used, and as a result Williams nursed a grudge against the young publisher for years. Laughlin's outdoor activities helped other literary friendships, though; for many years he and Kenneth Rexroth took an annual camping trip together in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. In the 1960s, Laughlin published Rexroth's friend, the poet and essayist Gary Snyder, also an avid outdoorsman. In the early 1950s, Laughlin took part in what has come to be known as the Cultural Cold War against the Soviet Union. With funding from the Ford Foundation and with the assistance of poet and editor Hayden Carruth, Laughlin founded a nonprofit called "Intercultural Publications" that sought to publish a quarterly journal of American arts and letters, Perspectives U.S.A., in Europe. Sixteen issues of the journal eventually appeared. Although Laughlin wished to continue the journal, the Ford Foundation cut off funding, asserting that Perspectives had limited impact and that its money would be better spent on the more effective Congress for Cultural Freedom. Following the dissolution of Intercultural Publications, Laughlin became deeply involved in the activities of the Asia Society. Pound's advice to Laughlin to give up poetry didn't stick. He published his first book of poetry, Some Natural Things, in 1945, and continued to write verse until his death. Although he never enjoyed the acclaim that the writers he published received, Laughlin's verse (which is plainspoken and focused on everyday experience, reminiscent of Williams or even the Roman poet Catullus) was well-respected by other poets, and in the 1990s The New Yorker published six of his poems. Among his other books are In Another Country, The Country Road, and the posthumous autobiographical poem Byways. Laughlin won the 1992 Distinguished Contribution to American Letters Award from the National Book Awards Program. The Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin award, for a poet's second book, is named in his honor. Personal life Laughlin married three times. He was first married to Margaret Keyser for a decade; the couple had two children. In 1955, Laughlin married Anne Clark Resor, and with her also had two children. Laughlin met Gertrude Huston in 1945 at a Halloween dance party. Huston worked as a book designer and art director for New Directions. The pair married on December 5, 1990. Laughlin died of complications related to a stroke in Norfolk, Connecticut, at age 83. Works Laughlin's works include: The river (1938) In Another Country (1979)