William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams (17 September 1883 – 4 March 1963) was an American poet and physician.

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• One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.
  • Letter to his mother, written from the University of Pennsylvania (12 February 1904), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 5

• To tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about — if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me. However, what I do write and allow to survive I always feel is worth while and that nobody else has ever come as near as I have to the thing I have intimated if not expressed. To me it's a matter of first understanding that which may not be put to words. I might add more but to no purpose. In a sense, I must express myself, you're right, but always completely incomplete if that means anything.
  • To Harriet Monroe (October 14 1913), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 26

• It's a strange world made up of disappointments for the most part.
  I keep writing largely because I get a satisfaction from it which can't be duplicated elsewhere. It fills the moments which otherwise are either terrifying or depressed. Not that I live that way, work too quiets me. My chief dissatisfaction with myself at the moment is that I don't seem to be able to lose myself in what I have to do as I should like to.
  • Letter to Robert McAlmon (8 August 1943), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 216

• Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for. We talk about revolution as if was peanuts. What we need is some frank thinking and a few revolutions in our own guts; to hell with what most of the sons of bitches that I know and myself along with them if I don't take hold of myself and turn about when I need to — or go ahead further if that's the game.
  • Letter to Robert McAlmon (4 September 1943), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 217

• Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
  • Letter to James Laughlin (14 January 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219

• What is the use of reading the common news of the day, the tragic deaths and abuses of daily living, when for over half a lifetime we have known that they must have occurred just as they have occurred given the conditions that cause them? There is no light in it. It is trivial fill-gap. We know the plane will crash, the train be derailed. And we know why. No one cares, no one can care. We get the news and discount it, we are quite right in doing so. It is trivial. But the haunted news I get from some obscure patient's eyes is not trivial. It is profound.
  • The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951), Ch. 43: Of Medicine and Poetry

• There's a lot of bastards out there!
  • Remark (c. 1957), as quoted in the introduction to the poem "Death News" by Allen Ginsberg: Visit to W.C.W. circa 1957, poets Kerouac Corso Orlovsky on sofa in living room inquired wise words, stricken Williams pointed thru window curtained on Main Street: "There's a lot of bastards out there!"

• The art of the poem nowadays is something unstable; but at least the construction of the poem should make sense; you should know where you stand. Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.
  • Interview with Stanley Koehler (April 1962), in The Paris Review : Writers at Work, 3rd series, Viking Penguin, p. 29 ISBN 0-14-00.4542-2

Al Que Quiere! (1917)

• I lie here thinking of you:—

  the stain of love
  is upon the world!

  • "Love Song"

• It's a strange courage
  you give me ancient star:

  Shine alone in the sunrise
  toward which you lend no part!

  • "El Hombre"

• Brother!
  — if we were rich
  we'd stick our chests out
  and hold our heads high!

  It is dreams that have destroyed us.

  There is no more pride
  in horses or in rein holding.

  We sit hunched together brooding
  our fate.

  Well —
  all things turn bitter in the end
  whether you choose the right or
  the left way
      and —
  dreams are not a bad thing.

  • "Libertad! Igualidad! Fraternidad!"

• Who shall say I am not
  the happy genius of my household?
  • "Danse Russe"

Spring and All (1923)

• so much depends
  upon

  a red wheel
  barrow

  glazed with rain
  water

  beside the white
  chickens

  • "The Red Wheelbarrow"

• By the road to the contagious hospital
  under the surge of the blue
  mottled clouds driven from the
  northeast — a cold wind.
  • "Spring and All"

• Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
  dazed spring approaches —
  They enter the new world naked,
  cold, uncertain of all
  save that they enter. All about them
  The cold, familiar wind —

  Now the grass, tomorrow
  the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
  One by one objects are defined —
  It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

  But now the stark dignity of
  entrance — Still, the profound change
  has come upon them: rooted, they
  grip down and begin to awaken.

  • "Spring and All"

• The pure products of America
  go crazy —
  • "To Elsie"

Sour Grapes (1921)

• Among the rain
  and lights
  I saw the figure 5
  in gold
  on a red
  firetruck
  moving
  tense
  unheeded
  to gong clangs
  siren howls
  and wheels rumbling
  through the dark city.
  • "The Great Figure"

• Old age is
  a flight of small
  cheeping birds
  skimming
  bare trees
  above a snow glaze.
  Gaining and failing
  they are buffeted
  by a dark wind —
  But what?
  On harsh weedstalks
  the flock has rested —
  the snow
  is covered
  with broken
  seed husks
  and the wind tempered
  with a shrill
  piping of plenty.
  • "To Awaken an Old Lady", originally publised in The Dial (August 1920)

Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)

• I have eaten
  the plums
  that were in
  the icebox

  and which
  you were probably
  saving
  for breakfast

  Forgive me
  they were delicious
  so sweet
  and so cold

  • "This Is Just to Say"

• He's come out of the man
  and he's let
  the man go —
  

the liar
Dead

his eyes

rolled up out of
the light — a mockery

which

love cannot touch —

just bury it
and hide its face
for shame.

• "Death"

• Your case has been reviewed by high-minded
  and unprejudiced observers (like hell
  they were!) the president of a great
  university, the president of a noteworthy
  technical school and a judge too old to sit
  on the bench, men already rewarded for
  their services to pedagogy and the enforcement
  of arbitrary statutes. In other words
  pimps to tradition —
  • "Impromptu: The Suckers"

• It's all you deserve. You've got the cash,
  what the hell do you care? You've got
  nothing to lose. You are inheritors of a great
  tradition. My country right or wrong!
  You do what you're told to do. You don't
  answer back the way Tommy Jeff did or Ben
  Frank or Georgie Washing. I'll say you
  don't. You're civilized. You let your
  betters tell you where you get off. Go
  ahead —
  • "Impromptu: The Suckers"

An Early Martyr and Other Poems (1935)

• Among
  of
  green

  stiff
  old
  bright

  broken
  branch
  come

  white
  sweet
  May

  again

  • "The Locust Tree in Flower"

Complete Collected Poems (1938)

• These

  are the desolate, dark weeks
  when nature in its barrenness
  equals the stupidity of man.

  The year plunges into night
  and the heart plunges
  lower than night

  • "These"

The Wedge (1944)

• Let the snake wait under
  his weed
  and the writing
  be of words, slow and quick, sharp
  to strike, quiet to wait,
  sleepless.
  — through metaphor to reconcile
  the people and the stones.
  Compose. (No ideas
  but in things) Invent!
  Saxifrage is my flower that splits
  the rocks.
  • "A Sort of a Song"

Collected Later Poems (1950)

• Not now. Love itself a flower
  with roots in a parched ground.
  Empty pockets make empty heads.
  Cure it if you can but
  do not believe that we can live
  today in the country
  for the country will bring us
      no peace.
  • "Raleigh Was Right" (1940)

The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954)

• I think
  of the poetry
  of René Char
  and all he must have seen
  and suffered
  that has brought him
  to speak only of
  sedgy rivers,
  of daffodils and tulips
  whose roots they water,
  even to the free-flowing river
  that laves the rootlets
  of those sweet-scented flowers
  that people the
  milky
  way
  • "To a Dog Injured in the Street"

• The cries of a dying dog
  are to be blotted out
  as best I can.
  René Char
  you are a poet who believes
  in the power of beauty
  to right all wrongs.
  I believe it also.
  With invention and courage
  we shall surpass
  the pitiful dumb beasts,
  let all men believe it,
  as you have taught me also
  to believe it.
  • "To a Dog Injured in the Street"

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

• Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
  

like a buttercup

upon its branching stem —

save that's green and wooden —

I come, my sweet,

to sing to you.

We lived long together,

a life filled,

if you will,

with flowers. So that

I was cheered

when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

in hell.

Today

I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

that we both loved,

even to this poor

colorless thing —

I saw it

when I was a child —

little prized among the living

but the dead see,

asking among themselves:

What do I remember

that was shaped

as this thing is shaped?

while our eyes fill

with tears.

Of love, abiding love

it will be telling

though too weak a wash of crimson

colors it

to make it wholly credible.

There is something

something urgent

I have to say to you

and you alone

but it must wait

while I drink in

the joy of your approach,

perhaps for the last time.

And so

with fear in my heart

I drag it out

and keep on talking

for I dare not stop.

• Only give me time,

time to recall them

before I shall speak out.

Give me time,

time.

When I was a boy

I kept a book

to which, from time

to time,

I added pressed flowers

until, after a time,

I had a good collection.

The asphodel,

forebodingly,

among them.

I bring you,

reawakened,

a memory of those flowers.

They were sweet

when I pressed them

and retained

something of their sweetness

a long time.

It is a curious odor,

a moral odor,

that brings me

near to you.

• Endless wealth,

I thought,

held out its arms to me.

A thousand tropics

in an apple blossom.

The generous earth itself

gave us lief.

The whole world

became my garden!

But the sea

which no one tends

is also a garden

when the sun strikes it

and the waves

are wakened.

I have seen it

and so have you

when it puts all flowers

to shame.

• I cannot say

that I have gone to hell

for your love

but often

found myself there

in your pursuit.

I do not like it

and wanted to be

in heaven. Hear me out.

Do not turn away.

I have learned much in my life

from books

and out of them

about love.

Death

is not the end of it.

• The storm unfolds.

Lightning

plays about the edges of the clouds.

The sky to the north

is placid,

blue in the afterglow

as the storm piles up.

It is a flower

that will soon reach

the apex of its bloom.

• When I speak

of flowers

it is to recall

that at one time

we were young.

All women are not Helen,

I know that,

but have Helen in their hearts.

My sweet,

you have it also, therefore

I love you

and could not love you otherwise.

• The storm bursts

or fades! it is not

the end of the world.

Love is something else,

or so I thought it,

a garden which expands,

though I knew you as a woman

and never thought otherwise,

until the whole sea

has been taken up

and all its gardens.

It was the love of love,

the love that swallows up all else,

a grateful love,

a love of nature, of people,

of animals,

a love engendering

gentleness and goodness

that moved me

and that I saw in you.

• I come, my sweet,

to sing to you!

My heart rouses

thinking to bring you news

of something

that concerns you

and concerns many men. Look at

what passes for the new.

You will not find it there but in

despised poems.

•     It is difficult
  to get the news from poems
  

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.