James Laughlin

Infobox Person
name = James Laughlin


image_size =
caption =
birth_name =
birth_date = October 30, 1914
birth_place = Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
death_date = November 12, 1997
death_place = Norfolk, Connecticut, U.S.
death_cause = stroke
resting_place =
resting_place_coordinates =
residence =
nationality =
ethnicity =
citizenship =
other_names =
known_for = publisher, poet
education =Harvard University
alma_mater = Harvard University
employer =
occupation =
home_town =
title =
salary =
networth =
height =
weight =
term =
predecessor =
successor =
party =
boards =
religion =
spouse =
partner =
children =
parents = Henry Hughart, Marjory Rae Laughlin
relations =


website =
footnotes =

James Laughlin (30 October, 1914 – 12 November, 1997) was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers.

He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Laughlin's family had made its fortune with the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, founded three generations earlier by his great grandfather, James H. Laughlin, [cite web |title=In Memoriam-James Laughlin |url=http://www.connectotel.com/marcus/laughlin.htmlaccessdate=2008-07-28] and this wealth would partially fund Laughlin's future endeavors in publishing. As Laughlin once wrote, "none of this would have been possible without the industry of my ancestors, the canny Irishmen who immigrated in 1824 from County Down to Pittsburgh, where they built up what became the fourth largest steel company in the country. I bless them with every breath."

While a student at Harvard University, he took a leave of absence and traveled to France, where he met Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. He proceeded to Italy to meet and study with Ezra Pound, who famously told him, "You're never going to be any good as a poet. Why don't you take up something useful?". Pound suggested publishing, and when Laughlin returned to Harvard, he used money from his father to found New Directions in a barn on his Aunt Leila's estate in Norfolk, Connecticut.

The first book printed by the new press was "New Directions in Prose & Poetry", an anthology of poetry and writings by authors such as William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop, Henry Miller, Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, and E. E. Cummings, a roster that heralded the fledgling company's future as a preeminent publisher of modernist literature.

Laughlin's son committed suicide by stabbing himself multiple times in the bathtub. Laughlin later wrote a poem about this, called "Experience of Blood", in which he expresses his shock at the amount of blood in the human body. And despite the horrific mess left as a result, Laughlin reasons that he cannot ask anyone else to clean it up, "because after all, it was my blood too." [http://www.poetrypoetry.com/Features/JLaughlin/F_ExperienceOfBlood.mp3]

Laughlin won the 1992 Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award from the National Book Awards Program.

He died of complications related to a stroke in Norfolk, Connecticut, at age 83.

tyle

Laughlin's style is marked by striking simplicity, with Laughlin himself stating "...They mean what they say, and I don't decorate [my poems] in any way. They are very simple statements of what I want to get across." [ [http://www.poetrypoetry.com/Features/JLaughlin/JLaughlin.html] Click on "Easter in Pittsburgh] ]

Works

Laughlin's works include:
*"In Another Country" (1979)
*"Selected Poems" (1986)
*"The House of Light" (1986)
*"Tabellae" (1986)
*"The Owl of Minerva" (1987)
*"Collemata" and "Pound As Wuz" (1988)
*"Collected Poems of James Laughlin" (1992)
*"Angelica" (1992)
*"The Man in the Wall" (1993)
*"The Country Road" (1995)
*"The Secret Room" (1997)
*"A Commonplace Book of Pentastichs" (1998)
*"Byways: A Memoir" (2005)
*"The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin" (2006)

Laughlin's correspondence with William Carlos Williams, Henry Miller, Thomas Merton, Delmore Schwartz, Ezra Pound, and others has been published in a series of volumes issued by Norton.

One of Laughlin's most anthologized works is "Step on His Head", a poem about his relationship with his children.

"Step on His Head"
"Let's step on daddy's head",
Shout the children, my dear children,
As we walk in the country
On a sunny summer day.
My shadow bobs dark on the road as we walk
And they jump on its head, and my love for them
Fills me all full of soft feelings.
Now I duck with my head, so they'll miss when they jump
And they screech with delight, and I moan
"Oh, you're hurting, you're hurting me! Stop!"
And they jump all the harder,
And love fills the whole road.
But I see it run on through the years,
And I know how someday they must jump and it won't
Be this shadow, but really my head
As I stepped on my own father's head.
It will hurt, really hurt,
And I wonder if then, if I'll have enough love.
Will I have love enough when it's not just a game?

References

External links

*
* [http://www.poetrypoetry.com/Features/JLaughlin/JLaughlin.html Laughlin reads some of his works]

* [http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/109 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets]