William Carlos Williams

Today,  September 17th,  is the anniversary of the birth of the great American poet, and Allen’s mentor William Carlos Williams, born 1883 (140 years ago) in Rutherford, New Jersey

We draw your attention (as always) to the extraordinary trove of recordings of Williams (both lectures and readings) currently available from PennSound – here

For more on those recordings – see here

James Laughlin‘s New Directions remain Williams’ primary publisher

Invaluable is the collection (now digitalized) of Williams’ papers at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University

 

Here’s Allen (from Colin Still‘s illuminating short film, “William Carlos Williams – “No ideas but in things”) :

“The principle is mindfulness itself, of the arrangement of the verse form on the page, however you do it, with many different considerations, whether it be consideration of how does it look when you originally wrote down, how did it look in your head when you conceived the phrasing, how did it look when you spoke it, how does it sound when you break it up bu the breath, how does it sound when you break it up by idea..”

Here’s footage of Allen reading Williams;

and (audio) of Allen lecturing on Williams  here and here 

William Carlos Williams on the Allen Ginsberg Project (there’s extensive transcription of Allen’s Williams classes)

Previous William Carlos Williams birthday celebrations – here,  here, here, here (Williams’ intro to Howl), here, here, here and here