Then, this fall, I was over in Italy working on a documentary film about Ezra Pound which is being produced by the New York Center for Visual History. It was a most educational experience for me, but hard work. I had never realized what a technical business film making is. But I guess you do. I found the long sitting around while they changed lights and lenses between shots very frustrating. My role in the picture is to be interviewer, narrator, and reader of poems. I did eight hours of interview with Olga Rudge, Ezra’s mistress, who is still alive in Venice, and also helped the crew to locate beauty spots in Venice which Ezra had written about in the Cantos. Happily, Venice is just as beautiful as ever, although it seems to be sinking into the mud on which it was built. On days of high tide the water was coming up over the sidewalks. And the boats couldn’t get under some of the bridges. It will probably take another year to finish the film, as we will have to go back and do other places in Italy where Ezra lived, or about which he wrote, and then go to Provence, for the troubadour towns, and probably to Paris and London as well.
I am afraid that I won’t be able to get to the big celebration for you, because I have a college lecture engagement that same date, but I will be thinking of you.
Very best, as ever,
James Laughlin
« • »
new career as lecturer: As part of JL’s treatment for bipolar disorder, his psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Wiesel, enjoined his patient: “You have so much to tell, to teach the coming generations, give of yourself.” Beginning hesitantly, JL spoke at Indiana University in the fall of 1971, launching a lecturing “career” that would last for more than two decades and include numerous college appearances, semester-long college courses (as at Brown University), and star turns at places like the New York Public Library.
documentary film about Ezra Pound: Ezra Pound: American Odyssey was a film made for the Voices & Visions Series—separate films on thirteen American poets were shown on PBS television in the late eighties. JL also participated in the film on William Carlos Williams. Both films can be viewed on the Internet under Voices & Visions.
218. TN—1
10/28/82 [New York]
To: JL
Subject: Tennessee Williams, Clothes
Here is a xerox of Tennessee’s “corrections” for Clothes. His pen markings come through a bit light on the copy but I think you can get the general idea—he has taken out anything to do with a “ghost” play. Fred and I both think that in doing so he has destroyed what is special about the play.
I also enclose a clean copy of the Dramatists Play Service edition. When Tennessee first came into the office he said he was satisfied with this version and that we could just publish our edition using it and making just the corrections necessary to put it into our play style. If we can proceed on this basis, I could get the manuscript ready very quickly and we could have the book on next spring’s list.
If we are going to do the play in the spring, we need an answer rather quickly or we won’t be able to get anything into the catalogue.
As I understand it you are going to write to TW at his Key West address.
PLF [Peggy Fox]
« • »
219. TL—2
10/31/82 [Norfolk]
DEAR TENN:
I hope this finds you well and working. I am just back from England where I was working again on the Pound documentary film in which I am the commentator. I have found this film work very interesting—we were in Italy for a month in the summer—but it is certainly different from ordinary writing. I found it easier, actually, just to talk off the cuff rather than write a script.
Thank you for sending in that very interesting poem. It came just in time. We were able to get it into the anthology just going to the printer, which will be out in about six months. I am always pleased when you write poems, and wish you would do more.
This spring, for my annual reading or lecture for the Academy of American Poets, I’ve decided to read eight or ten poems which I have published at New Directions, by different poets, and try to do a few minutes talk about each poet. Which of your poems would you suggest I read? Do let me know. And if there is any background story to go with it, something I wouldn’t know about, please give me that. Many thanks.
I’m glad that we can go ahead now with Clothes for a Summer Hotel, a wonderful play and one of my favorites, perhaps because I have always liked Fitzgerald so much, and Zelda’s book, too. Fred and Peggy asked me to look over the corrections you had marked in the DPS edition. I think many of the small corrections are excellent, they tighten it up. But I’m much troubled by your taking off “A Ghost Play” as subtitle and the deletions and changes which play down or even eliminate that important part of the structure. It just isn’t the same play if you take that out. I like the comparison with the Japanese Noh plays, where ghosts are so important. And I like what the ghost concept enables you to do with time, making past and present contemporaneous. I think this is very strong.
So I hope you will reconsider and let us know if we can keep as much as possible of the ghost concept, though, of course, using the other good small changes that you made. Forgive me if I am being professorial—I never like to fuss with your work—but it may be the influence of my new old-age career. I have now lectured, mostly on Pound and Williams, at about twenty colleges, and this fall I have Harvard, Princeton and Maine to do. Then a course at Brown in the spring. I don’t do anything very scholarly. It is more hortatory, trying to get the kids to like and read good modern poetry.
I keep busy trying to increase the principal of Rose’s trust, the one for which Dakin and I are trustees. By moving around in money market instruments, all safe ones of course, I think I have nearly doubled the value in ten years. So that is in order.
Very best, as ever,
[James Laughlin]
« • »
very interesting poem: “The Color of a House” was the first contribution in ND 46 (1983). The volume was dedicated: In Memoriam / TENNESSEE WILLIAMS / 1911–1983. JL’s poem in response to TW’s death, “Tennessee,” was published in the following annual, ND 47 (1983); the first line of the poem, which follows from the title, read “called death the sudden subway and now he has taken that train.”
220. TL—1
January 26, 1983 [New York]
Dear Mr. Williams:
I am enclosing the galleys for Clothes for a Summer Hotel, and I have marked my queries in the usual way. If you remember, you gave Fred Martin a marked copy of the Dramatists Play Service version of the play in which you had made some cuts—these we have restored in the main (per J. Laughlin’s letter and your discussion with Fred), but Mr. Laughlin did like some of the minor changes and most of my queries concern these and the wording that you prefer in certain cases where changes had been made. Other than those few questions, the galleys look very clean.
I have taped a copy of the “Author’s Note” at the head of the galleys. If you have time to expand upon this, I think it would be helpful to the reader (just a paragraph or two), but if you don’t we will use the original “Author’s Note” as is. (I remember Mr. Laughlin saying that your technique in this play reminded him of Noh dramas.)
Is there any dedication for this play?
It’s too bad that you won’t be in town for the tribute dinner for Mr. Laughlin at the National Arts Club on February 25. If you have time to do a letter that can be read at the festivities, I know it will be most appreciated.
If you would just give either me or Fred a call when you have finished the galleys, we will immediately dispatch someone to pick them up.
After working on Clothes, I am very much looking forward to a really good production that can capture the intensity and pathos of Scott and Zelda’s relationship.
I certainly hope you have a productive and enjoyable stay in Europe.
All best wishes,
Peggy L. Fox
« • »
tribute dinner [ . . . ] at the National Arts Club: The Na
tional Arts Club is a private club in Gramercy Park, New York City, founded in 1898 to “stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts.” It regularly honors those it feels have contributed to the artistic education of the American people, and it hosted a dinner in honor of James Laughlin and his contributions to literature on February 25, 1983. When JL found out on the morning of the 25th that Tennessee had been found dead in the early hours of that day, he closeted himself in his office at ND and composed the poem “Tennessee,” which he read at the dinner that night, turning an occasion to honor him into an impromptu memorial for his friend of forty years.
221. ALS—1
[received February 4, 1983] [New York]
DEAR PEGGY,
Only serious mistake in galley was a bit of confusion at end of Scott-Hemingway scene—I trust my pen correction is clear.
Love & thanks, TW
« • »
222. TLS—1
[received February 4, 1983] [New York]
[to be read at the National Arts Club Award ceremony in honor of James Laughlin, February 25, 1983]
It was James Laughlin in the beginning and it remains James Laughlin now, with never a disruption or moment of misunderstanding in a friendship and professional relationship that has now lasted for forty years or more.
By nature I was meant more for the quieter and purer world of poetry than for the theatre into which necessity drew me.
And now as a time for reckoning seems near, I know that it is the poetry that distinguishes the writing when it is distinguished, that of the plays and of the stories, yes, that is what I had primarily to offer you.
I am in no position to assess the value of this offering but I do trust that James Laughlin is able to view it without regret.
If he can, I cannot imagine a more rewarding accolade.
Tennessee Williams
January, 1983
« • »
February 25, 1983: The morning of February 25, 1983, TW was found dead in his bedroom at the Hotel Elysée in New York City. The cause of death, initially attributed to “asphyxia caused by an obstruction in the opening of his larynx” from choking on the cap of a medicine bottle, was reported in the press and was repeated in articles and biographies for decades. However, six months after his initial report, Dr. Eliot M. Gross, the city’s chief medical examiner, corrected the cause of death in his report, indicating that a toxic level of the barbiturate Seconal (secobarbital sodium) in the playwright’s blood had brought about his death. Following a 1985 exposé in the New York Times, an acknowledgment of Gross’s malfeasance was published in Unnatural Death: Confessions of a Medical Examiner (Random House, 1989) by forensic pathologist Michael Baden.
to be read at the National Arts Club . . . : JL typed the following sentence at the top of TW’s tribute to him that he then copied and shared with friends: “The last message that I had from Tennessee, which touched me more than I can say, was what he wrote to be read at the awards dinner of the National Arts Club in New York.”
Selected Bibliography
JAMES LAUGHLIN
The River. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1938.
Some Natural Things. New York: New Directions, 1945.
Skiing East and West. New York: Hastings House, 1946.
Report on a Visit to Germany (American Zone). New York: New Directions, 1948.
A Small Book of Poems. Milan: New Directions, 1948.
The Wild Anemone & Other Poems. New York: New Directions, 1957.
Confidential Report and Other Poems. London: Gaberbocchus Press, 1959.
The Pig. Mt. Horeb, WI: Th Prshbl Prss, 1970.
In Another Country. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1978.
The Deconstructed Man. Iowa City, IA: Windhover Press, 1985.
Stolen and Contaminated Poems. Isla Vista, CA: Turkey Press, 1985.
House of Light. New York: Grenfell Press, 1986. (with Vanessa Jackson)
Selected Poems, 1935–1985. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.
The Master of Those Who Know: Pound the Teacher. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986.
Tabellae. New York: Grenfell Press, 1986.
The Owl of Minerva. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1987.
Pound as Wuz: Essays and Lectures on Ezra Pound. St. Paul, MN: Graywolf Press, 1987. Collemata. Lunenburg, VT: Stinehour Press, 1988.
This Is My Blood. Covelo, CA: Yolla Bolly Press, 1989.
The Bird of Endless Time. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1989.
Random Essays. Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1989.
Random Stories. Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1990.
Angelica: Fragment from an Autobiography. New York: Grenfell Press, 1992.
The Man in the Wall. Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1993.
Collected Poems. Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1994.
The Country Road. Cambridge, MA: Zoland Books, 1995.
The Empty Space: Twelve Poems. Ellsworth, ME: Backwoods Broadsides, 1995.
Heart Island and Other Epigrams. Isla Vista, CA: Turkey Press, 1995.
The Music of Ideas. Waldron Island, WA: Brooding Heron Press, 1995.
Remembering William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1995.
The Secret Words: Poems. Coffeyville, KS: Zauberberg Press, 1995.
The Lost Fragments. Dublin: Dedalus Press, 1997.
The Love Poems of James Laughlin. New York: New Directions, 1997.
The Secret Room. New York: New Directions, 1997.
Poems New and Selected. New York: New Directions, 1998.
A Commonplace Book of Pentastichs. New York: New Directions, 1998.
Byways: A Memoir. New York: New Directions, 2005.
The Collected Poems of James Laughlin 1935–1997. New York: New Directions, 2014.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
For Williams titles in this section, years refer only to year of book publication and not to original productions of plays or completion of texts.
Battle of Angels. New York: New Directions, 1945.
27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays. New York: New Directions, 1945.
The Glass Menagerie. New York: Random House, 1945; New Directions, 1949.
A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New Directions, 1947.
American Blues, five short plays. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1948.
Summer and Smoke. New York: New Directions, 1948.
One Arm and Other Stories. New York: New Directions, 1948.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone. New York: New Directions, 1950.
The Rose Tattoo. New York: New Directions, 1951.
Camino Real. New York: New Directions, 1953.
Hard Candy, stories. New York: New Directions, 1954.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. New York: New Directions, 1955.
Baby Doll. New York: New Directions, 1956.
In the Winter of Cities. New York: New Directions, 1956.
Orpheus Descending. New York: New Directions, 1958.
Suddenly Last Summer. New York: New Directions, 1958.
Sweet Birth of Youth. New York: New Directions, 1959.
Period of Adjustment. New York: New Directions, 1960.
The Night of the Iguana. New York: New Directions, 1962.
The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore. New York: New Directions, 1964.
The Eccentricities of a Nightingale. New York: New Directions, 1965.
The Knight Quest, stories. New York: New Directions, 1967.
Kingdom of Earth. New York: New Directions, 1968.
Dragon Country, A Book of Plays. New York: New Directions, 1970.
Small Craft Warnings. New York: New Directions, 1972.
Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed, stories. New York: New Directions, 1974.
Memoirs. New York: Random House, 1975.
Moise and the World of Reason. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975.
The Two-Character Play. New York: New Directions, 1976.
Androgyne, Mon Amour.
New York: New Directions, 1977.
Where I Live: Selected Essays. New York: New Directions, 1978.
Vieux Carré. New York: New Directions, 1979.
A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur. New York: New Directions, 1980.
Clothes for a Summer Hotel. New York: New Directions, 1983.
Stopped Rocking and Other Screenplays. New York: New Directions, 1984.
The Collected Stories of Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions, 1985.
The Red Devil Battery Sign. New York: New Directions, 1988.
Tiger Tail. New York: New Directions, 1991.
Something Cloudy, Something Clear. New York: New Directions, 1995.
The Notebook of Trigorin. New York: New Directions, 1997.
Not About Nightingales. New York: New Directions, 1998.
Spring Storm. New York: New Directions, 1999.
The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume I. New York: New Directions, 2000.
Stairs to the Roof. New York: New Directions, 2000.
Fugitive Kind. New York: New Directions, 2001.
The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions, 2002.
Candles to the Sun. New York: New Directions, 2004.
The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Volume II. New York: New Directions, 2004.
Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays. New York: New Directions, 2005.
The Traveling Companion and Other Plays. New York: New Directions, 2008.
The Luck of Friendship Page 36