James Laughlin
James Laughlin
James Laughlinwas an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishing...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth30 October 1914
CountryUnited States of America
reading thinking two
Of course a poem is a two-way street. No poem is any good if it doesn't suggest to the reader things from his own mind and recollection that he will read into it, and will add to what the poet has suggested. But I do think poetry readings are very important.
thinking age poet
I think one ages and one dates. I tend to have a good deal of difficulty in liking some of the new poets.
thinking knowing world
I think there's no excuse for the American poetry reader not knowing a good deal about what is going on in the rest of the world.
thinking people might
I think most people read and re-read the things that they have liked. That's certainly true in my case. I re-read Pound a great deal, I re-read Williams, I re-read Thomas, I re-read the people whom I cam to love when I was at what you might call a formative stage.
thinking years six
I think that concrete poetry seems to have, as far as I can see, come to a kind of a dead end. It doesn't seem to be going any further than it went in its high period of about five or six years ago.
reading mean thinking
I think that is where poetry reading becomes such an individual thing. I mean I have friend who like poets who just don't say anything to me at all, I mean they seem to me rather ordinary and pedestrian.
reading thinking differences
I think there is a great difference, in that when the poet is reading you get the whole personality of the person, especially if he's a good reader. Whereas a person just sitting gets what he puts into it.
thinking interesting attention
I think we will always have the impulse towards visual poetry with us, and I wouldn't agree with Bly that it's a bad thing. It depends on the ability of the individual poet to do it well, and to make a shape which is interesting enough to hold your attention.
thinking groups responsible
It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work of a small group of fiends.
authors material publish quite suggested
We see them when they come to New York. They stay at my wife's apartment. We have quite a correspondence with them at all times. They play a very important role, the authors in the firm, because so much of the material we publish is suggested by them.
alternate attempt particular prose
We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry.
clear occasions poet relationship sad
Then, of course, there are those sad occasions when a poet or a writer has not grown, and one has to let them go because they're just not making headway. But we have a very clear personal relationship with the authors.
books generally somebody stick taken three
Once we've taken on somebody we generally try to stick with them for at least two or three books to see if they will develop, if they will grow.
almost
Often something comes in from which you can see that the person is good, the book may not be perfect as it is, and the person doesn't want to do a re-write. That's something we do almost nothing of.