july 6, 1929

Dear Williams,

on the reverse side of this is a form which i wish you would
fill out and rush back to meat once. I am sending a page like
this to each editor of BLUES and the sum of their remarks will be
published as a single page in BLUES No. 6. the agreed part
obviously means what we believe BLUES to have accomplished
in any way (influence, emancipation, significance and whatnot).
Take into consideration the Expatriate Number which is a
KNOCKOUT (it will contain app. 44 pages). The resolved part
will be a manifesto and a promise for the future.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, M. D.

9 RIDGE ROAD
RUTHERFORD, N. J.

Sept. 12, 1929

Dear Ford :

Have no illusions about the american public
relative to its interest in bound volumes of experimental
literature, its interest is nil. Differentiations of
personality, individualistic expressions are taboo. We
require mass action and group drawings.

This said, there could be nothing more to the
point than such a bound volume of BLUES as you have in
mind. Go to it. It won't sell for a lick. It is
downright compulsory for you to go ahead with it.

I have just returned from a vacation to find your
letter awaiting me. I want to get this note off at once
but the details of your plan must wait for an opinion
from me for another few days. I'll do the introduction
as you request.

As to publisher: Send your script to Mavis McIntosh, 112 W. 42 St., N.Y. She is my agent. I think she will give you the best advice obtainable and in addition she may take the whole work of marketing the collection off your hands. At any rate, give her a try.

Yes, a short foreword by you would be necessary.
If you object to employing an agent, say so and I'll
take a shot at your "ideal letter" to a possible
publisher.

Yours
William

9 RIDGE ROAD

RUTHERFORD, N. J.

Nov. 12, 1929

Dear Forde :

That's better - a swell cover. Yes, and under the
economic pressure we all suffer, a quarterly is inescapable,
forced on us, therefore a better face to the facts, and so
better all around.

Blues is after all you. You must bear its yourself
and make it go, no help to that though help you must have.

There are four or five new quarterlies and what
not. Some good some ( probably ) bad. Each will be at its
best a person, as I see it. Yours is the most unhindered of
all - so far, most alert for the new - but not sure yet. If
ever it will be.

But I like this issue. I like the English letter.
I like the French scene. And the thing about the ferryman is
clever as hell.

Rexroth is one of my favorites though I like his
present effort less than some others. His letter in the back
of the number is well written. He has something, that boy.

And he is quite right in jumping me for my lack of
lucidity and my statements which do not help. But all that
means nothing to me at all but this - How can I do better?
Time is lacking. The only reason I propound what I do, these
bits of statements is in recognition of the fact that they
should be done better and more fully. Let someone else be
lucid. I'd welcome it. Most are just dum, say nothing, make
no attempt to surmount the difficulties of a skeleton
statement, they just leave their rags about.

I'd like someday to complete what I have to say, to
articulate up the bones of my plea.

But BLUES is coming on. Good, keep it up.

Yours

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

Nov. 20, 1930

My dear Ford :

The enclosed letter will explain itself ( if you can read it ). It has to do with a periodical, published in Paris, called BIFUR . It tells in particular that Parker Tyler's poem which he sent me some months ago has been translated into French by Jolas and will appear in the next number .

After that the magazine will change from a literary vehicle to an economico-political one. Worse luck. I am resigning from the staff of "correspondents". Not that that means a damned thing.

I'll be in to see you before you leave for the blues country, I may be able to make it tomorrow ( Friday ) but I'm not sure. Anyhow you may count on my coming in soon.

Yes, I liked this last number of BLUES. It gave me a thrill. Then I saw my own contribution and I wasn't so cocky about that. It had # good direction to start with but the "footwork" was poor. I enjoyed the two Dutchmen at their game but they weren't so hot either when it came right down to it. I'd like to answer them both at once in one good sized paragraph. I think it could be done. They aren't half so far apart as their argument might seem to indicate.

I suppose you know that "LUES" is another name for syphilis. ( He, the cover lettering ).

I like Zukorsky's work more and more. He has a sense not "for the work" not "le mot juste" but for words. They have, the words, edges and facets as he uses them. That's good. The same for Parker Tyler.

Lazo's drawings are excellent. I like them as well as anything I've seen since Juan Gris passed out of the picture - much to my everlasting regret. That man was my perfect artist. He embodied all the personal faults with which I am so familiar in myself. I felt a deep grief at his passing - yet I never knew him personally.

WILLIAM

Sept. 6, 1935

Dear Ford:

We've had a severe storm of six days duration, a sodden, leaden sky from which rain has dribbled and poured without cease. During those days I read your Life of a Child - and with pleasure. The recollections seem to have that universality about them which surprises: Did other people go through that too? It waked very old thoughts in me that I had forgotten were there. And the end is really brilliant, an amazing jerking up of the attention to a splendid climax. A book to put down on the true side of the ledger as against the more merchantable lies which are always better worth a publisher's while (I'm afraid!) since the world likes best to read about itself and they are all liars.

It makes me think of that classic among boys in my day, a book called, Only a Boy. There was another called, Only a Girl. They were forbidden fruit and I don't think I ever had one of them in my hand for more than a few minutes. They had a place. They were a crude attempt to piece out the little knowledge we had about ourselves as best we were able - and in spite of our parents. I speak of this since the sex life is so preponderant in a child and so thwarted and bent that it often never gets straight thereafter. You have touched it with fair emphasis I think though most readers who forget what they did with their right hands that very morning will be shocked. Or perhaps not, I don't know. Anyhow, they'll have to protect their young from you.

Thanks for the opportunity of seeing the book and best luck to you in getting it published. I'll surely see you this fall when you are here.

9 Ridge Rd.
Rutherford, N.J.

Jan. 3, 1936

Dear Ford:

I'm damned sorry to appear to be so difficult to reach. It's just that I lead a very crowded existence to wrench free from which requires a sort of mental acrobatics which has become difficult for me. My days get settled for me weeks in advance sometimes - to say nothing of last minute calls. And even were I to go, at times, I feel cheap, ridiculous, not to be able to give myself freely by the hour or the day or the week to whatever lead might turn up. It seems always to have been so - or else I've nearly killed myself trying to do the impossible. Therefore I remain and must remain more or less of a work machine - appreciative of others, wishing to see them and know them - giving a bad impression to those who wish to see me in that light : foolishness, just to say I don't see how I can get in on Sunday - and if I did what the hell - but if I can I will though it is unlikely that I can do it : da capo. I'd like to talk to you again and to see Tchelitchev whose drawings I have admired.

Yes, I received your first communication but in the wild scramble of the past weeks it got away from me unanswered. Please forgive me.

9 Ridge Rd.
Rutherford, N.J.

DR. W. C. WILLIAMS
9 RIDGE ROAD
RUTHERFORD, N. J.

March 22, 1937

Dear Ford:

I'm headin' in the general direction
of your poem and a reply to you. It hasn't been
possible, so far, for me to give attention to
either. Too damned much work. As soon as April
cuts down the amount of illness I'll get going
again.

It has been pure chance that I have not
seen you before this. Each time you have asked
me to come in to the city to read my poems I have
planned to do so but something always came up to
prevent it.

I'll read the poem when I can find the
time to sit down to it at ease, sometime in the
next two weeks, and give you my opinion of it
as best I can able.

March 25, 1937

Dear Ford:

Your poem is a good corrective for me; that's a bad beginning, it sounds medicinal. Thinking structurally or poems for a number of years it is good for me to have someone put work before me for what it says. The thing holds together because of its argument - curiously enough, because of its sanity. By the title and the end of it I take it that with revolution accepted the artist has round in it what Beaudelaire round in evil. It is a legitimate defense of the poet and his art. It runs away into all sorts of youthful dreams which I have almost forgotten. I enjoy the poem which threatens me with its questions relative to fear. But we are talking of the poem, not of me.

Toward the beginning of the poem I have made a suggestion or two as to technique. Of no particular importance; just my old obsessions coming up again: compression, tautology, omission of the unnecessary word - out, cut, cut - explain nothing.

Rhyme is a very dangerous mode, it tends to twist the sense and to make for trite forms both of thought and of line. I dislike rhyme and find it an obstruction to my enjoyment. But you use it with due caution, near rhymes, hidden rhymes, consonances, etc. There is a nice feeling for sounds -

But the problem of what we are to do with ourselves, which is the poem's real foundation, remains unsolved. Omit fear. Very well, but for what? For closer human relationships? They stink. Perhaps they should stink. We never get by the stinks if we are airless. I know that. But the physical barriers to a life in any part of the world that I can imagine are to me insurmountable. We are all too thin skinned, too necessitous in our living, we can't get away, we can't hurt others, we are hounded up one street and down another - while we are still young enough to enjoy. And we can't enjoy. We long to die. We nearly all long to have it end. We don't know what to hope for, what to want. We are convinced we shall never get it, not even leisure to die in.

So your poem, a tribute, has its important beauty which I feel. But it is a sad beauty. It is a desperate beauty, the beauty you see in Tchelitchew. I've only seen one small think of Tchelitchew, a drawing of a running girl with a big hind foot - I can see that you have caught him well in this poem. I wish you the best - or what? I don't even know what to wish anyone any more.

Yours

March 31, 1937

Dear Ford:

All right, later in April I'll be in on an afternoon
to be arranged later, a Tuesday, a Friday or even a Saturday -
if I may. No, my intuition about Tchelitchew wasn't so
remarkable for your poem, after all, gave me the background.
I'd like to see more of his work and intended to do so when it
was at the Julien Levy Gallery. I'll be glad to see his new
compositions.

Djuna Barnes has never been a real person for me. She
is a contradiction masquerading as an individual. I don't get
her at all, neither flesh and blood nor spirit. And she is of
that intolerant, dogmatic nature which believes in solutions of
things. Just rubber from which I bounce quite willingly. If
I knew her better I might like her - but I'm afraid we have
nothing much to offer each other. I have read nothing of hers
for years.

These last poems of yours seem very sad to me in the
full emotional sense - the disassociation between sense and
image is disturbing. Perhaps that is what you are seeking. But
what you are not seeking is a certain slowness of line. This
usually calls for rhyme and you have gone to rhyme - not
always to good effect. This sounds like some damned PhD instructor
in English at Yaprinctarvard - except that they would probably
approve.

I haven't a fault to find, though, with The Passionate
Shepherd, nor would I change a word or it. It's the best I've
seen or yours. The two squarish ones are the ones I can't see.
The Undersea one is all right until you hit the rhymes "reason"
and "season" - from there on it falls completely apart. In the
Fox one I can't for the life of me get by #the#little red fox"
and the "little red rose" diminutives the#pops and bings. They
don't mean nothin' to me - You seem to be riding a ### soap
bubble made from soap from the 5 and 10. No thanks. But the
errect is, I insist, sadness, dissociation - they depress me
without convincing me. I don't like that.

The Prodigy is better again. Here you have had to feel
your lines again. They live once more.

WILLIAM C. WILLIAMS M. D.

Nov. 14, 1937

Dear Ford:

Mrs. Williams and I got in to see the
show Friday afternoon it only for a few minutes.
There was no time to tell anyone we were coming.
I talked with Julien Levy about the pictures."
They are delightful to the eye, the same color
interest that I saw in the large composition
last spring, being at the same time portraits
in the plain sense of the word - portraying and
revealing the individual. No tricks other than
those of brush, color and surface. The head of
a man in the center of the west wall, just the
head, seemed particularly effective. The Sitwell
portrait is, of course, I believe, the most
important piece in the exhibit.

It's been impossible for me to even so
much as look at the work you have sent me. I read
the single poem and though it started with great
force but lost itself a little toward the end. I
may be wrong. It had an emotional quality and
this became dissipated, lost among things. There
needs to be a simple line in there somewhere.

More another time,

22

Nov. 30, 1937

Dear Ford:

The Confession is on its way back to you under separate cover. I didn't want to let it go without a reasonably careful reading and that has been precisely what I couldn't do under the circumstances. Finally I got going and finished it last night.

It's a kind of detective story to me with the emotions as villain. The appeal, that is, concerns the mind primarily though the sensibilities are the characters. It reminds me somewhat of the surrealistic novel of Soupault which I translated several years ago.

What the hell is one to do with such subjects matter? It is a relief not to have it treated as Dickens might have treated it. At least we do have minds, of a sort, and they do have a function to save us from getting the world on our chests. But I seem not to find the catharsis which would be for me the chief virtue of such a book. Without such catharsis much of the talk seems no more than the ticking of a clock. I get the intellectual stimulation but I am not moved.

Maybe another character, a so called "normal" person working from the outside " with good intentions" and sprawling into the fragile and complex "mess" of the situation might give the relief you need ending in a heightening of the effect at the end. I think it a mistake to end on the mere physical fact of the revelation of the freak without telling what the defect is. It is a good bit like cheating the reader who has expected it from the first. A "moral" crash with the normal person blundering in like Fortinbras at the end of Hamlet would be better.

And, at the beginning, in the convent school the boy teaches the younger boys to masturbate. He seemed normal enough then. Did the other boys notice anything?

Best luck. The book is a little monotonous, it needs relief, I think.

K novel-M.S. Confession of a Break

23

January 24, 1938

Dear Ford:

The value of your poem is for me that of the excellent technical use of the words of it. I don't know what in hell it's all about but that quality of clean, acute sounding words is always a satisfaction. It makes common things fresh, I should say the ordinary city sights get a fresh value when the words are used properly.

I've been reading something of Paul Eluard's recently, a book of poems the name of which I've forgotten and can't go into the next room to look up. He uses words well, gets his effects very simply " prise dans la vide d'une place". It's all that comes to mind. The French get away with much cheap stuff because of the gratuitous benericences of the language. What I'm driving at is that the plain use of simple words that give a lovely effect of color because of their beautiful use - is worth a great deal. English and even American seems crude beside the best French. You seem to me to recapture some of the nuances of words in what you do. It's a point that can be overemphasized.

No, I didn't mean that the personality should be dual. I mean that he should have a normal, so called, "friend" or counterpart for direct contrast. I merely sensed a flatness to the story. My suggestion was haphazzard. No doubt it is of no value. Perhaps the duality you suggest is the right answer. I think the length of the account would preclude its inclusion in New Directions. Why not send it to Laughlin?

I saw the Julius Cesar and enjoyed it. Haven't been to the theatre since.

Best Luck

March 30, 1938

Dear Ford:

Looks good to me. More power to you. But not my auto-
biography just yet. That will have to be a monastic, brooding,
gay sort of lonely thing that cannot be hurried - cannot even
be put on the spot but will have to come about in the manner
of the seasons. I don't feel up to it at present. There's too
much to do before that.

To me the title VIEW is much better than the other two###
less dynamic, more passive but it **should** be a "view", the work
contained therein being left to supply the drive.

I'll have some prose of one sort or another for you by
fall or sooner; whenever you want it. Let's hope you get started
before a war engulfs us all again. The times are too like those
of 1913 to suit me. At that time it looked as if we were really
building up to a period of major empression. They did not let
it occur. As then there are too many now who do not want the
artist to speak as only he can. They'll slaughter the world
before they'll let a Lorca live. Be sure to have something on
Lorca in your first issue. He is very important to me.

And Eluard. When you are in Paris if you can pick up a
book or #two of Eluard's work lying around not too expensive -
I don't know which to choose - sent it to me collect.

Congratulations on the new venture. I saw Virgil Thompson
at your suggestion and had a profitable talk with him.

Dec. 11, 1938

Dear Ford:

I'm all right. Thanks. How are you? I'm sorry about Tchelitcheff. Tyler was telling me something of his troubles last Sunday. The Connecticut air should help him.

Yes, the books arrived from 4 Chemins. I'm sorry not to have acknowledged them sooner - and I've enjoyed reading at them. That's all I've been able to do so far since my French is getting werry, werry hazy these days. But every once in a while a brilliant passage comes through to me in all its glory. Eluard is very uneven - or if you prefer, perfectly even - doesn't shy from anything but goes right on through at a somewhat plodding gait turning up what comes. Once in a while he comes! so to speak. A fine poet when he does. Very French. Perhaps french. We don't have the color of his action about here much, at least it doesn't show - have to have Paris for that.

Getting to New York isn't easy for me - an old story. I do get in but only occasionally. Not much chance of going your way before spring.

Yes, I am sorry to say, I AGREE, Pound needs air.

February 23, 1941

Dear Ford:

Is it really a year since I have written to you? I'm
sorry if this is so because you have been so unfalteringly
generous toward me in a manner which I deeply appreciate. It is
not possible for me to do much for my friends. Especially this
year I have found it almost impossible to get away from my daily
routine. I forget, too, that friends will not always remember
me, they have their own lives to live. If I do not write more
often and if I do not get to see those whom I think well of it is
because it is next to impossible for me to do so. Don't think
I don't regret it. I was so God damned ashamed when Tchelitchev
came up to me in the Gotham Bookmart that time and I didn't know
him. That's the penalty.

The drawing accompanying my translation of Calas' poem
was superbly appropriate and a fine thing in itself. I was taken
off my feet. Full of genius along an avenue I hadn't travelled.

I wish I had other translations of Calas' poems to send
you for VIEW. I haven't any. Calas has one - or perhaps Klaus
Mann has it after all. I'll do my best to translate one or two
others just as soon as I am able but I'm not able now. The day
won't be long enough and my mind is worse than a garbage can - not
even a chicken leg to suggest an authentic shape in it. I have
desires and I work a little here and there - a play, a start here
or there - but *nothing* really going. Not a sign of a poem any-
where. Nothing but things that can be done no longer.

You asked me if I had read the Surrealist section of
New Directions: hardly a word of it. That's just an example of the
way I have to live. I looked, made a stab here and there and put
the volume aside until a later date. It is disgraceful but it is
the truth at least. I want to see your sister and I hope she'll
still remember me when the baby comes - poor kid, I wish her luck.
Tell her I'm for her - if that means anything!

Sincerely yours

July 18, 1944

Dear Ford :

Been away for three week's rest, it
was paradisical ( I borrow your word which you
used re. Teletchew's new period - I'll be eager
to see his show this fall and I mean eager. His
magnificence grows in the mind as time passes.)

I thank your mother for remembering
me. I remember her pussy cat in VIEW with
pleasure. Was it a cat? I think so.

The poems by the two colored were
startlingly good, you emphasized correctly the
first by the use of the larger faced type. The
directness, the unaffected use of rhyme kills
all kinds of second rate work in fine editions
for me. Will he be able to keep that unaffected-
ness and go on developing? I wonder. Well, it is
what it is, excellent. I take off my hat.

The translation by Roditi shows both
good and bad in R. The first incident is excellent
(the boy and the rodent) the second is tiresome.
couldn't finish reading it, it bored me.

Started a "letter" for you a month or so
ago but dropped it for one reason or another.
I read it over last evening ( my first since
arriving home ) but couldn't do more than look
at it to decide that there is something there
just barely worth rescuing . As soon as I get a
moment to myself again I'll rework it and send
on the script. Maybe something else will come up
before then.

If you enjoy your summer as I did my three
weeks at the shore you'll come back with enough
clarity in the eye and force in the brain to
drive through all the approaching blizzards for
the next year to come - if any of us survives.

Cummington Press is bringing out my book of
poems The Wedge in August sometime D.V. Yes, I
hope J.L. does yours as promised.

Nice of Miller to have noticed my words.

Sincerely

DR. W. C. WILLIAMS

June 21

Dear Tyler :

This looks to me as though it would be
or make an excellent cover for VIEW - by
Priscilla Hoagland, age 7; a comer, believe me.
She has style and invention to an unusual
degree.

Please return the sketch or drawing or
invention if you do not want it. Postage
enclosed.

Best luck and greetings.

Best
regards
P. Meehan
take
on this

W. C. WILLIAMS, M. D.

Sunday

Dear ford :

Good luck to you in N.Y. 's the most
I can say tonight . Jus' goo' luck . I've
got the rigor mortis blues , and how is
the city treating you ?

But keep me on your list. I want to
see BLUES, I wanna see it bad. That's
good. Myea, myea.

Gosh I feel tired. But I wanted to
say thanks for you're note. Except that
that's all there is in me tonight. Not
even gin. Not even apple. But later on
when I'm less a snowman.

See you some day. There's lots of
good guys around N.Y. so I hear.

Glad you came north.

Yours