T.L. Morrisey

Sunday, November 19, 2017

William Carlos Williams: Experiment in Autobiography

From last summer's reading: in I Wanted to Write a Poem, The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet (1958) William Carlos Williams discusses each of his many books with some additional commentary on his life. When he was sixteen or seventeen Williams had a cardiac event and during his convalescence he began to read and then write poetry. Towards the end of the book he writes: "Among the younger poets, I should like to pay tribute to Irving Layton, who seems to me the most accomplished writer of verse in Canada who has come to my attention in the past year." He also discusses his greatest work, Paterson, and complains about some negative reviews by Randall Jarrell and Marianne Moore... Poets have long memories. Do people still read Williams' fiction? Personally, it never interested me, but most fiction doesn't interest me.



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