Williams, William Carlos

New York. 1959. McDowell Obolensky. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 144 pages. hardcover. keywords: Autobiography Poetry America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In this book, William Carlos Williams goes back to one of the strongest influences on his life: his mother. Mrs. Williams' life took a fascinating course from Puerto Rico where she was born and brought up, to Paris where she studied painting, to the United States where she lived after her marriage. Dr. Williams has chosen an unusual and extremely effective way of presenting his subject. He has not worked within the framework of the essay, nor has he written about his mother a biography or an appreciation. Instead he has blended his writing with her words to achieve an effect analogous to his blending of prose and poetry in PATERSON. His picture of his mother is actually a reconstruction; from the things she said she comes alive. She was a spirited young girl growing up in an exotic country, Puerto Rico, in a circle where she met many Europeans yet where the way of life in the tropics made a deep impression upon her. As a young woman she went to Paris with an ardent enthusiasm for painting; later she came to live in Rutherford, New Jersey. Years later when she was old, Dr. Williams and she spent long hours together, reading and translating novels together and talking about the past. It was then that he gathered material for this hook about her by taking down what she said. What he has written is, for one thing, a study of old age, of life in compression with time removed and events recaptured in an almost one-dimensional. strangely immediate past. inventory #5874