Without Whoomph

21 Ramadhan, 1443

I've been keeping up my reading of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume II: 1939 - 1962 and have arrived at 1960. The sheer range of Williams is startling. Towards the end he was still experimenting, adopting new verse forms and new voices. 

But there are also signs of declining energy, I think, especially in the various translations. I wonder how far he did these to get away from himself and the depression that disfigured his later years, especially after his strokes. I was startled to find out that a number of translations from the Chinese I thought were solely by WCW were, in fact, essentially the work of one David Wang, who sounds a fascinating figure in himself. It seems he died mysteriously, in his late forties. I'd feel inclined to do a bit of research on him, except for my own lack of the necessary whoomph.