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1429 Central Ave. Deerfield, Ill. 60015 Nov. 21, 1976 Dear Jack - Yes, we're still here in Deerfield...though Josh (who'll be 26 in Dec.) is now living near Portland, Oregon and Becky, who got married last Oct. (and is teaching in the same Deerifled [sic] grammer [sic] school she attended as a youngster) has an apt. in Evanston, leaving only Naomi, who'll be 18 next month, at home. . and chances are if we can manage the funds she'll be off to college someplace next year. I can appreciate what the loss of your daughter must have meant to you, and especially the suffering she went thru, and therefore what you and Gladys went thru'...cause we lost our youngest to cancer in Feb. '73, a week after her 12th birthday, after a leg amputation at the hip. You learn to live with that, but you never get over it, and the visions of her suffering still haunt.

After having two jobs shot out from under me in one year, I'm now working as a sales rep. for a manufacturer of corrugated box machinery, covering a territory from Winnipeg to Little Rock, Manitowoc to Western Nebraska...so yes, Missouri and Kansas are included. If I can make it to Moberly on one of my jaunts I'll phone in advance to determine if a visit would be comfortable for you. And thanks for the Foolkiller; I enjoyed your reminisce of Thomas Benton and Dellinger's piece on H.H. Lewis, who (would you believe!) had escaped me.

Did you know Vincent Ferrini? A different kind of poet than Bergman, he hammered at you with images out of his experiences as a factory worker--vivid, unusual, imaginative with a boldness that sometimes took your breath away--during his proletarian days. A different kind of tenderness than what I find in Bergman, who is the most poignant poet I can remember. Hard tenderness. Does that sound like a contradiction? Then how about a love poem (WINE OF THE HEART) that ends:

   "We shall be together so long
    It will seem like yesterday
    For the blood of the tenement stopped
   And ours were the hands removing the blade."

Or this one to his son, weeping at a photograph of an Italian lad, blinded and handless from the War, learning to read Braille with his tongue: (DISCOVERY) concluding like this:

    "be not bewildered
     by midnight 
     O child
     weeping among
    the weeds
    look
    hear
    the dance of his flute

    his stump is around
    your shoulders"

Anyhow, Ferrini has a base in Gloucester, where he lives, and the Univ. of Connecticut in Storrs has just published, in paperback, his selected poems with a magnificent introduction by George Butterick, his editor and friend. Ferrini and I have been friends for almost 30 years, and in a note, he asks me: "Can you give me some addresses for reviewing, magazines and newspapers? I'll send him poop on the Chicago papers and ask Studs if a review can be gotten into underlined: Chicago Guide maybe by Studs).

Is there a chance you could get a review assignment? Whether or no, his book will