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PARTISAN REVIEW
mind that created. I have heard it maintained that the distinction is neces–
sary only as a critical strategy and that at the deepest level the distinction
vanishes; it is the same man who both suffers and creates. Or rather: when
we are engaged with the greatest works of art, responding to them with that
feeling of exacted surrender which characterizes the experience, we are never
aware of the distinction between man and artist . I do in part believe the
argument, but I hold to the distinction because it discourages me from
thinking that a work is fully explained by the circumstances of its origin .
It
also reminds me that the imagination intervenes between life and work and
that it is still a mysterious business . Simpson is not troubled by these scru–
ples; he thinks that poems are sufficiently clarified by reference to people,
jobs, money, friends, influences at large.
I would meet him upon this honestly. He thinks that Williams's story
of the night wQ.Uld be an account of the women he brought to bed, and that
the poetry would be illuminated if we knew more of those encounters. I
think the poetry would still be waiting for us, keeping its secrets, when
morning came . Simpson has enough faith in his biocritical method to divide
his book into three sections: "Ezra Pound, or Art" (88 pages), "T.S . Eliot,
or Religion" (100 pages), and "William Carlos Williams, or Experience"
(123 pages). The game is rigged, the terms are incommensurate.
It
is fair
enough to say that art is crucial to Pound and religion to Eliot, but not if you
assign experience to Williams; the dice are grossly loaded in Williams's
favor.
It
would be fairer to call Williams's supreme value sex or even contact,
if you insist on dishing out these fractured terms . Williams gets top billing
in Simpson's book for reasons that have nothing to do with the work and
nearly everything to do with the life . I never met Williams, though we cor–
responded a bit during his last years , and I cherish the fifteen or twenty
letters he wrote me . I have no doubt that he was a fascinating man, a far
more forthcoming person than Eliot and far more tolerable than Pound. But
I cannot be persuaded that he was what Eliot indisputably was, a major
poet, or what Pound disputably was, an extraordinarily gifted poet if not in
the class of Eliot or Yeats . Williams comes out well in Simpson's account,
but for unconvincing reasons . The story of his days is lively: the early years
with H.D., Pound , Charlie Demuth, Zukofsky, the history of objectivism,
Williams's one-sided vendetta against Eliot, the works and days in Ruther–
ford, New Jersey, writing, loving, doctoring, his marriage, illness, courage .
Most of this is well told in Williams's
Autobiography
and
The Budd-Up,
so
Simpson has plenty of evidence-good narrative stuff. Besides, he can offer ·
a plausible version of Williams's popularity in terms of "sincerity ."
If
Williams can be credited with the invention of "an American measure," all
the better. But the most powerful reason for Williams's primacy in this book
