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Quite a number of these
things are very recent, not as

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recent as that
plant from Mexico,

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that's pressed against
the window, over

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there at the firies and
snuffies, but recent.

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I think about it,
partly, because I'm

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modulating from something very
recent, a game and a brother,

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to something that's old.

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And I want to
identify-- this time,

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I want to identify an editor.

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His name was Richard Ashman.

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I guess maybe I'm
speaking mostly

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to you young writers here.

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They don't make editors
like that anymore.

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Richard Ashman-- he ran The
New Orleans Poetry Journal,

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and from way out--

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I was up in Oregon, and
I heard about this place.

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I sent off some poems, like
by airmail, when there was

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airmail, and it was different.

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Here came a check so fast.

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I didn't see how he had time
to read my poems, right back,

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and he was like that.

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He was very generous,
and he would

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send back these checks by return
mail and put out this magazine.

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I have old copies of The
New Orleans Poetry Journal

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that's got all sorts of
people we hear about now,

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and I guess I never have
gone around to ask them,

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were you as poor as I was
when Richard Ashman used

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to send those checks?

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I mean people-- as
I remember, people

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like Galway Kinnell
and James Wright,

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you know that generation.

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It seemed like almost everybody.

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I should check
around here to see

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if there's anyone old enough
to hoist the glass as I

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do to Richard Ashman.

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