From the fantastic, absolute must-read “Calling All Authors: A Biography in Letters, and Phone Calls” by Marc Scott:

My habit of calling authors started in 1993, but not exactly because of what Richard Howard told me. Richard passed on W.H. Auden’s idea to me, that the only thing an American had to do was list his (or her) phone number and register to vote. I learned all this after I learned that Richard made use of the phone to call up poets whose poems he liked and wanted to “buy.” He called my friend Rick, for example, two days after Rick mailed him some poems. “This is Richard Howard.” Rick had been sending poems to Richard Howard for years, but not to his apartment. Rick swore that they were returned to him unread by editorial assistants at Western Humanities Review. “Where have you been?” Richard said to Rick.

Rick urged me to send some poems to Richard. I did, and two days later I got the call. “This is Richard Howard.” I said hello. He said he wanted a poem called “Drosophila,” and that the other four poems I sent him didn’t “resist themselves enough.”

Not long after that, I saw Richard Howard at the Modern Language Association convention in New York. He was dressed in red from eyes to feet. I introduced myself. “Have you been to my apartment?” he asked. I had not; I had only read his translations of Barthes, Baudelaire, and Cioran, some of his poetry, and several of his essays and reviews. I knew of him. “You should come over.” I said I would. Before I could ask him where he lived, he said, “Call me. I’m listed.”

Richard would tell me that Howard Moss, when he was poetry editor for the New Yorker, received any number of sour, angry, and hateful phone calls. Richard had had his share, too. “But Auden said that it was the duty of an American citizen to vote and have a listed phone number.” He then told me that Auden got some sickening phone calls, one of which he received while Richard was there. The caller said, “You faggot. I’m going to cut your balls off.” Richard saw Auden’s face. Auden said, “I’m sorry, but you have the wrong number.”

If the poetry in Scott’s collection Tactile Values is anywhere near as ballsy as he is, I must read it.
Also, I must work on being less shy around famous people. There must be some support group for this; it feels like there are support groups for every last thing in the U.S.!