The correspondence between James Laughlin and William Carlos Williams began late in 1933 at the instigation of their mutual friend, Ezra Pound. At the age of nineteen, Laughlin had met Pound in Rapallo, Italy, where he spent several months on a leave of absence from Harvard at Pound’s "Ezuversity,” a sort of informal seminar conducted by the poet. 

Rose’s and my wedding at the Campidoglio in 1953. The dour man to my left is the Mayor of Rome. Like the captain of a ship, he has the power invested in him to marry.

East Germany has never lacked for gifted poets; its problem has been holding on to them. In the aftermath of Wolf Biermann ’s expatriation in the mid-70s, bankrupt cultural politics caused even such left-thinking writers as Gunter Kunert to leave for the West. 

To the Editor:

With reference to your interview with John Irving appearing in your Winter 1987 edition in which Mr. Irving alleges I was rude and snubbed Mr. John Cheever during a visit to Iowa:

I was not carrying a cane at the time but remember a request from Mr. Irving to speak with him privately which I did and during which meeting I suggested to him, that if he had the option to leave the cosy world of teaching, it was better to go suffer and pursue a writing career outside of university. 

 He was a fascinating talker, in spite of the stammer, and he knew everybody. He was a great friend of Bill Williams. You must have heard the story of his broken arm? He called up Williams at Rutherford and said, “I’ve broken my arm. Can I come and stay with you till it heals?” Bill said, “Certainly.” About a month or two went by and Max did nothing about having the cast examined or changed, so finally Bill insisted  on looking at it and discovered that there had never been any broken arm.

I believe I wrote, ‘And on with you now from this new nought anew.’

The following interviews were excerpted and arranged from those conducted for “James Jones: Reveille to Taps,” a ninety minute television documentary, which was broadcast on PBS in 1983 and 1986.

Annie Wright, to be truthful, was not an “exclusive” school. That may have been why so many girls left, disappointed, after a year or so.

Pound always set his sights high. Nothing but the best. When I was studying with him at his “Ezuversity” in Rapallo in 1935 he advised me not to waste time trying to write stories. Stendhal, Flaubert, James, Ford and Joyce, he told me, had done all that could be done with the novel. They had finished it off.