Don Williams—Donald Mace Williams—is a writer. A poet, a novelist, a journalist, a translator, and so on. A real man of letters. He has been steeped in poetry all of his life. When he and his family were living in tents during the Depression, he had Mark Van Doren’s Anthology of World Poetry at his side. That amounts to an education, in one volume.
But Williams went on to have a lot more education, in the classroom and beyond.
He was born in Texas on “Black Thursday”—October 24, 1929, when the stock market crashed. He has titled one of his novels “Black Tuesday’s Child.” (Note the switch of days. “Black Tuesday,” in 1929, was five days after the 24th.) Another novel is The Sparrow and the Hall, set in medieval England.
Speaking of old England—very, very old England—Williams is a translator of Beowulf: here.
Further dipping into Williams, here is a volume of poetry (his own). Here are poems of Rilke, which he has translated. Don has had a productive life.
One of his first loves was music, a love that of course endures. He studied singing, and his brother became a pianist. And what goes with songs but poetry? Poetry in a great range of languages.
Robert Frost is a poet who has meant a lot to Williams. So have a good many others, some of whom we discuss.
In our Q&A, we talk about all sorts of things. It’s a treat to hear Don recite poetry—his own and others’. He has a wonderful voice, a voice redolent of Texas (and perhaps other parts of the country too, as Don has lived all over).
There are a couple of questions I forgot to ask him. So, I asked him by e-mail, afterward. And he gave me written answers. Would you like to hear him?
I asked him something like this: “You have taught writing. I’m not sure how I would do it. I mean, I could work with someone’s copy. I could edit it and show him what I was doing. I did that for years. But teaching writing? Really teaching it, the way you would teach math or history? I’m not sure how I’d go about it.”
Don answered,
I tried to teach writing for a good many years, both on newspapers and in college journalism classes. When I was the writing coach for The Wichita Eagle, I sat with reporters and went over their stories line by line, suggesting this or that change and commending phrases I liked. Every day, also, I wrote comments on that day’s stories and passed them out. I’m not sure I improved anybody’s writing either way. I think I usually, over the years, found exactly the same things to quibble over or praise in a reporter’s work that I had found at the start.
What I hope may have helped writers write better is a couple of maxims that helped me from my first days as a reporter. One was home-grown. My dad, who had been a reporter and editor among many other things, told me, “Don’t say, ‘He attempted to accomplish the difficult matters,’ say, ‘He tried to do the hard things.’” And though I never worked for The Dallas Morning News, I knew what the signs in the newsroom said: “Write Like You Talk.” Not quite good grammar, but just the right tone. If I did teach anyone to be a better writer, I imagine it was by promoting those directives and others like them.
Yes. For many years, people have asked me (something like), “How should I write?” And I tend to say, “Write like you talk (and gussy it up a little bit, if that seems wise). Don’t try to have a ‘writing voice’ separate from your actual voice—your way of speaking. Writing is speech written down, basically. You write it down so that others, who aren’t with you, can hear it.”
On meeting me, readers have often said, “You talk like you write, and you write like you talk!” I really can’t do otherwise. I mean, I can, but it sounds stiff.
Bill Buckley wrote exactly like he talked. (He would want me to say “as he talked.”) So did Norman Podhoretz. So did David Pryce-Jones. I could go on …
Another thing I wanted to ask Don Williams was, “Who are your favorite singers?”
The answer:
When I started voice lessons, at 16, my ideal was the young John McCormack, who, even on the acoustic 78 r.p.m. discs that I bought for a quarter each at the Salvation Army store in Denver, sang beautiful, perfectly free tones such as no tenor I’ve heard since then has produced. Later, I added to my list of ideal singers the Danish tenor Aksel Schiøtz, a wonderfully warm-voiced and tasteful artist.
But the singer who made the greatest impression on me in live recital was Leontyne Price. I dislike routine standing ovations, because if you do them for every performer, how do you show your enthusiasm for great ones? But when Price ended her program with “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess, I jumped up, yelling—and then fell back into my seat because my knees were so weak. A glorious sound.
Two notes, please: John McCormack was the favorite singer of the late, great Martin Bernheimer, the music critic and scholar. (For my appreciation of Martin, written in 2019 when he passed away, go here.)
Note 2: Don says, “… the singer who made the greatest impression on me in live recital was Leontyne Price.” Same.
Back to our podcast: There are a couple of technical glitches in it—well, not glitches, but curiosities, let’s say. Don is using a friend’s Zoom set-up, so it has her name on it, not his. I myself am zooming in and out, somehow. (I guess zooming goes with Zoom.) My app has switched itself to some setting, in mysterious fashion. I’ll see whether I can un-switch it.
But forget tech. The main thing is to meet—to get to know—Donald Mace Williams, which is a pleasure to do.
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