13 December 1991 was a bad day for me: Annie Stanton called a with the news that Diane Walker had died of a sudden heart attack two weeks previously. Annie and Diane and I had been particularly close while in Dr. Boston’s independent studies group.) My Christmas card to Annie had mentioned Diane which made her immediately call me. I think Diane was about sixty. In any event, she died a lot too young. She was the first close friend of mine I’d lost.
On Sunday, 15 December 1991 Diane was still much on my mind but a good (and sympathetic) visit from Mike Kettner provided some relief. He arrived late, mainly due to my having forgotten that Midway Blvd, one of the two streets my house is on, is shut down at both ends by construction. He was here for two and a half hours, though (causing me to miss most of the Giants’ game that I’d planned to watch, which was fortunate, as they were again lousy). Lots of anecdotes, about such things as the phone-sex business he was involved with for a while, about his turning pacifist during the Vietnam War as a green beret (the subject of a novel he’s trying to peddle) and later hiding out in Canada, his onetime heroin addiction, his meeting jwcurry who is a marijauna junkie (as is–less so, he says–Mike), the literary scene in Seattle, his job as civil service parking lot attendant at the University of Washington in Seattle and his troubles with his boss. I did a bit of talking, too, about my less interesting life.
A few days later I heard from Jeff, continuing a philosophical discussion we’ve been having, as well as telling me the piece on my work will be in the second issue of his new magazine–and a short review of Of Manywhere-at-Once in a later issue. He also said nice things about my Apollo poem.
Tuesday 24 December 1991 I put a copy of my book in a package and sent it in for review to the American Book Review. Nothing came of that, probably because, like most such publications they didn’t then review self-published work.
A week or so later, I sent a copy of Of Manywhere-at-Once to Laurel Speer a fellow columnist for in hopes she’d comment on it privately, and possibly in her column as well. I was sure she would, for she’d written many columns about her struggle as a writer. She did write back briefly about it but said it wasn’t the sort of thing she wrote about in her column or something to that effect. Oh, well, she wasn’t too bad a poet and writer, but not what I’d call minimally adventurous in either poetry or prose.
Next another vain attempt to get a little publicity, and maybe more, this time from William Dickey, via what I think was a good, amusing short letter in a padded envelope with my Of Manywhere-at-Once. I had thought several times of sending him the book, in its previous form, mainly due to what I considered its similarity in several ways to his Self-Interviews and Sorties, and because, what the Hell, he might turn out to be a decent sort. Anyway, I chose now to send him the book purely on impulse. Doing it made me feel good, but by mid-morning the day I mailed it went dead on me, I don’t know why.