William Carlos Williams Society
William Carlos Williams Society Business Meeting
29 December 2006, MLA Conference, Philadelphia, PA
Present: Dan Morris (presiding), Laura Close, Ian Copestake, Kerry Driscoll, Daniel Hoffman, Andrew Krivac, Chris MacGowan, Glen MacLeod, Peter Schmidt, Erin Templeton, Emily Mitchell Wallace, Eric White.
- The first item of business was to determine the panel topics for the
2007 MLA, which will be held in Chicago. After much discussion, the following
topics were selected:
- Williams and Poetry, Little Review, and others-
papers exploring WCW's involvement with, and relation to, various little magazines published in Chicago. Christian Wyman, the current editor of Poetry, will be approached as a possible panelist.
-Erin Templeton volunteered to chair this panel. - Williams and Company-papers exploring WCW's creative and
personal associations with artists, writers, musicians, actors, et al, both at
home and abroad.
-Eric White volunteered to chair this panel.
A third topic was also discussed-namely, Williams and the History of the Book/Textual Culture, which would address issues of book design, typography, illustrations, the photos used on the dust jackets, etc. This topic was finally tabled for possible use at a later time because it was regarded as too close to the first panel topic described above. - Williams and Poetry, Little Review, and others-
- The group then discussed the panel topic for ALA in Boston, 24-27 May, 2007.
In light of the WCW Review's forthcoming issue on the
topic of Williams and Dada, it was decided to offer a panel on
this subject.
-Kerry Driscoll offered to chair this panel, and will solicit abstracts by posting a call for papers on the ALA homepage and the UPenn website. - Emily Mitchell Wallace asked that a subcommittee be formed to discuss and revise the Society's current bylaws. Some discussion ensued as to exactly who has a copy of this document; Emily will send the bylaws to all members of the group via email in order to get a collective sense of what needs revision.
- Glen MacLeod presented W. Scott Peterson's generous offer to fund two annual $500 prizes in order to encourage scholarship on WCW. Considerable discussion ensued about defining the parameters of each award (one would be for the best essay to appear in the WCW Review in 2007; the second would be for the best work on Williams-a book, chapter thereof, or essay‹which appears anywhere in 2007), along with the logistics of who would do the evaluating, the eligibility/ineligibility of the WCW Review Editorial Board, and how the award check would be issued. A subcommittee was established, consisting of Kerry Driscoll, Chris MacGowan, and Glen MacLeod, to do further research on these issues, formulate a proposal, and report back to the group as a whole. Kerry also agreed to make inquiries about advertising in PMLA and other MLA publications (along with American Literature and American Literary History) to announce the inception of the prize.
The meeting adjourned at 7pm to attend the "Poets' Dinner" reception generously arranged by Emily Mitchell Wallace.
Respectfully submitted,
Kerry Driscoll
Secretary/Treasurer
Proceedings of the 2005 WCW Society Conference in Frankfurt, Germany
From 27th - 29th July, 2005, the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, hosted the first William Carlos Williams Society Conference. Entitled "Points of Contact: The Heritages of William Carlos Williams," the three day meeting was opened by guest speaker, Peter Halter, who gave his talk on "Williams, Frost and the Magic of the Commonplace." In the following two days Peter acted as respondent to the other eleven papers, and was wonderfully supportive and incisive in his comments. The format of the conference was that of a round-table discussion, rather than panels of talks, and each of the eleven presenter's papers had been circulated in advance of the meeting. A slot of an hour was given for discussion of each paper, after a brief summary of the topic, and this allowed for an intense focus on each scholar's work and a genuinely rewarding exchange of views and ideas. A list of the presenters and their work appears below:
Peter Halter, "Williams, Frost and the Magic of the Commonplace"; Andrew J. Krivak, "Influences and Emergence: The Pre-Modernism of William Carlos Williams In the Letters to His Brother Edgar"; Christina Oltmann, "Poetics Poems Politics: The Politically Subversive Force in William Carlos Williams' Poetry of the 1920s and 1930s"; Grzegorz Kosc, "William Carlos Williams as Robert Lowell's Marriage Counselor"; Todd Carmody, "Affective Poetics: Louis Zukofsky and the Materiality of Loss"; Erin Templeton, "'The eternal bride and father‹quid pro quo': Williams, Marcia Nardi and Paterson"; Eric White, "Evolutions and Improvisations: William Carlos Williams and the Composition of 'Kora in Hell'"; Christopher MacGowan, "Creeley and Williams: Measuring Williams' Selected Essay"; Robert Stanton, "'Close to Williams' house': Williams to Armantrout via Niedecker"; Nick Selby, "The machinery of touch: Robert Creeley, William Carlos Williams and the poem underhand"; Paul Cappucci, "'Imaginative Blobs of Paint': William Carlos Williams, Frank O'Hara, and the Artistry of Jackson Pollock"; David Arnold, "Williams without Words: A Dialogue with Michael Palmer."A book of the conference, including all of the above listed papers, will be published by Cambridge Scholars Press in Spring 2007 under the title The Heritages of William Carlos Williams: Points of Contact. A second Williams Society sponsored conference will take place in Frankfurt in July 2007, and will feature an opening address by the poet August Kleinzahler.