Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson

June 11 ’05

Dear Simso—

I never did mention that poem.⁶¹ The word “stupid” at the end didn’t work for me.⁶² I tried to think of substitutes, planning to ask you if one of them might fit the translation — that is, if I found one I liked — but got nowhere. But I thank you anyhow. And no, I didn’t know it. I know nothing of that literature.

Thine—

David

61 I’d included a Robert Hass translation of Kobayashi Issa’s death poem in a previous letter to David: “A bath when you’re born, / a bath when you die, / how stupid.”

62 I happen to love that “stupid” at the end, and told him so in my next letter.