(^230) James E. Miller, Jr.
readers would conclude with Robert Lowell’s judgment, in proclaiming
Williams as “part of the great breath of our literature, that “Patersonis our
Leaves of Grass.”^21
A final word:
from
“An Elegy for W.C.W., the lovely man”
John Berryman
Henry in Ireland to Bill underground:
Rest well, who worked so hard, who made a good sound
constantly, for so many years:
your high-jinks delighted the continents & our ears:
you had so many girls your life was a triumph
and you loved your one wife.
At dawn you rose & wrote—the books poured forth—.
you delivered infinite babies, in one great birth—
and your generosity
to juniors made you deeply loved, deeply:
if envy was a Henry trademark, he would envy you,
especially the being through.^22
NOTES
- Williams quotations are cited in the text, using the following abbreviations:
A: Autobiography(New York: Random House, 1951; rpt. New Directions, 1967)
CEP: The Collected Early Poems(New York: New Directions, 1951)
CLP: The Collected Later Poems(New York: New Directions, 1963)
I: Imaginations(containing Kora in Hell, Spring and All, The Great American Novel, The
Descent of Winter, A Novelette and Other Prose) (New York: New Directions, 1970)
IAG: In the American Grain(New York: New Directions, 1956)
P: Paterson(New York: New Directions, 1963)
SE: Selected Essays(New York: New Directions, 1969)
SL: Selected Letters,ed. John C. Thirlwall (New York: McDowell, Oblensky, 1957) - William Carlos Williams, “America, Whitman, and the Art of Poetry,” Poetry
Journal8 (Nov. 1917): 27, 31. - William Carlos Williams, “An Essay on Leaves of Grass,” Leaves of Grass One
Hundred Years After,ed. Milton Hindus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1955), p. 22. - William Carlos Williams, “The American Idiom,” New Directions17 (New York:
New Directions, 1961), pp. 250–51. - Louis Simpson, Three on the Tower: The Lives and Works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot,