WorldCat Identities

Laughlin, James 1914-1997

Overview
Works: 460 works in 659 publications in 8 languages and 16,625 library holdings
Genres: Bildungsromans  Artists' books  American poetry 
Roles: Editor, Publishing director, Author of introduction, Inscriber, Translator, Correspondent, Author of afterword, colophon, etc.
Classifications: ps3523.a8245, 811.54
Publication Timeline
Key
Publications about James Laughlin Publications about James Laughlin
Publications by James Laughlin Publications by James Laughlin
posthumous Publications by James Laughlin, published posthumously.
Most widely held works about James Laughlin
 
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Most widely held works by James Laughlin
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6 editions published in in English and held by 786 libraries worldwide
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6 editions published in in English and held by 476 libraries worldwide
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2 editions published in in English and held by 464 libraries worldwide
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8 editions published in in English and held by 354 libraries worldwide
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5 editions published in in English and held by 345 libraries worldwide
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5 editions published in in English and held by 343 libraries worldwide
DELMORE SCHWARTZ: from his glorification as the golden boy of the American literary scene to his untimely death in 1966, alone and destitute. JAMES LAUGHLIN: founder of New Directions, publisher and editor of the modernists. This collection chronicles a correspondence that began with the poet's first unsolicited submission to New Directions in 1937, and continued throughout the tempestuous friendship that lasted until the poet's death. The relationship that developed between them was both literary, steeped in their own work and that of their contemporaries, and personal: gifted storytellers, they delighted each other with factual and fictional observations. The two remained friends and colleagues until the mental illness that eventually claimed him began to destroy Schwartz's ability to trust even those closest to him. Here follows the highs and lows of a relationship between two extraordinary personalities.
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8 editions published between and 2000 in English and held by 318 libraries worldwide
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2 editions published in in English and held by 304 libraries worldwide
James Laughlin, poet and publisher, is known in Italy as Il Catullo americano, the American Catullus. Like the Latin poet whom Laughlin has long called his master, the subject at the heart of his work remains "love/...& the lack of love,/which is what makes evil," but seen now from the wry, often poignant perspective of old age. In his newest collection, The Secret Room, he has gathered nearly 150 poems that address his mature theme in a variety of ways. The philosophical lyrics of "Looking Inward" and the satirical jabs and invectives of "Epigrams and Comic Verses" employ short-line forms, including Laughlin's signature "typewriter metric," originally devised with the advice of William Carlos Williams. "Byways" continues his autobiographical work-in-progress, in a three-stress line borrowed from Kenneth Rexroth. And with "39 Pentastichs," Laughlin introduces a five-line stanza in a natural voice cadence suited to casual observations.
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14 editions published between and 1996 in English and held by 302 libraries worldwide
sames Laughlin was first introduced to Henry Miller's writing in 1934 when he was studying with Ezra Pound in Rapallo, Italy. As Laughlin remembers it, one day Pound tossed a book at him across the table at which they were sitting, saying, "Waal Jas, here's a dirty book that's really good. You'd better read that if your morals can stand it." Laughlin was so impressed with the book, Tropic of Cancer, that he promptly initiated a correspondence with Miller which soon turned into a publisher/author relationship when Laughlin, at Pound's urging, founded New Directions in 1936. Ever mercurial in temperament, an idealist who struggled financially to meet his material needs, Miller relied on his publisher Laughlin's generosity and expert editorial advice for decades. Although Miller's letters, sometimes quite teasingly, decried the conservatism of American book publishing, Miller nevertheless trusted Laughlin with intimate details about his work and personal life.
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4 editions published in in English and held by 286 libraries worldwide
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5 editions published in in English and held by 286 libraries worldwide
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4 editions published between and 1986 in English and Undetermined and held by 267 libraries worldwide
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5 editions published between and 1994 in English and held by 259 libraries worldwide
In the literary world James Laughlin is best known as the publisher of New Directions Books. But he has also been a dedicated poet. His work is both modern - rich in technical experiment - and ancient - grounded in the Greek and Latin poets. Guy Davenport has called Laughlin "a very ironic Roman poet, and a very salty Greek one. Which is not to say that he imitates anybody, or offers plaster casts of antiquities. He is the youngest and most modern poet now writing in the United States. He is the real thing." Laughlin describes himself as a writer of light verse. He can be witty but underneath the wit there are often pungent truths about the human condition. His work is notable for its range of subject matter, the originality of its invention, his restoration of the classical tradition, his wordplay, his satire, and the intensity of his love poems.
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4 editions published in in English and held by 259 libraries worldwide
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6 editions published between and 2000 in English and held by 240 libraries worldwide
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2 editions published in in English and held by 224 libraries worldwide
James Laughlin has been called the American Catullus. Like that most Greek of ancient Latin poets, he elevates his everyday subjects with wit and clarity of language. Love and hate, death and aging, politics, literature, travel, the horrors of war - Laughlin's muse speaks of all these things with a fresh directness that makes his poems both timeless and contemporary. The founder of New Directions, Laughlin's efforts as publisher and poet have been to prolong and extend the old poetic traditions. Poetry for him is, in Gertrude Stein's phrase, a "continuous present" in all times and cultures. Laughlin developed his distinctive tight metrics with the advice of William Carlos Williams. A longer, comical line is found in the recent poems of Laughlin's doppelganger, Hiram Handspring. The Man in the Wall follows Laughlin's recent Collected Poems (Moyer Bell Limited).
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3 editions published in in English and held by 222 libraries worldwide
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6 editions published between and 2000 in English and held by 192 libraries worldwide
James Laughlin (1914-97) was a poet of distinction as well as the founding publisher of New Directions. A Commonplace Book of Pentastichs, the last book of his own that he helped to prepare, is a compilation of 249 poems composed in a five-line stanza form first introduced in The Secret Room (1997). A note to "Thirty-nine Pentastichs" in that earlier volume explains: "A 'pentastich' refers simply to a poem of five lines, without regard to metrics. The present selection is of recent short-line compositions in natural voice cadence, many of them marginal jottings and paraphrases of commonplace book notations." Here, then, are armchair marginalia and apercus to be savored at random.
 
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Audience level: 0.66 (from 0.59 for What shall ... to 0.79 for A commonpl ...)
William Carlos Williams and James Laughlin : selected letters
Alternative Names
Laughlin, J. (James), 1914-
Laughlin, J. (James), 1914-1997
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