Southern California, Where The American

I Arrived In San Francisco In January 1951. After The Second World War, The Population Was So Uprooted. Soldiers Came Back Home For Brief Periods And Took Off Again. So The Population Was Very Fluid, And Suddenly It Was As If The Continent Tilted West. The Whole Population Slid West. It Took 10 Years For America To Coalesce Into A New Culture. And The New Culture Happened In San Francisco, Not New York.

The Paintings May Communicate Even Better Because People Are Lazy And They Can Look At A Painting With Less Effort Than They Can Read A Poem.

We'd Like To Just Write Nothing But Lyric Poetry. The Trouble Is, The Individual Is Going Along Intent On His Own Personal Gratifications And Love Affairs And Financial Affairs And Everything Else. But Loping Alongside Him Is This Fascist Lout Who Keeps Trying To Take Over. And If You Keep Ignoring Him, He Gets Bigger And Bigger, So Every Once In A While The Free Individual Has To Turn Away From His Private Pursuits And Give This Fascist Lout A Few Clouts, And Beat Him Down To Size.

The World Is A Beautiful Place To Be Born Into If You Don't Mind Some People Dying All The Time Or Maybe Only Starving Some Of The Time Which Isn't Half So Bad If It Isn't You.

In Plato's Republic, Poets Were Considered Subversive, A Danger To The Republic. I Kind Of Relish That Role. So I See My Present Role As A Gadfly, To Use My Soapbox To Promote My Various Ideas And Obsesions.