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James Laughlin (30 October, 1914 – 12 November, 1997) was an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers
New Directions Publishers

New Directions Publishing Corp. was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin, then a Harvard University sophomore. The company was incorporated in 1964 as the New Directions Publishing Corporation and operates from New York City, and its books today are distributed by W....
.

He was born in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania with a population of 312,819. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area is 2,462,571....
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , often colloquially referred to as PA by natives and Northeasterners, is a U.S. state located in the Northeastern United States and Mid-Atlantic States regions of the United States....
, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Laughlin's family had made its fortune with the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company
Jones and Laughlin Steel Company

The earliest foundations of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company were the American Iron Company, founded in 1851 by Bernard Lauth, and the firm of Jones and Lauth, founded in 1852 by B....
, founded three generations earlier by his great grandfather, James H. Laughlin
James H. Laughlin

James H. Laughlin was a pioneer of the iron and steel industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was born March 1, 1806 near Portaferry in County Down....
, and this wealth would partially fund Laughlin's future endeavors in publishing. As Laughlin once wrote, "none of this would have been possible without the industry of my ancestors, the canny Irishmen who immigrated in 1824 from County Down to Pittsburgh, where they built up what became the fourth largest steel company in the country.






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James Laughlin (30 October, 1914 – 12 November, 1997) was an American
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 poet
Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
 and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers
New Directions Publishers

New Directions Publishing Corp. was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin, then a Harvard University sophomore. The company was incorporated in 1964 as the New Directions Publishing Corporation and operates from New York City, and its books today are distributed by W....
.

He was born in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania with a population of 312,819. The population of the seven-county metropolitan area is 2,462,571....
, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania , often colloquially referred to as PA by natives and Northeasterners, is a U.S. state located in the Northeastern United States and Mid-Atlantic States regions of the United States....
, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin. Laughlin's family had made its fortune with the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company
Jones and Laughlin Steel Company

The earliest foundations of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company were the American Iron Company, founded in 1851 by Bernard Lauth, and the firm of Jones and Lauth, founded in 1852 by B....
, founded three generations earlier by his great grandfather, James H. Laughlin
James H. Laughlin

James H. Laughlin was a pioneer of the iron and steel industry in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was born March 1, 1806 near Portaferry in County Down....
, and this wealth would partially fund Laughlin's future endeavors in publishing. As Laughlin once wrote, "none of this would have been possible without the industry of my ancestors, the canny Irishmen who immigrated in 1824 from County Down to Pittsburgh, where they built up what became the fourth largest steel company in the country. I bless them with every breath."

While a student at Harvard University
Harvard University

Harvard University is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, United States, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the Colonial Colleges institution of higher learning in the United States....
, he took a leave of absence and traveled to France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
, where he met Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent most of her life in France, and who became a catalyst in the development of modern art and Modernist literature....
 and Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas

Alice B. Toklas was the life partner of writer Gertrude Stein....
. He proceeded to Italy
Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
 to meet and study with Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an United States expatriate poetry, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist poetry movement in the first half of the 20th century....
, who famously told him, "You're never going to be any good as a poet. Why don't you take up something useful?". Pound suggested publishing, and when Laughlin returned to Harvard, he used money from his father to found New Directions in a barn on his Aunt Leila's estate in Norfolk, Connecticut
Norfolk, Connecticut

Norfolk is a New England town in Litchfield County, Connecticut, Connecticut, United States. The population was 1,660 at the 2000 United States Census....
.

The first book printed by the new press was New Directions in Prose & Poetry, an anthology of poetry and writings by authors such as William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an list of American poets closely associated with Modernist poetry and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine....
, Ezra Pound, Elizabeth Bishop
Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and writer. She was the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, and a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1956....
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an United States novelist and Painting. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of...
, Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore

Marianne Moore was a Modernism American poet and writer....
, Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was a United States Modernism poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, and spent most of his life working for an insurance company in Connecticut....
, and E. E. Cummings
E. E. Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings , popularly known as E. E. Cummings, was an Poetry of the United States, painter, essayist, author, and playwright....
, a roster that heralded the fledgling company's future as a preeminent publisher of modernist literature.

Laughlin's son committed suicide by stabbing himself multiple times in the bathtub. Laughlin later wrote a poem about this, called Experience of Blood, in which he expresses his shock at the amount of blood in the human body. And despite the horrific mess left as a result, Laughlin reasons that he cannot ask anyone else to clean it up, "because after all, it was my blood too."

Laughlin won the 1992 Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award from the National Book Award
National Book Award

The National Book Awards are among the most eminent literary prizes in the United States. Started in 1950, the awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the prior year, as well as lifetime achievement awards including the "Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters" and the "Literarian Award"....
s Program.

He died of complications related to a stroke in Norfolk, Connecticut, at age 83.

Style

Laughlin's style is marked by striking simplicity, with Laughlin himself stating "...They mean what they say, and I don't decorate [my poems] in any way. They are very simple statements of what I want to get across."

Works


Laughlin's works include:
  • In Another Country (1979)
  • Selected Poems (1986)
  • The House of Light (1986)
  • Tabellae (1986)
  • The Owl of Minerva (1987)
  • Collemata and Pound As Wuz (1988)
  • Collected Poems of James Laughlin (1992)
  • Angelica (1992)
  • The Man in the Wall (1993)
  • The Country Road (1995)
  • The Secret Room (1997)
  • A Commonplace Book of Pentastichs (1998)
  • Byways: A Memoir (2005)
  • The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin (2006)


Laughlin's correspondence with William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was an list of American poets closely associated with Modernist poetry and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine....
, Henry Miller, Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton was a 20th century Roman Catholic Church writer. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, in the U.S. state of Kentucky, Merton was a poet, a social activism, a student of comparative religion as well as the author of numerous works on spirituality....
, Delmore Schwartz
Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz was an American poet and short story writer from Brooklyn....
, Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an United States expatriate poetry, critic and intellectual who was a major figure of the Modernist poetry movement in the first half of the 20th century....
, and others has been published in a series of volumes issued by Norton.

One of Laughlin's most anthologized works is "Step on His Head", a poem about his relationship with his children.

Step on His Head

"Let's step on daddy's head",
Shout the children, my dear children,
As we walk in the country
On a sunny summer day.
My shadow bobs dark on the road as we walk
And they jump on its head, and my love for them
Fills me all full of soft feelings.
Now I duck with my head, so they'll miss when they jump
And they screech with delight, and I moan
"Oh, you're hurting, you're hurting me! Stop!"
And they jump all the harder,
And love fills the whole road.

But I see it run on through the years,
And I know how someday they must jump and it won't
Be this shadow, but really my head
As I stepped on my own father's head.
It will hurt, really hurt,
And I wonder if then, if I'll have enough love.
Will I have love enough when it's not just a game?

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