Poets Amiri Baraka and Edward Dorn shared a commitment to radical forms of poetry and culture. Baraka wrote largely in response to the Civil Rights movement, calling for a non-racist and socialist society. Dorn was a champion for the poor, most famous for his epic poem Gunslinger. At the time of this letter’s writing, the two were just beginning to publish their work. Dorn had accepted a part-time teaching position at Idaho State University in Pocatello. Baraka, despite his recent success with the press, was not doing so well. He wrote the letter below from New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, where he was being treated for hepatitis. He had contracted the disease after sustaining a minor addiction to heroine.
Tues May 8 (?) [May 9,1963]
Ed,
I guess you know by now the horseshit that has virtually plowed me (& us) under. It’s a stupidity past any I thot myself capable of. Oh well! Shit & eat shit!
But hepatitis. The ass sucker’s sickness. That is the limit! Dirty needle, for sure. And the hott is that I had stopped fucking around w/ that shit for about 2 months before it happened! Bitter fruit.
Anyway, it means, most practically, 3-5 wks in bed. 3 in this wild hospital. A city hospital of which no genre more hopeless exists! All the horseshit & indolence of any “charity” institution. The sloth & terrifying poverty. Old men scream here all night. I had forgotten. But I’m here, they say, for at least 3 wks. And after that, a […] clean cut […] wearing resident sez, “You drink too much, sir. I’m telling you for your own good.” Me, who’s practically a teetotaler. But I plan, after I get out of here, to get to some specialist & see just how much my drinking will be or can be curtailed.
Otherwise, of course, my family is humming & confused. & the kids, now suddenly ain’t got no old man! What kind of dumb shit is this now. I’m really a stupid shithead. This is one of the dumbest things I think I’ve ever done.
Anyway, we see what the hospital holds in store. There’s about 20 other cats on my ward. Old men. 30 years of P.R. [Puerto Rican] & Negro cats. White men tend to be old & nuts. The all night screamers. Poor old city white men. Where have these cats been all their lives? In what hopeless furnished room or whatever. A poor Negro or Puerto Rican is one thing. Their culture is reactive, is to a large extent formed, because of the need to exist & grow in such conditions. But the old white poor person is terribly shabby & unnerving.
There’s an old cat next to me who moans night and day about his death, in the most unpleasant, sentimental terms. & I’m sure he’s right.
I’m still very sick. can’t eat much. Very jaundiced—eyes and skin. Can’t move around too fast. But I’ll beat this shit in for now. Meanwhile, let me know how the real America is. But maybe W.D. will have to get a new correspondent? We’ll see how I feel…I’ll try to let you know.
All love
Roi
From Amiri Baraka & Edward Dorn: The Collected Letters. Edited by Claudia Moreno Pisano. University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque. 2013.
FURTHER READING
In 1963, Edward Dorn read one of his more noteworthy poems “On the Debt My Mother Owed Sears Roebuck” at The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
Listen to a joint reading by Edward Dorn and Amiri Baraka.
In response to a request by Edward Dorn for reading suggestions, Charles Olson, an influencer of both Dorn and Baraka, delivered A Bibliography on America for Ed Dorn at Black Mountain College in 1955. Here is a list of the references he makes.