BIB_ID
184826
Accession number
MA 5758.1
Creator
Williams, Jonathan, 1929-2008, author.
Display Date
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1973 March 20-April 23.
Credit line
The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature.
Description
1 item (102 pages), unbound ; size varies + envelope
Notes
Various drafts of 35 poems, in manuscript and typescript, written every day between March 20-April 23, in honor of Bette Milder, with corrections, annotations, and notes, typed on different sizes and types of paper.
Envelope with inscription: "Jonathan Williams/Tom Meyer / Corn Close / Dentdale / Sedbergh / Yorks. / Script of 12-inch Pianist."
Typed on title sheet: "Adventures with a 12-inch pianist beyond the blue horizon / A Spring Journal for Bette Midler* / Jonathan Williams / Winston-Salem, North Carolina / March 20--April 23 / *who did not boil / my first cabbage, / but I wish / she had."
Written in pencil on title sheet: "give the piano player a drink because he's bringing me down! - Bessie Smith."
Sheet with a reproduction of Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken and his bowtie forming the words Buster Brown.
Typed in the introduction (page 3): "... Spring 1973 found me as Visiting Poet to just about every institution of the higher Learning in Winston-Sz North Carolina ... One evening in February 1973 we heard Bette Midler in Raleigh. ... I told the Divine Miss M in her tacky dressing-room after the show that we were poets. She said: 'I hope you write hot ones. I like 'em hot.' So, this run of poems is for this lady who has brought America's stale cabbage to the quick boil."
Numerous copies of autograph manuscript notes and poems in various ink interleaved throughout.
Envelope with inscription: "Jonathan Williams/Tom Meyer / Corn Close / Dentdale / Sedbergh / Yorks. / Script of 12-inch Pianist."
Typed on title sheet: "Adventures with a 12-inch pianist beyond the blue horizon / A Spring Journal for Bette Midler* / Jonathan Williams / Winston-Salem, North Carolina / March 20--April 23 / *who did not boil / my first cabbage, / but I wish / she had."
Written in pencil on title sheet: "give the piano player a drink because he's bringing me down! - Bessie Smith."
Sheet with a reproduction of Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken and his bowtie forming the words Buster Brown.
Typed in the introduction (page 3): "... Spring 1973 found me as Visiting Poet to just about every institution of the higher Learning in Winston-Sz North Carolina ... One evening in February 1973 we heard Bette Midler in Raleigh. ... I told the Divine Miss M in her tacky dressing-room after the show that we were poets. She said: 'I hope you write hot ones. I like 'em hot.' So, this run of poems is for this lady who has brought America's stale cabbage to the quick boil."
Numerous copies of autograph manuscript notes and poems in various ink interleaved throughout.
Provenance
Carter Burden.
Housed in
Black cloth drop-spine box (40 cm)
Catalog link
Department