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.
 
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