First Published: Alive Magazine No. 129, March 31, 1979
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Malcolm and Paul Saba
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Alive,
Probably you’re just a bunch of fascistic punks posing as leftists to attack the left, trying to blame your hateful crimes on one man, but I’ll send this anyway. My sons (actually this Newfoundland form of address is a contraction of scions, which you can look up in any bourgeois dictionary), you are in worse trouble with me than before, since you now reveal that the dastardly tissue of lies you wrote about More poems for people [see Alive 26, p. 24: book review by Alan G. Pickersgill] signed by Edward Pickersgill was a collective effort. I should have known that one man couldn’t have made up such a string of lies against a proletarian poet.
Woe on the one like me, who has been brought up in ignorance of sex, or regarding it as an “abomination”, as our Renaissance enemies say. Such a one, if a man, might regard the back hole no more loathsome than the front; a male partner no more forbidden than a woman.
The urge to continue the ways of feckless youth among those older can be terrible.
All I can say on this matter is cheer up me hearties! The legend of sexual senility is a legend. Indeed it is in old age a healthy person achieves a sensible sexual capacity and attitude. Your present torment is only for a while.
Adolescent promiscuity is absolutely healthy and socially useful, as it gives souls a fine introduction to souls, and prepares one to function in a community, being sensitive to human wants.
Puritanism, in its 19th and 20th century form, cautions against sex in awful strictures, and of course by constantly talking about it keeps it always in mind. The poor wight is thus put on a double fork, repentant for not sinning and also for sinning. I heard you scream, my sons! Did I draw blood?
You are becoming older and into the pairbond stage. Cheer up! The legend of a happy second childhood is no legend!
As to your statement of aims: the notion of an implacable aggressive Soviet Union is hardly new. Anti-Sovietism was and is one main vehicle by which anti-Canadianism is pushed. There are two countries continuously abused in the media, the Soviet Union and Canada. The people are taking note and a pro-Soviet mood is growing. I would much rather a pro-Canadian mood. We must rely on ourselves.
China is now going through a clearly reactionary phase. As I write the Chinese are retreating in haste and some disorder from Viet Nam. I much prefer the human and practical mood of Ho Chi Minh to the Messianic mood of Mao Zedong. However, I honour them both as great if sometimes flawed revolutionaries.
Make sure of all titles to collective property. The collective autopsy and latest issue of Alive is healthy. Now it can be told that I tried to push the remnants of the CLM into such a project. If the present issue is the last, even then, Alive will not have been in vain.
Look into the matter of the scurrilous article about me.
If printed, clean up the spelling. Never mind those (sics).
If I missed something in my skimming I don’t ever apologize to you who have foully slandered the people’s poet.
Yours truly.