Running for Your Life: Touches of Tennessee

The Morgan Library closed its Tennessee Williams “No Refuge but Writing” exhibit on Sunday (May 13).

Didn’t see it? A pity. Not to worry, here’s a taste.

Like so much of what the Morgan does best, the show narrows its focus on artist genius, on what served as inspiration to take that genius and make art.

In the front of a cherished book of Williams, the Collected Poems of Hart Crane, a young man of 22 who would later pave the way for daring work on the American stage, scribbled:

“Alas for the poet, the dreamer  . . . He fights a solitary battle against the world’s dullness.”

Elsewhere, we learn that Williams could not contain his wild and lyric impulses, and early in his life fled to Mexico, chased by his “Blue Angels” (what he called his dark moods of depression. Any coincidence that Tony Kushner would write of Angels during a modern period of mass depression, the American AIDS crisis?)

He writes of the duality of the single heart, and I’m moved to near-tears, then read that “A Streetcar Named Desire” would enjoy 855 performances, amazed that his words that elevate and sting, a timeless outlet of wild and lyric impulses, live on.

Next: Running for Your Life: World Without Mind by Franklin Foer

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