Dear Jack,

I wanted to say I opened your letter to Lorca, but before you get upset, know that I hear you when you say the personal adventure will at best show in the lovely pattern of cracks where autobiography shatters but does not quite destroy the surface of a poem, & that this idea works on me everyday, & that I’m glad to have read your feelings about it today, quite by happenstance, as your letter was accidentally delivered to me in my house as I returned from editing this new book I’m working on. I’d love to sit around & shoot the shit with you about the displacement of self in the act of composing false autobiographies, or to be more accurate, detailing in short spans the impromptu desires of the many selves that occupy us, & their myriad ambitions & personalities, false histories & created narratives, but you’re dead, & what survives requires my visiting on irregular occasion, which makes it more my fault, so I’ll try to keep some of your lines memorized & in my body in such a way that they grow in me as a conversation I’m having with myself, & this will build something, I’m sure of it. In any case, apologies for the intrusion, though I’m fairly certain Lorca wasn’t getting that message anyhow.

Cheers,
Joe