Imaginary Letters (1928)

It was Scott who first alerted me to Mary Butts.

"You don't know who Mary Butts is? Mary Butts was a disciple of Aleister Crowley. She worked with him on his Magick (Book 4)."

A couple days ago I was in Paper Hound decompressing after a visit to the triage that is MacLeod's. To the Poetry section, which, at least for me, always has something unattainable. Ah, what's this -- a mint condition copy of Mary Butts's Imaginary Letters (1928), re-published by Talonbooks in 1979, with an Afterword by Robin Blaser. (And yes, drawings by Cocteau!)

I had bookstores on my list of to-do's that day, so I took public transit. There is nothing I like more after a day downtown than to pick through a book on the trip back home.

Here is the opening of the first of Butts's letters:

Chère Madame,

I do not know what you think about being a mother; it's an odd department of one's existence, but I suspect that you love your son. And you are more than naturally cut off from the very little a mother can know. And I expect your curiosity has not weakened. While mine has been gratified, so that without knowing enough, I may even know too much.