Description:

Guthrie Woody

Woody Guthrie Lengthy Letter Expressing His Longing to be Discharged from the Army & His Love for the Recipient of this Letter, Charlotte Strauss, Just Weeks Before His Discharge & Reunion with His Wife Marjorie



Autograph Letter Signed, "Woody", 6p, front and verso of 3 sheets of unlined paper, 8" x 10.5", December 21, 1945. To Charlotte Strauss. Single staple in upper left corner, folds and toning, else fine condition.



As Woody Guthrie faced each day on an isolated Nevada army base awaiting news of his discharge, he writes this moving letter to one of his closest correspondents during that time, Charlotte Strauss. Guthrie refers to a previous letter from her and confesses to deep anxiety about her response to the news of his recent marriage. He confesses his fear of losing touch with her, and tells her that she has made him feel a "very deep love" for her. Within weeks of this letter, Guthrie was back home and reunited with his wife Marjorie, but his correspondence with Strauss would continue.

In part, "They called us into the Orderly Room last night and told us to watch the shipping board. Said a big list of names are about to come out. Said we might be on it. Said they hoped so anyhow. They said to be sure and drop around the office nice and early in the morning. They said if our name is not on the go home list, well, it's better luck next time.All of us have walked through this office several times. We had heard all of this before, but it never sounded so sure and so hot this time. We had read long sheets of names, read them down again, had not seen the sound of our name. We had gone a little blind, and overlooked the list there a few inches away, tacked onto the same board, 'Following EM report in mass for a detail to duty' as mess hall workers, fire guards, prisoner chasers, area policers, butt can carriers, rakers and hoers, paper spearers, dust sweepers, rag slingers, mop washers, and as every earthly title and name except Home goers.
 
"You say you got 4 pages from me dated on the Tenth of December. Well by now you ought to have the 18 page one I issued to you on the 16 or 18 of December. I refer to this one, the 18 page number, as the 'Molasses Issue' because you had said that you were more or less fond of molasses, I believe you used the term, 'straight'.
 
"You did say that the joy busted through you with a kind of pain. I suppose you have just about caught my feelings here, and lots of other people. You know, it is this funny way it seems you've got to feel before your lines take on the drum beats of poems. These feelings give your words the swing and the sway, the hurt limp, the crawl and the jump. the slow walk that shows you your clearest feelings...It is because you can write from almost an equal love of pain and joy that I feel so much like answering you with any old stick I can smoke up and char, any old rhythm, any old story, or any subject. Lots of folks have fared a couple of these kinds of letters out of me before, but you, I want you to know, are one out of several thousand...it feels very nice to get letters so in love with naked poetry, so in love with naked beauty, so alive and warm, so young, in naked life. You see, Charlotte, I have always loved love..
 
"You have made me feel a very deep love for you, not as you fear, a blaze that flares up in me and then dies down low again...I did not invent love. It was here when I got here."


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