REMEMBERING WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

A lifetime of memories, a lifetime of writing, a lifetime of publishing (since 1936) - what to do, how to say it, what is the organic form? If you are James Laughlin, founder and publisher of New Directions, poet and friend of poets, you adapt the narrative metric of one friend (Kenneth Rexoth) to tell the very personal stories of your other friends with verve, compassion, and a shrewd eye to the emotional truth of complex relationships. You call the whole memoir Byways, parts of which have begun to appear in literary journals. But one part stands alone in your affections. The section Remembering William Carlos Williams grows of its own accord and captures a relationship so perfectly that you decide to do it up as a little book and share it with a few friends who, like the late James Merrill, are enchanted.