>> From the Library of Congress in Washington DC. >> TODD HARVEY: Hi. I'm Todd Harvey. I'm a curator at the American Folklife Center. I work with the Alan Lomax Collection and I've pulled a couple of materials here that relate to Woody Guthrie. The first is a long letter that he wrote to Alan, about 1952. He was holed up in Stetson Kennedy's trailer south from Jacksonville Florida which he called Beluthahatchee Klanny Swamp. Beluthahatchee is what Stetson Kennedy called it and Woody, I guess, just added that Klanny Swamp. >> JUAN FELIPE HERRERA: Sounds pretty good. >> TH: Sounds pretty good. He asks him for money down at the end which I think he usually does and made a real point of insulting Alan about how rich he was - wasn't really true. What's interesting about this in fact is that he typed it on back of a book jacket. I don't know if you know that book, do you? >> JFH: No, I don't. The 42nd Parallel. >> TH: It's John Dos Passos. I guess he was short of typing material. He burned all the rest in his furnace or whatever. This one is even more interesting. "This is to serve notice on all you Lomaxes, every one of you that Arlo had been born," Arlo Guthrie, on the 10th of July, 1947. >> JFH: On the tenth of Julio, 1947-o, Brooklyn, New Yorki-o. [laughter] >> TH: I think you'll enjoy Woody's play with words, especially this sentence here, "I'd like to see every wiggler in this humanely race come out painless and go up painless ad come down painless." >> JFH: Come down painless. He said it all in just one phrase - in one riff, to come out painless, go up painless, and come back painless. Given all of the intensity of his writing and how he capitalizes at the end fully and how he throws paint, a lot of fire in him. Don't you think? >> TH: I do. And playfulness. You read the next one. He says, "its great to be born when the water gates are wide open and you don't wang your noggin. >> JFH: That's right. [laughs] I just love the language. You don't wang your noggin and who are you? Right here. >> TH: I am here. >> JFH: I am here. With color and type and paper. So, you have fountain pen ink, you have some kind of overlay of watercolor and then you have typewriting ribbon ink. To me, it's like a work of art also. And this reminds me of the materials that have been handed out by poets in San Francisco and little cards just like this, but not as early as this and not Woody Guthrie. >> TH: We have hundreds of pages of Guthrie manuscripts. I hope that you'll take time to look at them all. >> JFH: Oh, thank you. I will. I've taken notes. I'm writing a poem somewhere in here and I've always loved folk music and folk songs. Thank you so much. I look forward to this. >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.