses of various pigmentations, but all ravishing, The earliest letter, to the editor of the Satur- ministering to his wants all the way. But in the solar day Evening Post, responds to a column by John system, airless and impersonally hostile, with death Rock called “Speaking Out,” which appeared in the beating on the walls of the capsule every second, Post on 20 April 1963. Rock, a fertility specialist, there is still room for adventure. For the vast major- wrote as both a physician and a Catholic in support ity of us the adventure will be vicarious, but we are of the newly developed oral contraceptive pill: willing to settle for that and to pay for it. (37) 776 Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 [ PMLA

A itting summation of Eigner’s sense of ecology, as Whitman’s cry at starvation Friedlander noted, is “Better than to know is to bal- in a land of plenty ance, often enough, or be healthy, while the balanc- prison camps the mean ing does take considerable knowledge.” In giving his South letter a title, “The Cigaret Trees”—an allusion to the six ways fantasyland of the folk song “Big Rock Candy Moun- of saying it tain”—Eigner is perhaps indicating that this is more the big problem is essay or manifesto than letter to the editor.1 The letter titled “Recent Concerns” is a re- consumption and conservation and population sponse to something that James William Fulbright, a little-known documents population consumption conservation senator, wrote or said. I have been unable to locate conservation population consumption any contemporary periodical publications by Ful- bright that Eigner might have seen—but the poet population conservation consumption may have been reacting to something Fulbright or what about said during the televised congressional hearings bringing others in sponsored by the senator in February 1966. In writ- ing about the Vietnam War, Eigner offers his ideas conservation consumption population about the balance between action and contempla- consumption population conservation tion that leaders need to strike in making decisions (2: 709) about national concerns. The letter, which contains an unpublished poem, provides context for a cluster The remainder of this poem, which takes up a of works from March and April 1966 that appear in whole page in the oversize Collected Poems, is a The Collected Poems, including “CALCUTTA,” “Whit- series of unattributed quotations from Specimen man’s cry at starvation,” and “Thoreau’s 2 or 3.” Days, Whitman’s collage of fragments detailing “Recent Concerns” demonstrates Eigner’s asso- his time tending to the Civil War wounded. In this ciative, paratactic, and metonymic approach to his way Eigner integrates Whitman into his own en- poetry, letters, reading, and social concerns. For exam- vironmentalist concerns and uses Whitman’s la- ple, Eigner writes, “Whitman had this idea millions of ment over the numerous dead to inform his own men could be company rather than just ‘crowds upon commentary on population. Eigner then invokes the pavement.’ Not so Thoreau, who said: ‘Simplicity, Thoreau to counterbalance Whitman’s celebra- simplicity, simplicity! . . . let your affairs be as two or tion of the multitudinous with a celebration of three, and not a hundred or a thousand . . . and keep the minimal. About two weeks after beginning your accounts on your thumb-nail.’” The poem “CAL- “Whitman’s cry at starvation,” Eigner writes this CUTTA” appears to have been prompted by something short poem: Eigner read or heard about food shortages in India: Thoreau’s 2 or 3 . . . how much affairs but the air- pressure from birds, wow, or snow, or they food is brought in rest on the branches and weigh them down what to do with heaps of it . . . (2: 708) while cloud motion may light time (2: 711) “Whitman’s cry at starvation” begins by linking Whitman’s concern for American citizens in the The juxtaposition of Whitman and Thoreau in “Re- mass to Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and cent Concerns” provides the ground for linking the the factors that contribute to food shortages: issues addressed in the letter to “Whitman’s cry at 131.3 ] Larry Eigner 777 starvation” and “Thoreau’s 2 or 3.” Whereas Whitman pers held at the , and a search documents little-known is a metonym for multitude, population, and the po- through the publications Eigner addressed his let- tential of Americans as a mass, Thoreau stands for ters to has not located any published excerpts. The the individual, the few, and simplicity. Most impor- 18 May 1963 Saturday Evening Post did include two tant, this binary is not static: just as Eigner cannot letters responding to Rock’s column (one pro, one determine a ixed ratio between thought and action con), but neither was Eigner’s. In a letter to Denise in the letter, neither do Whitman or Thoreau provide Levertov, dated 15 October 1963, Eigner reports that singular solutions for the problems Eigner contem- he did indeed send letters to Harper’s and the Sat- plates. Even if we reduce our affairs to light and small urday Evening Post. After copying a paragraph from things, like individual birds or snowflakes, they can Dreher’s article, Eigner writes, “This has seemed still weigh down the branches. Or, even if we reduce much like poetry to me, most of the time, however the number of our concerns to as few as three—pop- it is. Fleurs des Mal in the silence of Spring, and all. ulation, conservation, consumption—the “big prob- I sent Harper’s an awful 2100-word letter art[icle] lem” is that the ways of expressing them multiply on it.. O well. In same issue was an attack on a Con- when they are combined. And thinking in terms of gressman trying to encroach on conservation. So it numbers, as Whitman does in Specimen Days when goes.” Later in the letter, he writes: he tallies the wounded he visited and assisted, does not guarantee an arrival at the meaning of collective I sent the 2 pp. seconding Dr Rock w idea Joe might send it to Dr Rock, might like to and be able to. Wife action. Quoting from the section of Specimen Days in suggested i send it to Post as article rather than a which Whitman counts the dead, “The Real War Will letter, with a photograph. I did, and wrote a letter to Never Get in the Books,” Eigner ends the poem about editor saying I recognized it was harsh and so forth, Whitman with these lines: sorta iconoclastic, but I’m not war- like way down, i recognizes it wd be harder for him to print than it how much of importance is was for me to write ahem .. still It came back with a buried in the grave reject slip and where it says the Post isnt in a posi- in eternal darkness (2: 709) tion to accept unsolicited ideas (or the word may’ve bn original) underlined in editorial red. Wow! (?)² The last letter, to the editors of Scientific Amer- ican, was prompted by an item in the magazine’s One would assume that Eigner’s digressive and column “Science and the Citizen” in its March paratactic style would have made his letters hard 1969 issue. The article, which cites Barry Com- to follow by the editors of mainstream publica- moner’s report to the American Association for tions such as Harper’s and the Saturday Evening Post. the Advancement of Science on the environmental Nonetheless, these valuable letters document Eign- damage caused by nitrogen fertilizers, concludes er’s emerging interest in contemporary environmen- that “[t]o impose limitations on the use of fertil- tal issues during one of his most productive decades. izers would be to reduce food supplies at a time of mounting worldwide needs, as well as to engender fierce opposition from farmers and the chemical industry” (“Science” 48). In his letter Eigner pro- NOTES poses a solution to this “painful dilemma” that became a central part of his environmentalism— 1. he title of Eigner’s letter comes from the song’s a national, weekly day of fasting that would save refrain: food resources and reduce the need for fertilizer. O the buzzing of the bees in the cigarette trees It is likely that Eigner sent these letters to their By the soda water fountain Near the lemonade springs where the bluebird sings intended recipients, but no acknowledgment of re- On the Big Rock Candy Mountain. ceipt from the editors has been found in Eigner’s pa- (“Big Rock Candy Mountain”) 778 Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 [ PMLA

2. “Joe” is Larry Eigner’s brother Joseph, a biochem- Faville, Curtis. “he Text as an Image of Itself.” Appen- ist, and “Wife” is Eigner’s sister-in-law, Janet. dix. Eigner, Collected Poems 4: xxvii–xxxiii. Friedlander, Benjamin. Note. “Unpublished Letter to Ina Forster.” By Larry Eigner. 11 Feb. 1987. Passages 5, WORKS CITED n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2014. Hart, George. “‘Enough Deined’: Disability, Ecopoet- “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Rise Up Singing: he Group ics, and Larry Eigner.” Contemporary Literature 51.1 Singing Songbook. Ed. Peter Blood and Annie Patter- (2010): 152–79. Print. son. Bethlehem: Sing Out!, 1992. 180. Print. Luck, Jessica Lewis. “Larry Eigner and the Phenomenol- Davidson, Michael. Concerto for the Let Hand: Disabil- ogy of Projected Verse.” Contemporary Literature 53.3 ity and the Defamiliar Body. Ann Arbor: U of Michi- (2012): 461–92. Print.

little-known documents gan P, 2008. Print. Dreher, Carl. “Martyrs on the Moon?” Harper’s Mar. Rock, John. “Speaking Out.” Saturday Evening Post 1963: 33–38. Print. 20 Apr. 1963: 10+. Print. Eigner, Larry. he Collected Poems of Larry Eigner. 4 vols. ——— . The Time Has Come: A Catholic Doctor’s Pro- Ed. Curtis Faville and Robert Grenier. Stanford: Stan- posal to End the Battle over Birth Control. New York: ford UP, 2010. Print. Knopf, 1963. Print. ———. Letter to Denise Levertov. 15 Oct. 1963. Denise Lev er- “Science and the Citizen.” Scientiic American Mar. 1969: tov Papers. Spec. Collections, Green Lib., Stanford U. TS. 46–52. Print.

Letters to the Editor, 1963–69

valid, natural or whatever. Yet mankind is quite various in some ways from person to )()( 850 words )()( person, and society to society (it’s now recog- April 25 )( - May 2nd )( 1963 nized)—it’s kind of feasible to lay down laws Originally a note beginning On reading of grammar and Aristotelian laws about what “Speaking Out” of April 20th best beits bovines, or the ant, or ape, or to )( Saturday Evening Post () . . . interpret modulate them, but perhaps impos- this by Dr John Rock sible when you get to billions of men, even the Dear Sirs cannibal. heir lives are very diferent On learning something more, recently, of At first I thought other contraceptives the population raises and of the Shrewsbury might not be called less natural or unphysi- pill it struck me that the Catholic Church ologic than what Dr. Rock has been working is being pretty hard on humans, and the with, but anyway physiologic is one level or world—notwithstanding that in most, or all, degree or course or something, biochemical ields, control and sport is as ine a thing as another which has been distinguished—ex- any, stopping at a red light is, and consider- empliied right here I think—and what abor- ably necessary, also that I like tradition inso- tion is to infanticide, and contraception to far, at least, as I believe in going slow (even abortion, so may the new drug be to older as it appears I can’t really tell when it comes contraceptives, and malnourished babies, to traveling light / how much to relect on?); and grown- ups. It would scarcely be all to the since on one hand Catholicism frowns on good, of course, for it’s true that it’s like hid- contraceptives, at the same time that hetero- ing all the light- switches behind the wall, or is the only type of sensuality it has deemed a lot of them, there is everywhere the ques- 131.3 ] Larry Eigner 779 tion of What is happiness, what is a painless healthful reasons, and when in medieval days documents little-known life; and yet in many parts of the world there a city, town came to have too many people, be might very well be an extremity of pain, and unwieldy it, also, split up, in an intentional a very small modicum of enjoying life—the way, and afterwards there was Columbus, latter, entertainment facilities and the like, on New En gland and so forth, migrations of the the decline, too. Irish. Where as yet there is little likelihood of Although, evidently, I can’t be religious one potato in the moon, or space, or anything and can’t see very final or special causes, within reason, or distance, or poi. WE CAN Onan’s action was in Biblical times a rather ASSESS, and calculate the risk. Let not man grave social crime, as for one thing you wanted be a locust, and drive out his fellows. the children to outpopulate the wolves, if not Nor, barring holocaust, inferno, disaster, the sheep—and the smaller a population the overkill, critical mass, or till then, coming more likely and of high proportion is a short- to happen in some particular detailed way age of women or, especially, men (dream of perhaps, does it look as if various smogs or the androgyne)—and clear on up through fallouts will redress the death rate (as regards the1 19th century this was an issue, in quite a the near future), in time to lower and stabilize few places. Now, hardly so, the world is really the birth rate, that is, precisely enough to stay drawn up close—and lying apart. If purposes on a plateau. Despite all the bloodshed of the are real, they do not scorn facts, and are ready ages, man has kept growing. to be changed by them, clearly and openly. But thick. when facts, and things, are very numerous (While state- wide planning of babies, purposes are, and they go very fast, and for with or without government agency, seems example it’s conceivable we might regret birth drastic, and nation-wide about as drastic as control, in some years, by a shortage of nurses, anything could be, perhaps equal to or even or physicians, or physicists during those hours more than infanticide, and hemispheric more we think about keeping the bears away (hav- so, murderous, and global accordingly.) ing still the old problem of security among —Larry Eigner peers at any rate, rest of our lives, how much Swampscott, Mass. we need, and could enjoy, and where it lies, or )( 23 Bates Road )( we think it does). * It might also be brought in that the more he fewer billion people have to or less immanent, impending waste- disposal do things the better, and this problem, in however limited area- ways at includes contraception . . . present, as well as that of food and the drain on natural and supplemented capacity of earth in general (reasonably pure water, tourism— )( 143 & 9 lines 1720 words )(‡ in callous form, quantities—the plunting of )()( he Cigaret Trees )()( )()( June 11 63 )()( souls, eyes and ears, and so on, even beasti- )( o r : cide in that to grow more plants you must al- )()( To the Editors )()( low fewer animals so—Brinksmanship!), has Although his stand against race2 )( Harp- a basic relationship to size of population. he er’s, March )( is a millimeter or more in the admirable Greeks and/or others committed right direction, Carl Dreher among others not only infanticide and abandonment but displays an infatuation with self (anthropos— also colonization too (early form of colonial- “he universe is man’s business” ! !) and the ism, they would beat, harness the natives if treasure- hunt for experience per se, sensation, any, if they could, and it suited them). For that is more and more brutal and appalling— 780 Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 [ PMLA

the ultra Picaresque, a lust for life and ad- Civil War. He cannot suiciently imagine the venture which is increasingly untempered by transactions of a thousand cities, and their gentleness or love, hence any experience at all, roofs, or even the angles of all the buses, or blind therefore, self-destroying. Kipling can the children (he should not overlook them, be taken perhaps as nicely as in his day, but he certainly) playing on the steps. Too much. Or never was a Bible, he is outdated, as to a lesser even if he succeeded just as to imagination, extent Columbus is, he traveled for adventure and there was nothing that needed repairing and other, likely more cogent reasons as well; and upkeep, there would be more than too while the journeys there are traces of in myths much, too many things would be actual,—

little-known documents resulted in beneit to the tribe, the heroes at serious, business. But a matter of degree of any rate would rather have stayed home than course. Quite true, life wouldn’t be so pleasant go abroad, so the stories say—they didn’t go if Faraday and Edison had only day-dreamed. to kill any more buffalo than necessary. If But some things, ultimately, and according to life on the airlines has reached the point of the day, should not be puffed up in and be- heavy dullness, that can only mean that the yond the imagination. he imagined and the stewardesses should go back to their villages real, the present state of things, should always and towns, and the “man with . . . money”— be held in roughly the same boat. or any man—might go back to one too, take Better than to know is to balance, of- a walk in the country, help learn how to ish ten enough, or be healthy, while the balanc- more, be moderate and see to the preservation ing does take considerable knowledge. And a of fresh air, relatively pure food and drinking chance discovery in one ield has oten made supplies, which among other things involves another fruitful, which has just been impos- keeping the human population and traic of a sible before, or rather invisible to men’s eyes, size low enough to allow other fauna to exist, but just the same “Science,” or scientists, be- which has to be not only in his stomach and ing earthbound, must stop going of in all di- eye, but his imagination too, that is, indepen- rections at once, must get into some human dently, at a distance; and for men themselves order, things have been tightened up so much to exist, have room for their own middens, in that, unfortunately, there is very little room their most congenial place. he imagination for free play, science is much less a game now- should not be snufed out by too much furni- adays (for one thing it is by now compounded ture, though it oten is. he bored airplane- with technology, and so, of the same piece, rider should be aware of the birds far below speculation, and research—any research—or him, who, for reason or not, are dying out on the lack of it, has very immediate impact on the branches. Because he traverses the earth, the physical environment) than it is very seri- he has no right to be callous of it, or lord it. ous business. (From the human point of view, Rather, he should treat it the better, and do incidentally, or rather, for survival of a greater what he can for it, as he has drawn on it. And or lesser number of people, the oldest science as long as anything dies, or is alive, how is the of the spectrum, astronomy, is the least vital, earth uninteresting? Anyway, outside of the and anyway is now practically a branch of the earth worms are far more possible than birds. next science, physics.) Science as a whole must But he is more likely to find ants anywhere be centered on the earth, and ecology for in- else in the solar system than birds, anyway. He stance should be more in men’s minds than as- should imagine the 60-foot trees and others, tronomy. Astronomy is more spectacular (not ive times daily. He should take it on himself more intricate), so this brings me to the point to imagine the dead of World War II, as they that the more men there are the more they all were living, and those of the India-Pakistan have to be spartan philosophers, or scientists, 131.3 ] Larry Eigner 781 or Shakespeares, which is impossible, and ev- and will grow progressively less so. (Social- documents little-known eryone dies in any event, though I can’t feel ism might not be able to handle such vast this is a profound observation. It would be quantities any better, to speak of, and keep nice to set up an observatory on Jupiter too, them valuable. I can’t tell what might, being and Mercury, in spite of death, yet shouldn’t anyway a man who can’t become competent we try to make thought and industry more in anything, except possibly a few outlines. flexible? How can we do more by thinking But socialism for instance—or on the whole about a big star than by thinking about the a cooperative rather than a competitive way agricultural problems of India, intensely? of reaping and constructing things,—such as A Gordon Cooper goes to church and yet the Navahoes, say, have, or had—if carried out is also encouraged to seek more or less ad- some ways or others, might, conceivably, not ditional “insight into )( man’s )( own nature” turn people into sloths or dinosaurs, while not by a literal, materialistic, so to speak, ecstasy. developing the harsher drives.) While Man is more an abstraction, less real It does in fact seem as though we had and interesting, than men. Who may speak better try to gather ourselves, that we are for the Swedes, or the Iranians? And is all going downhill with our belongings. Maybe “possible” experience an absolute good, to be we can’t even aford to give much attention had at greater and greater cost? How feverish to the chances Russia might get a maser onto is it good for a man to get? the moon,—or Venus, or Mars, if we get there “The world is too much with us” but first—or bounce an n- beam off it, for how- “Earth is the right place for love” ever indiscriminately lethal or subtle strategic Neither we nor the earth are of inexhaust- purposes; as little as we can aford one or two ible strengths, and more than that, there is not more highstake fail- safe quiz programs and enough to do all we think of doing, for there emcees followed by psychiatric lore, mesca- are always human limits and circumstances, widely various as they may be. *Nor should line exploration, etc. . A crazy world, despite we waste ourselves and be overly preoccupied the fact that I guess it always was. with certain “frontiers”. It’s stupid to waste “ Every drill what we have, what we get, then work to get driven into the earth other things, in view of human problems it’s for oil enters my side insanely dangerous. And unused industrial also ” capacity (at least insofar as it’s not engaged in “ Look at illing the roads of . . with more vehicles, turn- what passes for the new. ing out a second refrigerator for quite a few You will not ind it there but in homes) or unemployment per se is a waste no despised poems. more than national parks are. Far more peren- It is diicult nial is the human waste involved in a glut of to get the news from poems artifacts and the attempt—which causes a pre- yet men die miserably every day disposition for more—to consume them, not for lack only a waste of emotion and energy, as like- of what is found there. ” wise occurs when I read more than I can think about, but (2) an oten exponential multiplica- )( )( both quotes tion of the waste. Which is a major evidence from William that free enterprise will never be as wonder- Carlos Williams: ful as it once was, having been the scheme by “Asphodel, that which men lived and created so many things, Greeny Flower” )( )( 782 Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 [ PMLA

)( )( As, for one thing, and thinking of rich/ poor nations, I won- I’d better admit, der if Keynes cd do as well as Gemini with a in fairness, one man’s computer. Or Bertrand Russell or someone. asphodel may be Plato opted for ph-kings. Do we need ph-cits another man’s lotus, et al )( )( [citizens?] or poets? Whitman had this idea —L Eigner millions of men could be company rather Swampscott, Mass. than just “crowds upon the pavement”. Not *Manpower, technical power, so Thoreau, who said: “Simplicity, simplic- or whatever How many cities in how many ity, simplicity! . . . let your afairs be as two

little-known documents lands might someday really be able to have an or three, and not a hundred or a thousand . . . atomic power plant ? Oil burners ? Such ques- and keep your accounts on your thumb- nail . tions from being metaphysical have become In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized historical, no less. life . . . a man . . . must be a great calcula- tor indeed who succeeds. . . . Instead of . . . a hundred dishes, ive; and reduce other things L Eigner in proportion. Our life is like a German Con- )()( Recent concerns )()( Apr 16 66 )()( Senator Full- federacy, made up of petty states, . . .” bright I think basically right in saying it’s not ------Communism the U.S. has to fear but aggres- There are times for living, or let’s say sion. And it’s not too signiicant if the Chinese purposeful action according to a more or dream of Africa and/or La .. America or the less home-grown, tribe-grown or else eclectic world, or if the Russians and others are repelled code (Thoreau, Dante, Don Quixote)—and by them. here are graver matters than ideolo- times for contemplation of the world, which gies (always are in quite a number of senses— includes the self. A passage in Ginsberg’s Kad- for instance Roger Williams had it religion dish,—where ater mourning or remembering should not be enforced aboard ship), such that his mother, “gone without corsets and eyes,” the Maoists can be taken as not more insane he says, “Nameless, One Faced, Forever, be- than Hitler and without dreams of irestorm- yond me, beginningless, endless, Father in ing the earth. If Chou- En- Lai could somehow death ..” (New American Poetry, p. 198, Ever- be brought to take over from Mrs Gandhi of green)—brings to mind again degrees of the India, say, where reportedly 1,000,000 slowly personal/impersonal%, 3 projections of self, in starving people bed down in the streets of Cal- the 3 or 4 monotheistic anthropomorphic # cutta at night, and ight for places on the inad- sects: Buddhism might be as much polytheist equate public transportation system in order to as otherwise, for all I know. Ikons,.. idols (Gk get “home” (to give one example)—then China image, phantom, from idein, to see, which is wd become a different type of problem. Ca- the root word of idea also—this etymology nadian wheat would become insuicient, and being 1 indication that vision is the predomi- besides foodstufs we could export some TVA nant sense in mankind, besides the fact that systems to China as well as Vietnam and India the visual area of the cortex is the largest at (for one thing a good back-up in the event we least of the sensory areas, hand going with eye miss the moon). As things are, though, I wish (and to no other region are “impulses deliv- somewhere was some computer that could tell ered with so little delay or pass so few senti- us when and how to un- dock from Vietnam nels”, states G.A.Dorsey in Why We Behave and stop destroying crops and killing people. Like Human Beings, a bk published in 1925), Even Newport, diminished as may be, is and the tendency, even slight compulsion, to still a live town, let alone Harlem and Watts; visualize, as people heard on phone or radio, 131.3 ] Larry Eigner 783 784 Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 [ PMLA

while we’re less inclined to imagine voices of this world, but they did not particularly people seen in phone-booths or what records covet it, or wish to live long in it, or ex- seen in a store might play); and without imag- pect to improve it; what they cared for ery, Wallace Stevens thought, the center could was an idea or a good . . . expressed in not hold, which was a thesis of B Berenson it, something outside it and timeless, in too, I guess. )( All this writing, and talk )( But which the contemplative intellect might we have to live not only in the be literally absorbed. . . . Plato . . . assures us . . . the intestines are long . . . that we the past, present, future may have leisure between meals to study to live

little-known documents philosophy. Curiously enough, the very eternity perhaps enemies of inal cause sometimes catch another thought this infection and attach absolute values way of life to facts in an opposite sense and in an human interest; and you often hear in sleep, the plain thing, America that whatever is is right. . . . and and the death )( lost thus we oscillate between egotism and to come in it idolatry. . . . Without suggesting for a I say, a moving wood to moment that the proper study of man- lie quiet kind is man only—for it may be land- scape or math ..—we may safely say that present (in enough of it, which is their proper study is what lies within impossible if we’re too personal their range and is interesting to them. . . . or anyway introvert or perhaps subjectivity is not in all respects an evil; selish, egotistical or hard- up), but it is a warm purple dye. . . .” also the past and (least of all, it had And earlier: “Eloquence is a republi- better be, probably—or how fast can art, as conversation is an aristocratic does life go?) future, and diferent one. . . . In the form of oratory relection, times come together in memory, rising out of the problems of action, could all sorts of times. And it could be be tuned to guide or to sanction action, that any time is for thought, if we and sometimes could attain, in so doing, can manage it—while nostalgia a notable elevation of thought. Although and thinking in narrow circles Americans, and many other people, usu- isn’t much compared to action or ally say that thought is for the sake of ac- physical work. Or the circle might tion, it has evidently been in these high get too broad, and “the balloon of moments, when action became incandes- the mind” too big for the earth. cent in thought, that they have been most )()( In the introductory ch. to Char- truly alive, intensely most active, and al- acter and Opinion in the United States, though doing nothing, have found at last “The Moral Background,” which I’ve that their existence was worthwhile. Re- come across just ater writing this, San- lection is itself a turn, and the top turn, tayana remarks that the Hebrews pur- given to life. . . . Every animal has his fes- sued material comfort,—milk and honey, tive and ceremonious moments . . .” yes, and this is what may have led them )( )( )( Copyright Charles Scribner’s Sons )( )( )( to stress the Fatherhood of God and the )( )( Brotherhood of Man, at that—whereas )()( And Mark Twain suggested importing “Socrates and his disciples admired American Missionaries from China to bring 131.3 ] Larry Eigner 785 out the anti- lynch spirit from the people. is, as well as in memory of the starved (in Bi- documents little-known “he Chinese are universally conceded to be afra for instance) and the hungry, in connec- excellent people, honest, industrious, trust- tion with which there could well be a Drive worthy, kind- hearted and all that—leave like the March Of Dimes, on the day of the them alone, they are plenty good enough just fast, to have money saved from food budgets as they are, and besides, almost every convert go towards getting enough or ample supplies runs the risk of catching our civilization. . . to those with a low or below- par living stan- once civilized, China can never be uncivi- dard, as long as foodstuffs for example are lized again . . .” available above ground, and perhaps to rec- )( )( ompense grocers and restaurant owners, ofer % Entity, unity—functional act of mind (let alone them a subsidy. personality). A whole may be functional, as, whole ield Community and participatory democ- of view,—or concrete, actual; or abstract and more imag- racy in general of course. hat day devoted inary, extrapolated, extended, projected, as panorama, universe, a sum of parts or units. You feel yourself a part with much heart to public living. If the thing of your surroundings, sometimes more so, sometimes didn’t broaden to this it would in some little less (whichever may be a matter of impingement, which time be a routine fad instead of an earth- and of abstraction (a moving forward?) or consolidation of life- oriented religious element. experience in the mind); or you feel yourself one man One or more fast days a week, if the idea or remember you’ve been various people, by imagina- tive projection or otherwise, however it is. Moving tribes caught on, might allow a deliberate lessening inclined to monotheism, or the opposite? (King of the of crops somewhat, though how be frugal one gods, family of the gods) Divine (a . . . garish ?) forces at day and bountiful the next? Very concerned irst, apparently, then totem animals and/or goddess(es), versatility would have to become widespread, gradually, then god(s). )( Apr 27–My 2 serious and involved, with swit and accurate, # Wonder if any monotheism has ever been anything but anthropomorphic. and keen, awareness, on- going, of what activ- ities (and industries!) to diminish, and at any time, which ones to increase. No doubt there April 12 69 would, in any event, be little time for study- he Editors ing war, and a few other things. And some Scientiic American dilemmas would always get overlooked and Sirs: neglected, still. Frugal days come to think of it used to With regard to the theoretical possibil- alternate, or be relieved by (rather), plenti- ity of reducing fertilizer use and “high” agri- ful ones, which they outnumbered. Fasts and cultural yield, that seems even more remote, feasts—the two words have the same source— indeed, than the possibility of lessening mu- were closely associated. nicipal and industrial waste (SCIENCE AND Hitherto, one dilemma has always made THE CITIZEN, March—“Pollution by Fer- a fine gordian knot with another. At pres- tilizer”), but not quite inconceivable. Barry ent for instance it seems the tourist trade in Commoner’s “painful dilemma” between some parts is inhibiting the recognition of insufficient food production and pollution hunger, indecent housing and so on, as in reminds me of an idea that came to me last the past, and more money is being devoted Fall, of a Weekly Fast—to include Thanks- to soil banks than to food- stamp programs. giving in the U.S.—as a frequent reminder And it might be relatively feasible for the to ourselves of the likelihood, whatever it is Federal Government to make payments for (and crop failures have not been unknown), non-manufacture and/or non-use of chemi- of inadequate harvests, and of how great food cal fertilizers—to industry, farmers,—and at 786 Letters to the Editor, 1963–69 [ PMLA

the same time cut soil-bank programs thus marks made by overstriking an opening parenthesis on putting now fallow acres back under the plow. a closing parenthesis. Text that Eigner deletes by typing Larry Eigner an x over each letter has been omitted since it is illeg- ible; words that he crosses out with a pencil have been Swampscott, Mass. struck through by hyphens. Eigner occasionally strikes the wrong key on his typewriter, and I have silently cor- rected obvious mistakes. 1. he irst page of the letter ends here, and Eigner inserts “)( - May 2nd 1963 )(” at the top of the next page. EDITOR’S NOTES 2. Dreher’s article concerns the “space race” of the Eigner uses a variety of idiosyncratic punctuation marks 1960s, in which the USSR and the US competed to be little-known documents and abbreviations in his letters, and I have retained as the irst to land a person on the moon. Dreher supported many of these as possible in transcribing the original the attempt to reach the moon but argued against rush- typescripts. To avoid excessive keystrokes, he oten un- ing the expedition just to be irst. derlines only the irst and last letters of book titles. He 3. The percentage symbol here and the pound sign brackets text that supplements the letters’ main text with that follows are Eigner’s idiosyncratic footnote indicators.