Incredible and impressively lengthy Autograph Letter Signed, “Woody,” and dated in his own hand, “10-8-46,” including 8 original sketches of a man adrift in a swirl of hearts. 8p, front and verso of 4 sheets of oversized unlined paper, 8.5” x14.” Guthrie writes from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, October 8, 1946, to Charlotte Strauss.
Penned entirely in Guthrie’s hand, this wonderful correspondence to an intimate friend, exhibits a pensive yet whimsical long poem from the folk musician. In part: “The colors up here in the Poconos make me feel like I’m sinking down and jumping up anew. The red is like paint in a bucket poured…Yes, I call them our hills already and my name’s not even on any mailbox. My name is down here at the paper…as a ‘character singer’ or a ‘literary writer…all I can say here tonight is sing on little cricket, sing on…I’ve learned not to get too scared of anything outside my own self.”
At the time he wrote this letter, Autumn of 1946, Guthrie was sharing a home in the Pocono mountains with his wife and two other families. Written to his close friend Charlotte Strauss—at once elegiac, Whitmanesque and undeniably the voice of Woody Guthrie— this piece is especially poignant in a cascade of closing poetic stanzas accompanied by his sketches of a man adrift a swirl of hearts. The folk legend writes of autumn’s vibrant colors, bright as any “on the slopes of the Montanas” or seen in the “glows of our Oklahoma sunsets” where “sky lights dance all over every leaf,” he writes “I can hear in all of the colors my own first and true song.”
Small bit of paper loss to upper left corner tip affecting some starting words, staples to left edge, and expected folds, else quite fine condition. Housed in a custom burgundy clamshell presentation box with gold embossed binding. From the estate of his intimate confidante Charlotte Strauss. An amazing document of key significance to the life and legacy of Woody Guthrie.
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