A Thank You Note to Linda Wagner-Martin

Abstract

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 WagnerMartin 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. A Thank You Note to Linda Wagner-Martin