I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Every time I have a little free time I feel I have to write a poem to you. But now that I’m writing one everything is OK, reminding me of Wassily Kandinsky who said that “If the emotional power of the artist “can overwhelm the ‘how’ “and give free scope to his feelings, “then art has started on the path “by which she will not fail “to find the ‘what’ she lost,” which is “the soul of art, “without which the body “(i.e., the ‘how’) “can never be healthy, “whether an individual or a whole people.” His style is more elated than mine, but I guess he means the same: that neither I nor my poem will feel very good unless I write how I have to write what I havd to write about. But as far as this poem goes, I guess I got it fairly easy, since writing this poem is what this poem is written about.
31 May 1975