The Humane Particulars

"Gives readers for the first time a full sense of the growth, range, and significance of their friendship. Recommended."—Choice

"The Humane Particulars is a scrupulously edited collection that documents the dance of the intellect between two of the twentieth century's most original thinkers. An invaluable resource for scholars of both Williams and Burke, this forty-year correspondence talks about life, language, literature, and ideas. It is, as Burke once said of Williams, 'riddled with humanity.'"—Brian A. Bremen, editor, William Carlos Williams Review

"The Humane Particulars gives us yet another window into the life and thought of William Carlos Williams—our one modern poet indisputably in the American grain—as he interacts with Kenneth Burke, poet, man of letters, and our American Aristotle of rhetorical discourse. At the heart of these letters—set in perspective by James H. East's spirited and informed introduction and generous notes—is Williams's relentless search for a radically new way of understanding the nuclear structure of poetic form and, through that, the world under our noses. And there is Burke, at every step of the way and using a dozen strategies, attempting to follow Williams's broken attempts to somehow—somehow!—net the protean energy of modern poetry itself."—Paul Mariani, author of William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked