The Last Word: Letters Between Marcia Nardi and William Carlos Williams

Williams devotees are familiar with the letters from an unidentified female poet in early books of his long poem Paterson ; that woman was Marcia Nardi (1901-1990). This volume contains all their ``surviving'' correspondence, as well as poems of Nardi's with Williams's handwritten comments on them and letters he wrote on her behalf to James Laughlin and others. Nardi pleads for friendship, describing herself as ``having been born with a sick nervous system.'' In response to a money order Williams sends her wrapped in a blank sheet of paper, she writes a 20-page letter. Williams asserts, ``You cannot hold it against anyone that they do not reply to your letters in detail. . . . Others have difficulties as well as yourself.'' The correspondence, which begins in 1942, ends after just a year. Five years later, when it resumes, Williams--partly out of guilt for having incorporated her letters in Paterson --becomes more patient, while Nardi again mixes emotional sagas with apologies (for taking up his time, for poems not yet revised). Her letters present a haunting portrait of a woman desperate for companionship, pouring her life out to any sympathetic ear, allowing her misery to overshadow her art (her poems are very few in this period). They also inadvertently point to numerous women writers who have been through similar periods. O'Neil is a freelance editor. (Feb.)