Odd Story Behind this One

I'd be hardpressed to think of a postcard which might leave one more disinclined to visit Pennsylvania than this "Greetings" card.

What is this postcard trying to say anyway?

"Come enjoy our highways of death?"

Or maybe it's bragging, "We have grass! Check it out!"

This card is clearly from the fifties, but it was sent to me in the nineties.

I was publishing a poetry magazine at that time (with my ex as co-editor) and so I talked to a great number of writers, and particularly poets.

You can't have a poetry magazine and not be contacted by Richard Kostelanetz.

Okay, I don't know if that's true today, but it was true then.

When they did a survey of all the poets publishing in America, I'm fairly certain he came in at number one, in terms of magazine appearances.

Lyn Lifshin was like number three at that time. It was hard to pick up a poetry zine in the eighties or nineties and not see Lyn and Richard.

Richard is constantly publishing, constantly expanding, and constantly networking.

Or again, I should specify that he was doing these things in the nineties. I have no idea what he's doing now, and I rarely pick up new poetry magazines so I would not know if he is still in hyper-drive in that regard.

I remember when I had to call him one time, he answered his phone with a careful "Friend or foe?"

I thought that was the best phone greeting I had ever heard, and probably completely appropriate in his case since Richard has pissed off no small number of fellow writers over the years (the very public Bernstein-Kostelanetz feud was one particularly gnarly example of that).

Mr. Kostelanetz (yes, he is a relation of Andre whose records you will find in every thrift store in America) has shown a lifelong commitment to experimental (or should we just say counter-traditional at this point in history?) writing.

I love the introduction he wrote for The Yale Gertrude Stein.

That's one of the best and most credible assessments of Stein's importance as a writer.

It's a great apologia.

Even if he had to become "the village explainer" (Stein smacking her bitch Ezra Pound up) for a few moments, it was well worth it.

Richard has written a great number of readworthy books.

If you like the "meta" in literature, then you will probably enjoy some of these a great deal. They are marked by playful conceptualist gestures--Richard came of age in the sixties so this makes sense. The sensibility is much more palatable than the sensibility I encounter today in most conceptualist writing (poetry, I mean).

Also, he has written a number of esteemed reference works on the literary avant-garde.

Richard Kostelanetz is a perfect example, where an artist who "fits" squarely into the avant-garde is largely excluded from prestige collectivizations (anthologies, readings, etc.)

I don't know if the reason for this today is "personality conflicts" but I can say with reasonable certainty that that was the reason yesterday. Or the day before yesterday. Somewhere back there.

Anyway, Richard probably thought he was doing two people a favor when he realized that one of his former interns (whom I will identify here only as "Mary") lived in Harrisburg also, and suggested that we form some sort of alliance or working relationship.

I have to admit I was a tad shocked to receive a postcard from a literary submissive.

She was pretty much volunteering to do whatever our magazine needed, which was a very nice gesture. A very nice, scary gesture. Maybe if she had been a strapping twenty-four-year-old Jewish man instead of a middleaged Jewish woman (appearance unknown) I would have taken her (erm, him) up on her (erm, his) offer.

I will also admit that this experience left me with the disquieting belief that Richard Kostelanetz has a secret army of interns, assistants, and what have you deployed all across this great nation of ours, just waiting for a single word from him to mobilize...for good...or evil.

Mary wrote this postcard to me (and my mag) on "Aug. 8th 94" and it begins (quite funnily) "Hello, I don't know who I'm writing to..."

She goes on to tell me that "I spent a few months working for Richard in '79." And that it was "time well spent."

I never met Mary, but I hope she is well and thriving.

Which is not always easy to do in Harrisburg. Or anywhere else for that matter.