Strephon Kaplan-Williams Books

This is Oscar as quite a handsome young man sitting nude in his true maleness. Of course my mother needed nude models to paint from and my father was it. Perched on his arm is the swan. I was brought to them, not by a proverbial stork, but by a fantastical swan.

Gene Derwood did not write a letter as first contact to George Barker, then a young poet, like most people do. Gene wrote a direct discourse poem, To George Barker, or something like this. Poets discourse often via the language of the soul. It's as if they speak soul to soul without the intervention of their rather small human personalities. Directing direct discourse in the form of poems to each other is how the gods speak, the ones the Greeks and Romans of ancient days knew so well about. But a close look at many cultural traditions, such as the Romanian, will show also this type of poet's discourse.

Here Barker is idealized by painter, Gene Derwood, and maybe that is just fine. In her portraits of me, her son as a small boy and one as a teenager, she does not place me among the gods. Spare me! I am still a child. Here Barker is placed among the gods. He looks out at you 'with lips that can kill', a way of saying that he has through poet's nature the spark of divinity, not only conveyed through poem but possible also in a kiss with him of divine passion. What must her husband, Oscar Williams, have thought? Probably the same thing Joseph had to go through in husbanding the Divine Mary, that most extraordinary of persons herself to have such a son as Jesus, whomever the father turns out to be, and shall we ever know? Both Joseph and Oscar were, however, completely devoted to their women, despite their women's converse with the divine in barely human form. For another side of George Barker, see a sample of letters between Oscar and him.

Here I am home on furlough from military school at age fourteen. Gene now makes me pose both morning and afternoon in the good light, and maybe the next morning also to finish the painting. Some girlfriends have said I look incredibly sad here. Note the flower in my button hole of the military shirt. The ears stick out. The face is turned inward on itself. I don't deny this is me at that age.

I perceive this painting as my mother showing me her feeling understanding of me which she could not directly express to me. Gene Derwood has a way of making the person absolutely still in her painting. Her portraits of Dylan Thomas are that way also, and painted around the same time. You can see I have a lot bottled up inside of me. Six years later Gene Derwood will be dead. Life is already slowing down for her. She paints from her bed where she rests all day and drinks sour milk. She does not stop smoking, and smoking can kill.

This is me and my father in 1939, obviously summertime. The world is about to go crazy in another world war. From the lack of clothes we see that it gets pretty damn hot in summer in New York City. One of the reasons they sent me off to boarding school at age six was to get me out of New York City. Notice how when I was young I seemed to look like Dylan Thomas to Gene Derwood. She did portraits of him as well with lots of hair and big pop-out eyes. Note the bookcase, the typewriter, the drawers, the cigarette in Oscar's hand, the toy boat on the floor, the couch, the cushion to sit on for me. And the book Oscar would be reading if my mother would not want him to pose. This is practically the only painting made of me and my father together. He preferred to be portrayed with famous poets more than with his own son.

Gene and Oscar were close friends of Dylan Thomas, first by mail. Oscar and Gene recognized his talent before World War II and Oscar was Dylan's agent for getting his poetry published in America.

This is one of Gene Derwood's paintings of Dylan Thomas, probably donated by my father to Harvard Library. It was assumed by Oscar that they would keep two of my mother's paintings of Dylan Thomas on the wall. Does anyone know where these paintings are now? It would be nice to have them back, says the son, Strephon Williams.

Unfortunately Oscar and Gene had no control over how Dylan was handled when Dylan came and did his speaking tours. John Malcolm Brinnin was Thomas' agent for his speaking tours. Brinnin's 'gang' kept Thomas out drinking with all the fans and poet tasters who fell in love with the Thomas image and poetry. Oscar and Gene were enormously upset at Dylan's not being protected. As Oscar told me, the drinks they gave Thomas were twice as strong as in Wales. Always free drinks and adulation from Brinnin and friends. This killed Thomas in America. I have the whole story with drugs and abuse, as told to me both by my father and by the Irish poet, George Reavey. Read more...