“I’m a poet. And then I put the poetry in the drama. I put it in short stories, and I put it in the plays. Poetry’s poetry.”

“The girl was gone.”

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.

TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FIRST VISITED New Orleans at the end of 1938, when he was twenty-seven years old. “Here surely is the place that I was made for if any place on this funny old world,” he wrote in his journal. After seven weeks of exploring the French Quarter and enjoying its Bohemian life, his restless spirit took hold and he headed west. Three years later, he returned to New Orleans, where—“writing a great deal and not badly I believe”—he produced a number of poems, two short stories, and several one-act plays.