LETTERS: Typed letter signed, to a correspondent in Mississippi, with related material.
College Park, MD. 25 September 1975. One page, quarto. Typed by a secretary, but signed in full by Porter, with two small ink corrections. Fine.
To a correspondent in Mississippi: "...your little note and collection of copies of my poetry would make my day happy if I had nothing else. It is marvelous to be called a poet when I never expected to be anything but a prose writer and I must say that none of my poet friends have ever mentioned my poetry...if Rousseau could call himself a Sunday painer, I think I have the right to call myself a Sunday poet...I had the joy that only poetry can give you whether you write it yourself or read Yeats or John Crowe Ransom or Homer or Dante...As for being good, how would any poet know?... I have had my strange consolation, reconciliation with life in writing it in my times of deep loneliness, for which I blame nothing at all and no one...." Ca. 250 words.
Accompanied by typed fair-copies of four poems by Porter ("Winter Burial," "November in Windham" and "Two Songs from Mexico"), on colored stiff card, each signed by Porter in full, the first two with added captions about places and dates of composition.
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