AUGUST 28, 2020 / / 10 COMMENTS
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Excerpts from letters to Laura Sims
As promised ****here are excerpts from the postcards and letters David Markson sent me from 2003-2010:
Dear Laura / Thank you / I am pleased to have it / But the poems are so / Difficult / I will try / some more / Times / Thine / David
You think you’re a poet? Ha, get this. I’ve just received royalty statements on mine, for Jan ’05 through June ’05—I sold SEVEN COPIES! Willie Yeats is turning over in his grave. Eddie Poe weeps where he lies. Johnny Keats whimpers. SEVEN COPIES! IMMORTALITY.
Nada aqui. Old, tired, sick, broke. BUT WORKING!
Did I say that both of your contributions to my new masterpiece made the final cut?
A. Don’t do it, Rodya!
B. Catherine the Great dying in the royal W.C.
The MRI they scared the shit out of me by making me take for my brain did not show a brain tumor (they did not mention whether it showed a brain).
Is there no way to transport every central figure of the Bush administration to Guantanamo in place of 95% of the people there now? Can we ship Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, along with them?
When you come home, will you stop by and put my message on my answering machine with your energetic cheerful voice for me?
I am desperately trying to start a new book.
Greenwich Village street corner anecdote for you, circa early 1990s:
Grace Paley: David, how are you? Tell me what’s new?
DM: Hi, Grace, nothing really. Though in fact I do have a volume of poems coming out.
GP: That’s what we’d all rather do, isn’t it?
What the hell is a “young adult novel”? Don’t waste your writing time on trivia, dammit.
You turn old and pot-bellied and senile and you’re still in touch with some who a half-century ago were heartbreakingly young and beautiful.
Nada mas. My kitchen sink drips. The super fixes it. It drips anew. This comprising the major events in my existence of late.
Yes (again), thinking about a next book—but, dammit, collecting those cursed notes again—which (see your interview) I swore I’d not do! Ah, well, keeps me occupied, at least. “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
Meantime, nada here. Everything I can think of would be making me repeat myself—and I almost prefer the silence. (Actually I hate it.)
