Friday, October 5, 2007

Nixon gave poet bad dreams

Back in 1956 (when JFK's presidential ambitions first became apparent) William Carlos Williams had read to him twice Profiles in Courage. (Williams by that point could not easily read. By 1960 he couldn't read at all and asked Flossie occasionally to read aloud to him, including at times his own poems in process.)

In 1957 WCW had made some disparaging remarks about Kennedy to a friend, but now that the Kennedy-Nixon election was on, and would obviously be a very close one, the old poet was elated. Nixon he found "so despicable that the thought that he might now be the President of the U.S. still [gave WCW] bad dreams."