Men of Letters, and: In Crow Country

Men of Letters

Tell Patrick for statistics sake Mr. Stevens is 6 feet 2 weighs 225 lbs. and that when he hits the ground it is highly spectaculous.

—E. Hemingway in a letter to Sara Murphy, 1936

Stevens and Hemingway fought in the street.It was Key West, low elevation and alligators.Childish perhaps, but I like the story: too muchto drink, some hurtful words, followed byfists—a contact petty and human.

My mind makes a primal struggle of it,a great symbolic bout: Poetry vs. Prose.Knowledge of physics favored the novelist,who knocked the poet down a time or two.Yet Stevens broke his hand on Papa's jaw.

Afterward, feeling undignified, they made amends,constructed a fiction to fit the facts:officially, Stevens fell down a flight of stairs.Tell me, reader, if you know, what compassion is.In a mind of winter, I am dreaming of lions.

In Crow Country

So it went round. I asked Capt. what was best,and he said, "Send one or two for water, the reststay here. And if you have needle and thread,fetch it and sew up the wounds around my head." He was bleeding freely. I got a pair of scissorsand cut his hair. Upon examination, I saw the bearin its capacious mouth had taken nearall his head. And with grave looks from the othersI saw the skull laid bare to near the crown,noting a white streak where the fangs had passed.One ear was torn from his head and hung down;I stitched the other wounds and left it for last.

Under the captain's direction I had donemy best but thought his ear past mending.I told him so. "Oh, you must try to stitch it someway or other," said he. So I, then, bendingto the tattered ear, took up my needle again,stitching it through and through and over and over,and laid the lacerated parts together,without semblance, as nice as I could with my hands.