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greatest.”
    â€œSee you tomorrow night, Hank?”
    â€œSure, Baldy.”
    â€œHow about Confucius?”
    â€œThat’s good. He was right in there, all right. . . .”
    â€œJust another spot, my dear boy,” the scrubwoman said.
    â€œAll right, Helen.”
    â€œYou know you have the most lovely hands, like a violinist.”
    â€œIt’s nothing. It’s really nothing at all.”
    â€œYou been to college, haven’t you?”
    â€œYes, but college can never make a man intelligent. It can only educate him.”
    â€œDo you write stories and poetry and stuff?”
    â€œWell, yes.”
    â€œYa had anything printed?”
    â€œNot yet, Helen. I’m still developing, you see.”
    â€œDevelop’ng?”
    â€œYeah. You see, a writer’s got to go through a period of development.”
    â€œYa mean, ya gotta shoot down airplanes or something first?”
    â€œNot exactly. But it helps a hell of a lot.”
    â€œWill you write a story about me, sometime?”
    â€œMaybe. Maybe I will.”
    â€œYou see, I was born in Pittsburgh, PA. My father was a doctor but he drank too much and they took away his license—”
    The next morning as I turned over in bed, my freedom of movement was blocked by a very substantial mass of humanity: the scrubwoman.
    â€œGood mornin’, honey boy!”
    â€œOh . . . hello, Helen.”
    â€œYa sure had a load-on, Hanky. The minute I began tellin’ you my life story, you began pourin’ it down left and right.”
    â€œAnd then what happened?”
    â€œDon’t tell me you don’t remember , honey boy?”
    I leaped out of bed and began donning my clothing.
    â€œWhere ya goin’, honey boy?”
    â€œDown to a bar. Down to some bar somewhere.”
    â€œYa comin’ back, honey boy?”
    â€œNot for three or four days, at least.”
    I moved toward the door with some acceleration, opened it, and then—
    â€œYa know somethin’, honey boy?”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYa know who the greatest writer is?”
    â€œI said ‘Homer’ but I really haven’t given it much thought.”
    â€œ Y ou are, honey boy, and ya don’t need any more development ! I never met this Homer guy, but I know he can’t hold a candle ta YOU , honey boy!”
    I closed the door and went bar-ward to seek the solace of my ex-con friend. He could have it: Homer and Helen, Helen and Homer, and all the development it implied. With D.H. Lawrence thrown in.

Manifesto: A Call for Our Own Critics
    The insurgency of criticism from a nosography on poetics to a censorious dictum by certain university groups who write the laws of poetry, and spawn, with sumptuous grace and style, their own puppeteers —these, and their half-brethren and their purlieu, form a most deadly and snobbish poetic fixation. They create, record, and argue their own history, charmed with the largesse of their chosen circumference.
    What the university critics have lost in pulling down the blinds around their little ivy world they have gained in direction and prestige. To the remainder of us, the unwashed, the loiterers in pool halls and back alleys, there remains a frustrated and discordant yammering. In order to inculcate a more heuristic force, perhaps a manifesto, a gesture . . . a gestation . . . is necessary. It is difficult for a single poet to stand against the university coterie. Perhaps we too must invent our own history and choose our own gods if our portion of American literature is to receive a hearing on some tomorrow.
    Our writers should acquaint themselves with the claustral intent and exorcises of the campus groups—and let us be fair here: many of our imprint are not only pretty well unwashed but rather damn shoddily read as well (damn shoddily read as readers and damn shoddily read as writers). Our saving factors are our lack of