
Luke Batterham
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PERMISSION TO REPRINT 'THE POEM', one of William Carlos Williams's best-known poems, published the year before in The Wedge ('It's all in/ the sound. A song./ Seldom a song. It should// be a song – made of/ particulars, wasps,/ a gentian – something/ immediate, open// scissors, a lady's/ eyes – waking/ centrifugal, centripetal.'). Roschler's letter asks if he can reprint it in a forthcoming issue of Decade devoted to the work of Wendell Wilcox, explaining that "I want to include The Poem in order to further elucidate the Wilcox key, 'It is the hidden that makes the ordinary so exciting'". One detects maybe a hint of amused toleration in Williams's reply.