Ingmar Bergman’s Old Weiner

Cuttings from Duke Miller’s Epic Poem “Ingmar Bergman’s Old Weiner”

Dear Jan, of course, I agree to be your developmental editor and as such I have a few preliminary comments on the text you sent via the white sheets of bay fog that moved through the city last year

Please take my critique with an open mind and not as a knife pushing gently into your heart like some stranger in the kitchen deciding what to do

On page 222 I am wondering if a pride of lions would actually “stalk” neighborhood kittens

Would lions even bother to stalk creatures so small

You might consider changing stalk to “play”, we would still have dead kittens on our hands, but their bodies would be in the context of giant paws crushing them in some sort of mindless lion game

I think you know what I mean

As to page 81, I hesitate about you grinding photos of old friends in your Osterizer and as you note there is a small plate on the motor that reads “oblivion”

Are you aware the Osterizer line of mixers is under financial pressure from a wide variety of substitute blenders

The Ninja, for example, might be a more millennial-friendly reference and help in our book sales

As to you setting fire to all of your old clothes in the front yard while yelling at the neighbors … bravo

I think this is a beautiful image that might be the highlight of what I have read so far

Pictures of your old slips and house shoes leaping up in flames to sunburn your freedom is excellent

Keeping on the homeruns

The image of frozen ice cream stuffed into the pockets of priests really made my day and the fact that you carried the stream into a hospital run by gay married couples was, in a word, brilliant, the priests lying on the bed of nails, ringing endlessly to the nurse’s station and the only thing the reader can hear is the low voices of depression and anxiety like a prayer lacking the funds to travel

Finally, I found a group of typos that I’m not going to tell you about, since typos are for line editors and I find that if I point out the little errors, the big ones hide from me like becoming engrossed with picking my nose while the Sasquatch takes his family to a movie right there on the shores of Lake Hopeless up in the Yukon where Jack London first saw White Fang and Buck eating frozen elk with that brother and sister inside, naked, clutching each other for a final moment before they died, but did they die, I can’t remember … anyway, I’ll send more comments just as soon as the weather changes and I can find some silent mist or dark storm clouds to send your way … keep up the good work … Duke and Missa Him, Down Here In Old Mexico