Panel text reads: [annotations in brackets]
“Charles & sex”
– CO at BM –
sort of wife to Charles, her own needs secondary to his. Betty Kaiser, [who came down from NYC to study music w/ Wolfe, and became charles’ future and legal wife, and who was] of the same slight build and gentle disposition as Connie, played the same sort of passive, self-effacing role, [all but] blotted out in Charles’ huge shadow.
[Now from a perspective of several decades later I suspect] Charles [Olson], like most men, seemed never to get beyond seeing women, as anything more than sexual creatures and creatures [created] for his comfort [and use.]. Even the women writers he respected: Sappho; Stein (Her Melanctha was the only fictional work [by a woman (female)] he recommended as worth it–and Gertrude [--who always ould rather hang out with the guys than the gals–[] entertaining the latter was Alice’s job–] always [did] bragged about her “masculine mind”); [Greek scholar] Jane Harrison [her Prolegomena to a study of Greek religion [check title] which Olson highly recommended; [anthropologist] Ruth Benedict [her paperback Patterns of Cutlure which also passed from student hand to student hand because of Charles recommendation;]; Jung’s “side-kick” (to quote his word), [folklorist + psychologist] Maria [Marie (?) Marie Louise (?)] von Franz–Charles referred to all in an amused and [yet] amazed tone as “vestal virgins,” with its implications of such [asexual] women as keepers of the sacred fires struck by men and maintained for the benefit and ease comfort of men [so that men could do men’s work–the real work–in the world beyond the hearth.]; and although they lives apart from men, they lived in service and indebtedness to them (in the [B]beginning was The Word[,] and it was a male utterance), as Benedict [did] to Boaz, von Franz to Jung, even as Stein did in a Parisian world dominated by male writers and painters, a woman who [bought and promoted artistic work of males and who,] though lesbian, did not wish to speak of artistic and intellectual [matters] to other [mere] women (leaving the “female chitchat” to Alice), because of that “male mind.” Only Sappho [prime dyke,] seemed to burn for a brief time in unadulterated [(]womanly[)] light (til her celebratory singing of and for women was extinguished, only fragments remaining from the fires of time and neglect). [ And of course nothing yet was known of the facts and fantasies of Charles + Frances Boldereff beyond the famous love letters) another woman with spirit and intelligence Charles use w a symbiotic sounding board for his own ideas and inspirations (another taproot).] [[ A woman unattached to a male was a nonperson, without protection, without support. What else were these women to do, trapped as they were in instit[ut]tional molds (including marriage) that extended far beyond the home and were (are, still) everywhere in society, where women could serve only in unequal alliance with men. ]] [DELETE]]
Charles seemed never to question [any of] this [1/24/94 my own ignorance, who is not a prodiuct of his, (or her), time and story?--and by my own questioning hampered by my need for his approval; by my own rudimentary and inchoate sense, a stirring that had no language yet, just as then too songs of celebratory queerness were a long way off (in the making)(learning) (in the learning + the making). Although he had high regard for their work, the understanding and uses he put it to served and furthered his own work, it fed his own purposes, as in “From [For] Sappho [(“...what is rhythm but her limpidity?” p. 161 O’s collected poems])] Out [Back]” and [(and A Newly Discovered ‘Homeric if she were alive)”, “Hymn to Jane Harrison.” [about “con” + Black Mtn student-wife Libby Hamilton’s pregnancy, Jan. 1953, “Common Place,” in Butterick’s Olson magazine (later in the Collected Poems) [P. 282 + 655 in notes]] [and] in the poem about [about [] Black-Mtn student] Libby Hamilton’s preg[n]ancy in Butterick’s OLSON, to cite a few examples, in a stance that, while “tipping his hat to the ladies,” still remained securely anchored [in his alliances w/men especially those males who “fed” him (fed his insatiable hunger and even tho not respected as equals (partners) were at least respected in his alliances with men.]  in masculinist perceptions and understandings. [Those males who “fed” him were acknowledged and respected partners/equals].
Charles respected the intelligence and ability of the above women very highly ([as] like he respected Mary Fitton Fiore as a student-writer, before she gave up writing after her marriage to Joe, the only woman apprentice I know of he did respect and treated as one of the “boys,” because Mary also displayed a tough and curious [questioning] mind, a questioning one but one that never appeared to question Charles’ rightful place as master. Giving up writing, she devoted her life to her marriage, [“It’s what she settled for,” Olson once says to me, annoyed (jealous?)] telling me once she believed [1950s America was everywhere, even permeating Black Mountain–] it was what a woman should do, “take care of her"

60.
– CO at BM –
that he had perhaps [had] begun to love me, [if only] a little.
A mark of this was that on occasion he [now] allowed me access to his personal library. Olson did not lend books, ever, but he would let a very few select students read a book [if it were important to their “direction,” their “path,”] from his extensive library in his study, [in the studies building] which he rarely used, preferring to work late into the night at his house [he and Connie had moved to the student-built compact modern house above Meadows inn)], where [In his home] there was more of his vast collection of books stacked in floor-to-ceiling shelves [in the living room and in his bedroom-study]. His study was one of the larger ones in the Studies Building, [the only one as far as I know that was kept locked,] the walls of which were crammed, as in his home, from floor to ceiling with volumes, many of them first editions and quite rare (many of them, too, lifted–or “appropriated”-- [by Charles] from the college library and simply never returned–a constantly sore point with Nell Rice, the librarian, who waged a losing battle to get the books back but never did; to Charles, he just had to have them, they were, as far as he was concerned, more important to him for his work than to anyone else, so why shouldn’t he heave them, at hand and ready whenever he needed them? [He was also not averse to “borrowing” books from students; a paperback selection  of writings that Mary Fiore gave me also ended up in Olson’s personal library.) [check Olson + Newer BMC catalog]
It was in his study that he let me read his copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, one of the 1,000 unexpurgated copies D.H. Lawrence had printed himself in [Florence] Italy back in the 1920s [1928].
I [I browsed through as much as I could, including getting my first introduction to the Jungin his collection in the brief time he allotted, and for however brief that period,] took it as a great honor that he permitted me into this inner sanctum and Charles subtly intimated that it was indeed an honor, and even more, that he trusted me–not only with his precious books, but also, after the “Bar[t]leby” piece, in my writing [as well].
[No ¶] (Speaking of Lawrence [Speaking of Lawrence,], hanging on the honey-colored wooden [paneled] wall just inside the front door of his [Charles’] house was an original water color [sic] by Lawrence of a nude man pissing in a bed of daffodils, [presumably D.H. himself,] that Olson had somehow gotten hold of [in some kind of trade–]–as always secretive in certain matters, he didn’t say how.)
[###]
[INSERT: PP AF “We were sitting in the car parked in front…” etc.]
A second piece of mine that impressed [The next summer,] Charles [save] was one I wrote in a class. he gave [a class] in reading the newspaper, which was a current events course, only Olsonstyle, a morning class, [which was] unusual for Charles [since he preferred the energies of the night. It was], held in the Reading Room [just inside the main entrance of the studies bldg.] where you could read a variety of newspapers and magazines [while lounging on beat-up old car seats], in the Studies Building. The central text was the Asheville Citizen [extras of which Carroll stocked in his store and],  which we had to read everyday. Charles [the acuity of his political experience in Wash. during & after the war was momentarily revived,] had us look at the ulterior movies of John Foster Dulles, Truman’s Secretary of State, [in his global hysteria of phantom commie enemies lurking everyone, and] had us scrutinize closely the language of terms like “clean bombs” and “dirty bombs,” in weighing the danger of nuclear fallout. He even arranged with Doyle and his wife to have us come to the farmhouse on several mornings to watch the McCarthy hearings
Olson at BMC
10/26/77
C at BM
Caress Crosby scene–O! Telling me abt “truck” at BMC”
“The truck” scene
7/27/92
This lands into Charles[] me ltr from RC in “the Truck” for BMR
I can’t now recall exactly but I believe Caress [sic] Crosby paid two visits to Black Mtn, at Charles invitation, somewhere between 1954 and 1955. (Check w/ Joe Fiore). [Caress Crosby, who with her husband Harry ran the Black Sun Press in Paris in the 1920s, who was an old friend of Olson’s who invited her to visit and give a talk to us students. During her visit,] Crosby had offered [to be put on as an exhibit at BM] a batch of correspondence she and her [her late] husband Harry had received from [writers such as] D. H. Lawrence, Hart Crane, [+ Crane’s + Lawrence’s friend, [?]] as well as books of theirs [and other writers’, including the Black Sun’s printing of Crane’s “The Bridge” in 1930]. The Crosby’s had published under their Black Sun imprint in Paris back in the 20’s and 30’s.  (Caress had published Olson’s [first book of promo] X+Y in 1950. (<- check date))
[Didn’t Charles tell you of publication by RC in BMR of “The Truck” at this gathering at O’s for Caress C.? I think so. Yes.]
[8/4/92 Mary Fiore and I drove into Asheville to the Citizen office in her + Joe’s Jeep station wagon, the new announcement in the paper after Hart + Crane/D.H. Larence [] explicit w slack [] (Caress Crosby Collection)].
Hart Crane was not a particular favorite of Olson’s. His poetry was simply not discussed [at length or in depth] by him [Charles] in any of [his] Charles’ writing classes, but if it was mentioned at all it was w/ an air of impatient dismissal and, [O]n occasion, when a student mentioned “The Bridge,” [in class] Charles replying[lied] w/ a sympathetic grimace and hand-waving. W/ words to the effect that “it didn’t go far enough,” that it was a ‘failed attempt,” [trapped in description (like “poor'' Keats) and the old metrics,] giving Crane respect for at least trying as hard as he did. In a viciously merry attack on Slater Brown, Crane’s fancied, as well as Lawrence’s, Olson did a little impromptu impromptu performance in class one night, [mockingly] imitating pathetic + self-pitying tears Crans was supposed to have supped over his [some of his] letters to Brown [begging Brown to publish his poems] in light of
Continuation from p. 6 1st rough draft] Sat. 10/22/77
Use in Olson piece
“RC at BM”
1
Since I plan to do at some future time a piece on my experiences w/ Olson at Mtn, I won’t go into my arduous, confused and often painful apprenticeship w/ him. A very green, sprouting and totally ignorant + innocent [naive] writer (Olson: “You don’t even know how to write English,” and in the next breath, “But I’d give a million bucks for your innocence–I wish I had it!”). Let it go for now at that, + leave I’ll leave the rest to be dealt w/ at another time.
After 2 years in Olson’s writing classes, I write my first short story–I mean my real first short story. On the top shelf of my study were three foot-high stacks of scribblings accumulated during that period which were accumulations of apprenticeship measuring the bulk of what I needed to write through, and out to get to the “the Truck.” (On the night [One night] just before my graduation in Sept. 1955, I burned all three stacks in an old rusty old-barrel trash can outside the stables–the sparks flying against the sky prettier + more exciting than any of my words–a ritualistic burning of apprentice rubbish.)
I recall also, after my first reading [at BM] (w/ Fee Dawson) Stefan Wolpe said afterwards, “He doesn't know how to lie yet,” In “The Truck” I had finally begin to achieve that ability, which was, as I was only able to formulate years later, the lie of the imagination which became the truth of reality, a part of my own reality, at least.