The Legacy of William Carlos Williams: Points of Contact

The essays in The Legacy of William Carlos Williams collectively examine the reasons for Williams s continued importance to the work of a diverse range of American poets, and to the development of distinct branches of poetics throughout the twentieth century and beyond. As well as contextualising Williams s relationship to emergent cultural trends and ideas that influenced American poetry during his own lifetime (modernism, abstract expressionism, pragmatism, surrealism), the book highlights his impact on poets as diverse as Louis Zukofsky, Robert Creeley, Frank O Hara, Michael Palmer, Lorine Niedecker and Rae Armantrout. The essays contained here help shed light on contemporary trends in American poetry by re-examining Williams s own work from the perspective of those who embodied his example to forge divergent traditions. Williams is as exciting, mysterious, problematic, and tonic now as he ever was. He is the poet who opens doors onto language and onto our practice of everyday life. He continues to open new doors in a new century, as the fascinating and illuminating essays in this collection suggest anew. From Steven Gould Axelrod s Preface.