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N. Blaine 
Archives

Answer to his cost) 10/15/75

To Donald Allen 
File
N. Blaine
210 Riverside Drive (8-A)
New York, N.Y. 10025

Dear Don,

Remember you? Of course.  And it was 1957 ...the summer of and we had fun together with Barbara.  I'm awfully pleased to have the copy of "Standing Still and Walking in New York".  The Photo on the cover is terrific of both Frank and Larry.  It is somehow wrenching to me as it is so vivid.

I began to save letters from fellow artists around 1956, before that it was haphazard.  These letters are packed away in boxes and I fear if I open the old ones at this time, I will burden myself with a huge new task of organization.  I don't think however, that there are gems from Frank among them.  In the early fifties when I saw so much of Kenneth, Frank and John A., we were so active and available to each other that there was hardly a need for correspondence.  We saw each other every week, sometimes several times a week.  There were so many parties, jazz sessions, gang movie going and so much gab.  You know.  We moved in a pack.  Jane F., Al Kresch, the Burckhardts, Edwin D. ...but for a while Jane, John, Larry, myself, Kenneth, Frank were a kind of sixsome, or so my memory dictates.  This was the period a year after the various arrivals from Harvard and until the Artists' Theatre involvements.  Al Kresch was often a part of this early association.  It was a bit later that the close attachment for Grace H. began for Frank.  Everything moved so fast and time was accelerated.  Six months seemed like two years.  Influences were sometimes two months in duration.

You ask about the book I was preparing.  That still rankles.  I never spilled to Daisy Aldan how annoyed I was by her inconsiderate and selfseeking behavior.  I had collected, at considerable labor, a large number of photographs and drawings by artists whichI admired and had the idea, fully formed, of collecting through John Ashbery-- with the collaboration of Frank and Kenneth as well - poetry by poets we mutually respected --all to be integrated into a lovely production.  Painters I had already collected: deKooning, Elaine and Dill, De Nico, Pollock, Pasilis, Albert Kresch, Leland Bell, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Dorothy Heller, W. Kahn, Karl Knaths, Motherwell, Klein, H. Jackson, Jane Freilicher, Larry Rivers, Earl Kerkam, Grace Hartigan, H. Frankenthaler, Philip Guston, Jean Follet, Fairfield Porter, (one dead artist: A. Gorky), Hyde Solomon, (pending his consent), and probably Mike Goldberg and myself.  A few others would have been added.  In the course of preparing this ambitious project, I realized that to satisfy my standards I would probably have to give up my painting for a while as it was so time consuming.  I mentioned my idea to Daisy who said: "Oh, that's a great idea, I always wanted to do something like that".. I offered her my material.  She used 14 of the drawings which I collected.  In the front she credited me only with the Joan Mitchell photo, and the cover drawing which I allowed her.  Forgive my boring you with these details but I want to set the record straight.  My ambition was to create a more beautiful book, well printed ---not the inexpensive printing job in offset which resulted in the fifth: a New Folder (1959).  Daisy was friendly and oblivious.  I was cheerfully used.  My fault for not speaking out.  Daisy had my address in Greece but did not get me a copy of the book until I was down with polio in Mt. Sinai in December, 1959. (And then I only got a paper bound copy not one the cloth ones!) My preparations began in 1957 or earlier. I still have a number of the photographs.  John had collected a number of the poems.  I can't remember if he passed any on to Daisy.  Frank was involved, it couldn't have been otherwise. Edwin Denby would have been included in my group of poets.  Polly Hanson came into [[?]] the book through me. The rest of the selections are vague at the moment, except for the obvious loves.