I Wanted to Write a Poem is an engrossing book; in its verity and at the same time in having the attraction of fiction––certain fiction.

Marianne Moore

I Wanted To Write A Poem

Literature by William Carlos Williams

Subtitled “The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet,” this unique volume was the result of a series of informal conversations in the mid-1950s between Dr. Williams, his wife, and Edith Heal, then a student at Columbia University. In the relaxed atmosphere of the Williams home in Rutherford, New Jersey, the three discussed, chronologically, the poet’s works as collected on his very own library shelves. “There was an air of discovery about the whole procedure,” Miss Heal writes in her introduction, “the poet’s excited ’Why I’d forgotten this dedication,’ the unexpected appearance of reviews that had been tucked away in the pages of the books, pencilled corrections in the text, scrawled first drafts on prescription blanks.” I Wanted to Write a Poem is, then, a brief “talking” bibliography, alive with the Williamses’ memories of the circumstances in which the books were brought into being––in Miss Heal’s words, “a nostalgic review of the early twentieth-century literary world.”

Paperback(published Jun, 01 1978)

ISBN
9780811207072
Price US
14.95
Portrait of William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

One of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, William Carlos Williams is “The cornerstone of New Directions”

I Wanted to Write a Poem is an engrossing book; in its verity and at the same time in having the attraction of fiction––certain fiction.

Marianne Moore