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Kapaa, Kauai November 14, 1939
Dear Buddy:
[[left margin, boxed]] written in fun [[/left margin, boxed]]
This is the third day after Armistice, and you ask me to write on the as-isness of art in the whirl of today. Don't you know better? Not that I am still in mourning for the unknown soldier, nor that the world is heavy on my shoulders, nor that art is in any way connected with November 11, nor that i yell O Mockery, or even mutter tsk tsk, but that of all the remote, insignificant topics of the day you would pick on Art. A new comet has been discovered, some rats are getting cured of [[strikethrough]]malignant [[/strikethrough]] incurable cancer, some unknown Latin prima donna is getting a contract in New Oreleans, a horse bit an automobile in Peekskill, New Yo[[strikethrough]]u[[/strikethrough]]rk, Isami Doi is having a one-man show in Gallery 13 of the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and a child in my art class learned yesterday that the ocean around is may be gray, beautifully gray. Where is art? Where art thou? You see, it makes faint sense to isolate art and ask a friend on Kauai, "Will you comment on art for my page in the Sentinel?" Who the hell [[strikethrough]] will[[/strikethrough]] would have such nerve to make such a request? Who the hell would sit him down to write on anything serious? Who etc would read the Sentinel and say How true, How true?

Don't you see what you have done to me, to art, to philosophy, to homo sapiens? Who have dared insinuate that [[strikethrough]]anything makes [[/strikethrough]] there is selection to thought, that there is order to opinions, that there is purpose to isolation. Does the world function? Does man gaze at stars, or does light chance to sparkle in the dust of the earth? Do the waters of the sea arrive at our shores, breaking, breaking, breaking? Think now, and recall An Oxford Anthology of English Poetry, Chauser to Noyes. I would include Auden in my anthologies, I would say in the preface: "Tennyson, you did a swell job; you made us believe in waves breaking. But you can't fool me. I don't believe in [[strikethrough]]rh[[/strikethrough]] statice relation. I don't believe in symbol. Your little poem cannot make me believe that the sea is sad, and that "O for the touch of a vanished had" is a haunting mood. Nothing haunts, least of all poetry." We haunt ourselves. That's all.

For poetry is an attempt to recreate time. How can it ever succeed, for there is no time! If there must be time (lest we grow afraid of the great Whatsit) let us say: Time is the mind remembering. For a tree, is there time? For the sun, is there time. Come, let us go to the sun and there contemplate greater units, beyond the [[strikethrough]]lzill[[/strikethrough]] zillion zillionth magnitude that a brave child knows. You will see, dear friend, how silly everything is. Nevertheless, we must have sense in our lives. O.K. then, let's swear by soft-boiled rice--the Japanese neighbors say it's good for a hangover. We accept soft-boiled rice; therefore, to be decent citizens, we must have time. 

I already sound like a tired[[strikethrough]]2 [[/strikethrough]]- 20th Century poet. I shall proceed, muttering damnit, damneverything, while the skating rink music beats out ineffective music for skaters who would not see their ability hampered by rhythm that some guy connected with Victor recordings recorded. We can't hold back speed; we can't impose time morality in skating, in eating, in using public places; the masses would not stand for it. And yet they do. (The skaters go round and round, making fine circles. One of them should be a poet and say, "See the circles I have etched on concrete." That explains the folly of poetry. 

[[strikethrough]]time[[/strikethrough]]Now, what is the position that art commands on the charred social land[[strikethrough]]s[[/strikethrough]]-scape? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Yes and no. Why and because. Art has never had anything to do with the social landscape, except sitting on the top of the hill and saying, "This is my domain. Long may it rot." Art came down one day during the Rennaiscance (sp?) got thoroughly fucked, and the hungry men and women of today , seeing spires and oval doors, imagine they're  having intercourse too.