James Laughlin (1914-97) was a poet of distinction as well as the
founding publisher of New Directions. A Commonplace Book of
Pentastichs, the last book of his own that he helped to prepare, is a
compilation of 249 poems composed in a five-line stanza form first
introduced in The Secret Room (1997). A note to "Thirty-nine
Pentastichs" in that earlier volume explains: "a 'pentastich' refers
simply to a poem of five lines, without regard to metrics. The word is
Greek derived, from pentastichos, though few survive from ancient
times... The present selection is of recent short-line compositions in
natural voice cadence, many of them marginal jottings and paraphrases of
commonplace book notations." Musing on the full collection, Hayden
Carruth writes in his introduction: "For the reader it is a survey of
literature that will never be found in the classroom--praise whatever
gods may be--but indubitably will be found in loving and longlasting
proximity on many a bedside table." Here, then, are armchair marginalia
and aperçus to be savored at random.