Some Americans: A Personal Record

by Charles Tomlinson

book

134 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Paul Secor · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this lovely short book, English writer Charles Tomlinson relates his meetings with William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen, and Georgia O'Keefe during a series of visits to the United States, and with Ezra Pound during a journey to Italy.

It's a very fine read. My copy is inscribed by Mr. Tomlinson with the comment: "America made me see life in a different way."
Recommended to anyone with an interest in the writers mentioned above or just to anyone who loves a well told story.

[Cristiana Pagliarusco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely reading, a deep dive into American poetry through the voice and eyes of an open charming Englishman and poet.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Among England’s poetry scene of the 1950s, Charles Tomlinson stood apart due to his interest in American modernist poetry. This short book, a collection of four essays, describes personally meeting some American figures in the 1950s through the early 1970s, and what about their work greatly touched him.

The first two essays deal with Tomlinson’s meetings with several American poets during his sojourns in the United States between 1959 and the mid Sixties, namely William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, George Oppen, Robert Lowell, and Louis Zukofsky. (Tomlinson had earlier corresponded with, but never met, Wallace Stevens.) However, Tomlinson was not just a poet but also a painter, so the third essay is about visiting Georgia O'Keeffe at her New Mexico ranch. The last essay deals with Italy and isn’t so much about meeting American literary figures as the legacy of them, as Ezra Pound was a ghostly, non-verbal presence, and Henry James (the friend of Tomlinson’s employer in Italy Percy Lubbock) long-dead. Tomlinson dedicates much of this last essay to Paolo Bertolani, a young man inspired like him by American poets who would eventually make a poetic career of his own.

What Tomlinson recounts about these figures are never earth-shattering details that one wouldn’t know from biographies. However, they do fill out the reader’s knowledge of these poets and one painter by describing their way of speaking and personal quirks. All in all, I feel that this book is more about Tomlinson himself and how he was artistically molded by a foreign land whose artists he fell in love with, than about those creative figures themselves. Therefore, this book is best recommended for people who are either already fans of Tomlinson’s poetry, or are open to becoming such.