New Directions 17

New Directions 17

This one is a particularly rich annual. Among its most interesting pieces is a dialogue on Zen and Christian Mysticism by Daisetz T. Suzuki and Thomas Merton. Something Salinger probably took keen note of.

An interview with Ezra Pound from 1959 (by the BBC’s D. C. Bridson) documenting a slew of unpublished autobiographical and literary insights.

An excerpt from Cortazar’s Cronopios and Famas

A study of the genesis and development-in-composition of William Carlos Williams’ Paterson by John C. Thinwall.

A brilliant translation Jean Cocteau’s greatest poem, Leon, by Alan Neame.

Translations of Martin Walser (Germany), Tommaso Landolfi (Italy), Ernesto Cardenal and Pablo Antorfis Cuadra (Nicaragua), Francis Ponge (France), Jorge Carrera Andrade (Ecuador).

Stories by James Purdy, J. F. Powers, John Hawkes, H Selby Jr., and Peter Olwyler.

Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Charles Tomlinson, Bob Kaufman, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, Robert Lowry, and Evans C. Chigounis.

Essays by William Carlos Williams, Edward D4hlberg, Ceorg Mann, and George C. Kirstefit

Cover photograph: Detail from Louise Nevelson’s Royal Tide I.