VS

reading the epistolary correspondences of Charles Olson and Edward Dahlberg republished in Sulfur #1 (1981) is like listening to two mud slinging beef/battle rapper's at the top of their game...it's entertaining but unnerving...it's so fucking gossipy and mean and "oh damn, he didn't just say THAT..."...your momma jokes, fat jokes, who's your daddy jokes, racist jibes and innuendo...i can't put it down.

i've been the DJ to many rap battles in my day, most notably the raucous battle between M.O.S. (Misfits Of Style) and Top Ramen (LORDS/ Earthlings) where TOPR was very drunk and the guys from M.O.S. were very sober and TOPR kept bringing it to that level of "dude, what the fuck did you just say...not cool" to the point where i had to stop the record and tell him to cool off...M.O.S. were about to beat the hell of him and maybe deservedly so...lot's of punch lines about race (TOPR is white M.O.S. are black) and hygene...anyway, while reading Dahlberg's side of the correspondence i kept wanting to "stop the record" so to speak...all "Eddy, are you SURE you want to send that...i mean, just put the letter in a drawer for a week and let it marinate...and then if you still want to send it, then go ahead..." it's just that entertaining, yay.

thank you George Albon for selling your collection of Sulfur's back in the early 2000's to Green Apple Books and thank you mom and dad for paying my way through college so that i had enough chedder as a BA to basically buy the entire early run of Sulfur magazine when i randomly stumbled upon them that auspicious Wednesday in the Inner Richmond...

a taste? yes, yes a taste me thinks...

Dahlberg to Olson 4/25/47

"Dear Charles:-

I know the fable about Euripides and the dogs that tore him to pieces for his impiety. But what sacrilege have I committed against you? Did I say it, or did it not come out of your mouth, "I have betrayed two persons, my Father and Edward Dahlberg." Yor revile me as a base merchant. Have you shown gluttony for praise or reputation. Do I whore after people who can help me? Am I the consort of the merchants of Toledo, Carl Van Doren and Van Wyck Brooks?...Your book [Call Me Ishmael] written under the dominion of my identity, is the proof of that....Now, for the matter of paying some irreverence to your mother. You are again unjust: the one time I was your guest, I got the water and you the wine out of the Cana Pots. I am not a gross feeder, and what food is put before me does not matter, provided my host has the same frugal fare. You happen to be a rank eater, and if Plato and Socrates and the fable of Euripides and the dogs could not teach you that it is base to give your guest dingy food while you on the opposite him and eat large chines of beef, then your belly and your unflagging appetite should have given you such breeding and wisdom...

and then here's where Dahlberg goes for the throat, "oh damn!" moment...

"You will pardon this penultimate piece [o]f human malice: May God make Charles Olson a failure, may his Call Me Ishmael go as unsold and as unread as Thoreau and Herman Melville. Should this happen, maybe then some day in some chasm where Dante casts those caitiffs, like Edward Dahlberg who was for himself and not for Charles Olson, we can talk about grossness and shame and the dogs that tore Euripides to pieces"

—reprinted in Sulfur 1 (1981)

DAMN! and MOTED! and and and...