3 page Typed Letter, signed, with holograph corrections. 11x8½. Signed 'Buk" at close, with a larger than usual sketch of the little man and bottle.
A remarkable letter with content on a variety of subjects. He begins: Hello mother: Listen, Stevens, [envelope addressed to 'Stevenson'] it's bad form to send a xerox of your letter because the other guy knows you're saving yours for yourself and maybe saving his and then someday trying to make a book of that shit. I mean, if you're going to try to do it that way you might as well be a door to door salesman, right?" He goes on to give his opinion of other poets: "If there is any reason for writing, they write for all the wrong reasons. Many are supported by their wives, mothers, others for a while. But the mothers die, finally, and the wives run away with say, the meter readers, who at least have the decency to speak of other things beside themselves." About gays in the arts: "I know that you're kidding a lot about the homos. The arts are full of them but they have a right to go there. They do have a tendency to help each other, that's only natural, and they do tend to be sensitive to life forces because they were once outcasts." Of Charles Manson: Manson was out of his mind, I think, but he'll probably be remembered much longer than you and I." On New Orleans: "I used to live on Carondelet. Rats as big as small lap dogs....I starved there with style." About a barmaid he was in love with: "...I was in love with a barmaid 25 years older than I. Looking for mother maybe. It was her eyes though. great. I never spoke to her. Except my last night in town. I told her I was taking a bus out of town. She broke down right there and cried. I walked out. I was just a kid. I didn't have the guts of a snail. I had mis-used her heart." Of President Reagan: "Reagan? No, I don't like him. But, hell, man, I've never liked any of our presidents." Of his current writing: "I'm scrabbling now, writing dirty stories for girly mags, and I don't mind it, I like it when the walls close in and I'm forced to sit at this chopper and hack it." He closes with a poem: "the gulls of Venice beach will steal the wheels off of your car, you must understand their need but blow their brains out if you catch them."