My book did well enough with my family.  My brother Bill even bought extra copies for his two daughters and his mother-in-law.  I sold a copy to Dr. Case, the foot doctor I was seeing for a bone spur in my heel, too–and he later told me he did read it.  As my visual poetry friends, just about all of them I sent copies to wrote me back about it during the summer of ‘90.  I got expecially good feedback about my sonnet from Jody Offer and Stephen-Paul Martin, revising it on the basis of what they said. Stephen-Paul also made a good point about the Canto of Pound’s that I discussed, one that I inserted into the revision of my book I soon was working on (credited to him, of course).

My local literary friends–by which I mean the dozen or so other members of the Port Charlotte Tuesday Writers’ Group, which met the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at the main local library, were supportive, too, several buying copies of it.  My number one such friend, Lee Hoffman (also my number one friend of any kind), had already helped me considerably through pre-publication versions of the book, but Nell Weidenbach, another member not only bought a copy but came to the meeting after she’d bought it with her copy, which she left with me, full of annotations.  Several were Very Sharp. She argued with some of the passages I’d put in hoping to engage the reader in just that way, which particularly pleased me.

Not what I’d call sophisticated about poetry, though, she told our group that she preferred most very traditional stuff to my later stuff, and to the work of Stevens, Pound et al!  She then recited my poem about wanting to run madly into the brush to the group, and they applauded.  Nell wanted to know why I didn’t write like that all the time.  I didn’t tell her I’d quoted the poem in my book to show the reader how far I’d advanced since it. (Although I have to confess I was fond of it).

At that meeting or another when we discussed my book, a lady named Carol who teaches writing workshops somewhere and seems quite knowledgeable and (proof of her acumen) wanted to buy a copy of my book from me, showed up for the first time..  She said when I discussed marketing of the book by appearing at writers’ clubs and the like, then expressing doubt as to my ability to carry it off, that I was “presentable,” and would come across well.  Alas, I never did appear at a such a club.  I didn’t even get my own club to organize a presentation although we’d had two such events for commercial writers (who weren’t members of the club).  I’ve never been good at pushing for things like that–if “only” on my own behalf.

Speaking of marketing myself, in July I did mail a copy of my book to the University of Pittsburgh, as well.  My hope was that they’d be interested in republishing it, Jonathan Brannen (I believe) having mentioned that they seemed interested in such material.  Three months later I got a not from somebody there claiming to have enjoyed reading it, especially the part about what I was then calling vizlature, but passing on a chance to do a reprint of it as it did not”suit the aims they (were) establishing for their series.”)  Manywhere had been sent them as a sample of what I could do, not a submission, but clearly if they were interested at all, they would have asked me to try again with a book nearer what they’re looking for.

Arond the time of the Pittsburgh rejection I got a notice about the annual Pushcart prize competition, and thought I might enter a chapter or part of a chapter from Manywhere in it.  Later I sent them the section on Geof Huth.  The inclusions in the Pushcart anthology went to the usual mediocrities–the ones in the small press, which the Pushcart people were famous for encouraging, who were doing excatly the same things mainstream writers were–not to the likes of me.

My one semi-successful attempt at publicity was getting the columnist, James Kilpatrick, to mention my coinage for “visual art,” then “vizlation,” in an early 1991 columnof his.  He didn’t mention my book, however, nor agree that the word could be useful, nor pay any attention to my one or two further letters about it.

The last name writer I wrote to about my book was James Dickey–because I liked his poetry and had read a collection of his criticism with enjoyment.  I thought he might be open to what I was up to–and considered it a good sign that his birthday was the same as mine, 2 February.  He didn’t so much as acknowledge receipt of my book, and Geof, a fellow alumnus of Vanderbilt with Dickey told me that he had once tried to get something from Dickery for an anthology of poems by poets who had gone to Vanderbilt and he had turned him down with a joke about his agent’s not letting him.  In short, a jerk.  Although, on reflection, I’m not sure how I’d react if students at Cal State, Northridge, my alma mater, asked me for a poem once I became as well-known as Dickey.  I’ve been totally ignored by CSUN since graduating. I think I’d send them a poem, though. If I didn’t, I’d explain why. I certainly wouldn’t ask for money.

One of my most quarrelsome literary friends through the mail at this time was Will Inman, a terrific Whitmanesque poet who, alas, didn’t merely dislike his friend Karl Kempton’s and my visual poetry but thought anyone involved with any kind of poetry other than his kind of free verse was an enemy of poetry.  I like people that committed to anything, and expressed admiration of his poetry, even publishing my veiw of him as a major poet, so he didn’t chuck me entirely.

In his first letter about my book, which I’d sent him, he blasted a lot of what I was trying to do, particularly my attempts to connect the discussions of various poems and poets with my sonnet.  These he called mechanical.  He didn’t like my Keats section, either, which surprised me.  I never thought anyone could consider it worse than innocuous.  But he praised my section on Roethke’s “The Shape of the Fire,” and said that if the book were like that section all the way through, it’d be his kind of book–like one I’d never heard of (by an author I’d never heard of) that he brought up.  He liked my theme and the idea of Manywhere-at-Once, though.

He had only gotten to page 85, so I was sure he’d have worse things to say.  He did, giving up entirely on the book 48 pages later–it was too “clinical and mechanical.”  Etc.  The usual anti-intellectualism of too many poets.  I should expect reactions like his, and be happy if anyone likes so much as a section or two of the book–but, of course, I want everybody to like every line of everything I write.  That couldn’t happen with a book as complex as Manywhere.

Almost all my other advanced literary friends seemed to like the book.  Doru Chirodea, for instance, even said he liked the part about my theory of aesthetic affect.  He was the only one who mentioned it.  Mike Gunderloy liked it enough to give it a complimentary capsule review in Factsheet Five in August 1990.  Crag Hill and Jonathan Brannen both gave me a thumbs up, but complained about the amount of terminology I cluttered the thing with.

John Byrum liked what I said about the writing of my sonnet but didn’t go along too much with the theorizing. Al Ackerman sent me a very funny enclosure along with compliments on my book, and John Bennett went so far as to agree with my blather about visual poetry and why his visio-textual poems probably weren’t.  I by then was 70% sure they are.

I  formally entered my book in the Pulitzer Prize Competition, having gotten instructions for doing that, and an entry blank on 16 July.  A couple of weeks earlier I had written those in charge of it to find out how to have a book considered for a prize (so I could send them Of Manywhere-at-Once).   My entering my book in the competition was, of course, absurd, as I noted in my diary; I had to send the Pulitzer people 4 copies of my book and $20, not to mention a biography and a photograph of myself.  I sent one of my college graduation pictures, by then eight years old but looking much more out of date than that.  I had very few pictures of myself, not believing film should be wasted on bald-headed men.

My book had, I thought, one chance in a million of winning but a chance or two in a hundred that someone would actually read it, which would be nice.  The main purposes of my wasting the money were two: to assure that when I pointed out twenty years later (now, in fact) how my work had been ignored by the Pulitzer Prize people, they wouldn’t be able to claim they couldn’t honor my book because it had not been entered in the competition; and to circulate my name at least a tiny bit.

A book (on ants, I believe) by the biologist Edward O. Wilson beat out mine, incidentally, as did–I’m sure–scores of much lesser books.  I have to admit that his book was probably worthy of the prize (and I am a big admirer of his sociobiology).  I still believe mine will one day be considered more important.  His did not open up any new territory in an important field the way I believe mine did.

In case I haven’t said, the raw material for this chapter–actually to become more than one chapter, I hope, are all my diary entries from 22 June 1990 to 2 February 1993 that have to do with my writing career.  So my present work is a kind of nostalgia trip back to my life of twenty years ago.  It’s just now starting to interest me after boring me for the first five entries.  That’s because yesterday I suddenly became caught up in the drama of my hero’s pursuit of a goal: literary recognition.  Or, vocational recognition.  Or, evidence that he is of value to the world.

Such, in my theory of psychology, is one of a human being’s innate sagaceptual drives–”sagaceptual” because the sagaceptual awareness in where one’s recognition of innate goals and a desire to pursue them is located.  It is where one experiences oneself as the heor of a saga.

One thing I hoped for–nay, believed certain of achievement–was my memoir’s causing others vicariously to experience my hero’s pursuit of his goal.   I seem to have been unrealistic about this.  Apparently, I have a much stronger sagaceptual awareness than others do.  I sometimes wonder, in fact, if others have a sagaceptual awareness, or a significant one.  I also think that many others are inflecibly sagaceptual.  Someone who is athletic, for instance, may identify with others who are striving for athletic achievement, but not for anyone striving for any other kind of achievement.  Certain athletes, or would-be athletes, may even be unable to identify with anyone else who is pursuing an athletic goal but someone in his sport!

I automatically respond to anyone pursuing any vocational goal, or any goal I can think of, for that matter.  I doubt if there are many people in the world more against the world-view of Adolph Hitler than I, yet when I read a biography of him long ago, I rooted for him to conquer the world.  This, I suppose, indicates most accurately the way I am sagaceptually: it’s not that I’m sagaceptual, others not, but that my sagaceptual drive in comparison with others of my drives is much stronger than most others sagaceptual drives are in comparison with their other drives.  Obviously, if I can root for Hitler to achieve his vocational goal, it means that I am not inhibited from doing that, as others I imagine would be, by competing drives, whatever they might be.

A drive to avoid violence?  Some kind of moral drive?  It’s complicated.  Now that I reflect on it, I do recall books I’ve read whose hero I rooted against because I didn’t like him.  Or was it because his goal wasn’t that important to me.  I do like the goal of conquering the world.  Although it’s never been a personal goal of mine–military conquering of the world, that is.  Or political conquering of it.   I would somewhat enjoy a kind of cultural conquering of the world, but would sincerely not like everyone’s accepting my outlook on existence.  I only want the majority of people to agree that it is a valuable outlook.

One of my comically unsuccessful marketing ploys was to send copies of my book to a few influential people not particularly known for an interest in poetry.  One such was Stephen Jay Gould, most of whose writing on biology I greatly enjoyed–although he was too much of an egalitarian  to believe in the neurological evolution of our species that has resulted in some people’s being innately superior mentally to others.  I got a short letter back from him 13 July thanking me for my “kind letter” (I used a few compliments on him–sincere ones!) and book, and clarifying his use of the word, “consciousness,” I having said something about his notion that consciousness had arisen due to natural selection and wanting to know exactly what he meant by the term.  (Basically, the ability to reflect on things, be “conscious” of something, rather than be that in which the external universe makes itself known which I term “the urwareness,” which precedes the cerebral ability to reflect on any part of existence and seems to me to precede what we call life.  Gould’s letter was nice but also a fairly certainly a shut-off letter, one that showed no desire for any continuation of our correspondence.

Nonetheless, I sent him one of my shadow cartoon post cards (showing a non-conformist among conformists, the former’s shadow being cast in the opposite directions of those of the latter) with a brief message on it about “consciousness.”  I didn’t want him to feel any pressure to reply to it out of mere politeness, and didn’t think he would.  He did not.  I would have liked to have been able to discuss things with someone like him, or his fellow Harvardian Howard Gardner, expecially if I’d gotten on a friendly enough basis with him to argue biology and politics, but people like that seem rarely to find their statooznikal inferiors worthy interacting with.  Gould, by the way, also interested me inasmuch as he was born, like I, in 1941.  Ditto George Will, whom I’ve also written (but do not believe I sent a copy of my book to).  I feel I have much in common with both, and am fascinatingly opposite them both in many ways.  I feel that if I’d had just a tick less creative intelligence, I would have been as “successful” as each of them.