Quite a number of these things are very recent, not as
recent as that plant from Mexico,
that's pressed against the window, over
there at the firies and snuffies, but recent.
I think about it, partly, because I'm
modulating from something very recent, a game and a brother,
to something that's old.
And I want to identify-- this time,
I want to identify an editor.
His name was Richard Ashman.
I guess maybe I'm speaking mostly
to you young writers here.
They don't make editors like that anymore.
Richard Ashman-- he ran The New Orleans Poetry Journal,
and from way out--
I was up in Oregon, and I heard about this place.
I sent off some poems, like by airmail, when there was
airmail, and it was different.
Here came a check so fast.
I didn't see how he had time to read my poems, right back,
and he was like that.
He was very generous, and he would
send back these checks by return mail and put out this magazine.
I have old copies of The New Orleans Poetry Journal
that's got all sorts of people we hear about now,
and I guess I never have gone around to ask them,
were you as poor as I was when Richard Ashman used
to send those checks?
I mean people-- as I remember, people
like Galway Kinnell and James Wright,
you know that generation.
It seemed like almost everybody.
I should check around here to see
if there's anyone old enough to hoist the glass as I
do to Richard Ashman.