A Thank You Note to Linda Wagner-Martin

I first glimpsed Linda Wagner-Martin, elevated on what memory recalls as a distant stage, in May 1979. This was before I had actually settled down to read her pioneer books and articles on William Carlos Williams. I had only just gravitated towards a decision to write my doctoral dissertation on the poet, aided by Walt Litz's argument that Williams would be a better subject to explore than the other author I had pitched to him with fervor. Having only just gotten started, I was in the process of reading what seemed like a very long list of works by our author. To be followed by what seemed the much shorter list of books and articles on our author—and Linda Wagner-Martin's name appeared alongside quite a few of them.

The occasion of this distant glimpse—which brought some reassurance that young scholars survived the years of doctoral research that loomed ahead, that such scholars might get jobs, and that they might even still have the energy left that Linda Wagner-Martin displayed in her presentation—was what was billed as the "William Carlos Williams 'Spring and All' Festival" at Kean College (since 1997, University) of New Jersey. As I look now at the review of the event, which appeared in the WCWN in Spring 1980, I am astonished that the program was so full. Evidently over 200 people attended. Among other events, Harvey Shapiro and David Ignatow read, two films were shown, and there was an evening performance of Williams's The First President along with the Theodore Harris score adapted for two pianos. I'll confess that forty years later I remember only the opera, because it seemed to go on for rather a long time, and that distant view of Linda Wagner-Martin on stage; the latter because of the many reminders in the years to come of her pioneer studies, as well as the contributions that followed them.

Part of the value of The Poems of William Carlos Williams (1964) and The Prose of William Carlos Williams (1970) is their comprehensiveness, a much more helpful approach given the need in Williams studies at the time than would have been a narrower focus. The 1964 volume is early enough to contain thanks to the poet himself, as well as to Mrs. Williams, for their interest in the manuscript. One of the book's main aims, its introduction declares, is to "disprove the assumption that [. . .] he wrote 'instinctively' with little critical awareness." A charge made less frequently now, although still making an occasional appearance. The 1970 study opens less defensively, and as a measure of its scope The First President gets some careful discussion. Paul Mariani, in his 1975 review of Williams scholarship for the American Library Association, William Carlos Williams: The Poet and His Critics, noted that the 1964 volume, "cracked the long freeze which had followed Vivienne Koch's 1950 new critical study."

In 1976 appeared Interviews with William Carlos Williams, collecting four extended interviews with the poet as well as a selection of comments from John Thirlwall's tapes of Williams from the period when Thirlwall was considering writing the first biography. Professor Wagner-Martin was certainly the appropriate choice to write the Williams section of Duke's Sixteen Modern Authors series in 1969, 1973, and most recently in 1989. And appreciation of Professor Wagner-Martin's contributions to Williams studies should also note her valuable work on Denise Levertov.

To bring this tribute something of a full circle: I have never met Professor Wagner-Martin. That 1979 graduate student would not presume to approach the speakers on that distant stage. But I was happy to write an appreciative note to the publisher for her 2013 volume in the Blackwell's History of American Literature series. They put part of my comment on the back cover, I was glad to see. I received a gracious note of thanks from Professor Wagner-Martin a few weeks later. This short piece is then my return note of thanks to her—not only for cracking "the long freeze" in 1964, but...