William Carlos Williams

[srvfan]

Let's begin with this poem:

Nantucket
William Carlos Williams

Flowers through the window
lavender and yellow

changed by white curtains—
Smell of cleanliness—

Sunshine of late afternoon—
On the glass tray

a glass pitcher, the tumbler
turned down, by which

a key is lying— And the
immaculate white bed

***

No matter how hard I squeeze my brains out, it appears nothing more than the person appreciating a clean room in a house/hotel in Nantucket. The first lines appear to suggest that the cleanliness is an overkill to the point that colored curtains have to be replaced even when it's not really dirty. Maybe not, because the smell came when fresh curtains were replaced.

Then WCW lets our eyes follow the sunlight to a well-arranged and clean glassware (turned down glass shows that it hasn't been used yet). Why does a key have to be protected from dust and dirt? Perhaps it hasn't been used yet, but what is it for? It can't be the door key because the observer is assumed to be inside the room. Then our attention is immediately averted to a clean white bed. But it's not just clean, it's immaculate.

Do you think it's sexually suggestive? Because I suspect it is so. Pitcher and tumbler with a key underneath is...? Although contact hasn't been made yet. And flower curtains replaced by white curtains -- the end of virginity?

WCW insists not on ideas, but on things. But the way I read the poem, I'm afraid it can't be helped. I think it's a good poem for honeymooners. The poem seems to suggest that the place is ideal for first timers to pop the c, to greet hows-your-father...ah you know what I mean.

[Chester]

You know, I just simply don't know what to make of WCW. There's a poem of his entitled "This is Just to Say" that's actually in The Oxford Book of American Poetry that my neighbor's kid could have written. Here's an excerpt:

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
.
.
.
.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.


Now, I'm sure one could go into great detail about symbolism and what did the plums represent and maybe it's a poem about loss, or maybe loss of a love, or maybe the insight gained into the inner workings or a relationship and what does it mean to leave such a note and what does that say about the person who wrote it or about the person who it is presumably written for, or what it says about how the person who wrote it regards the person who is to receive it, or all kinds of things that might give the poem some depth.

But every time I read it, it just seems to be about plums. And that's okay. But when I read a poem I'd prefer to have some reaction beyond 'so what.'

Maybe "Nantucket" is the same. I don't know. He's always mentioned and he's always in anthologies so his stuff has to be really good. Right?

[quasimodo1]

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=178804 This reading guide from the Poetry Foundation will give you some information to help you understand Williams poetry. Hope it helps. q1

[Chester]

Oh I've read and heard the defenses of the man's work. I'm quite aware. Still and all, I just can't shake the 'so what' feeling I get when I read a WCW poem. Probably a failure of mine, no doubt.

[firefangled]

Srvfan, I enjoyed this Williams poem. I had not read it before here.

[firefangled]

This is one of my favorite Williams short poems. It was published in 1920 so I am posting the entire poem.


Portrait of a Lady

Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze—or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
—As if that answered
anything.—Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore—
Which shore?—
the sand clings to my lips—
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
—the petals from some hidden
appletree—Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.

[srvfan]

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/feature.html?id=178804 This reading guide from the Poetry Foundation will give you some information to help you understand Williams poetry. Hope it helps. q1

Haha. I wrote an entry in the comments section. I have a very simple reading on "The Red Wheelbarrow". It was very difficult at first. But in my understanding of Mr. Williams' style, I think the things that depend upon the red wheelbarrow are nothing more but the imagery in the 3rd and 4th stanza. Without the red wheelbarrow, the existence of the two would not make sense at all.

Speaking of "This is Just to Say", I read somewhere that the plum symbolizes virginity and the character in the poem has just taken it. I can't commit to that reading but I paid attention instead to the character's tone in it. He's like a serial killer who admires his "prize" and boasts of his crime. A remorseful person would not do such things.

I'll try "Portrait of a Lady". Here is a Fragonard painting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Fragonard%2C_The_Swing.jpg

And here is an example of a Watteau dress:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Antoine_Watteau_030.jpg



T.S. Elliot made a poem of a similar title:

Thou hast committed—
Fornication: but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead.

The Jew of Malta.


I

AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon
You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do—
With “I have saved this afternoon for you”;
And four wax candles in the darkened room,
Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead,
An atmosphere of Juliet’s tomb
Prepared for all the things to be said, or left unsaid.
We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole
Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and fingertips.
“So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul
Should be resurrected only among friends
Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom
That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room.”
—And so the conversation slips
Among velleities and carefully caught regrets
Through attenuated tones of violins
Mingled with remote cornets
And begins.

“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
[For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind!
How keen you are!]
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you—
Without these friendships—life, what cauchemar!”

Among the windings of the violins
And the ariettes
Of cracked cornets
Inside my brain a dull tom-tom begins
Absurdly hammering a prelude of its own,
Capricious monotone
That is at least one definite “false note.”
—Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance,
Admire the monuments,
Discuss the late events,
Correct our watches by the public clocks.
Then sit for half an hour and drink our bocks.

II

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.”
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.
“Yet with these April sunsets, that somehow recall
My buried life, and Paris in the Spring,
I feel immeasurably at peace, and find the world
To be wonderful and youthful, after all.”

The voice returns like the insistent out-of-tune
Of a broken violin on an August afternoon:
“I am always sure that you understand
My feelings, always sure that you feel,
Sure that across the gulf you reach your hand.

You are invulnerable, you have no Achilles’ heel.
You will go on, and when you have prevailed
You can say: at this point many a one has failed.

But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?
Only the friendship and the sympathy
Of one about to reach her journey’s end.

I shall sit here, serving tea to friends...”

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends
For what she has said to me?
You will see me any morning in the park
Reading the comics and the sporting page.
Particularly I remark
An English countess goes upon the stage.
A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,
Another bank defaulter has confessed.
I keep my countenance,
I remain self-possessed
Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired
Reiterates some worn-out common song
With the smell of hyacinths across the garden
Recalling things that other people have desired.
Are these ideas right or wrong?

III

The October night comes down; returning as before
Except for a slight sensation of being ill at ease
I mount the stairs and turn the handle of the door
And feel as if I had mounted on my hands and knees.
“And so you are going abroad; and when do you return?
But that’s a useless question.
You hardly know when you are coming back,
You will find so much to learn.”
My smile falls heavily among the bric-à-brac.

“Perhaps you can write to me.”
My self-possession flares up for a second;
This is as I had reckoned.
“I have been wondering frequently of late
(But our beginnings never know our ends!)
Why we have not developed into friends.”
I feel like one who smiles, and turning shall remark
Suddenly, his expression in a glass.
My self-possession gutters; we are really in the dark.

“For everybody said so, all our friends,
They all were sure our feelings would relate
So closely! I myself can hardly understand.
We must leave it now to fate.
You will write, at any rate.
Perhaps it is not too late.
I shall sit here, serving tea to friends.”

And I must borrow every changing shape
To find expression ... dance, dance
Like a dancing bear,
Cry like a parrot, chatter like an ape.
Let us take the air, in a tobacco trance—

Well! and what if she should die some afternoon,
Afternoon grey and smoky, evening yellow and rose;
Should die and leave me sitting pen in hand
With the smoke coming down above the housetops;
Doubtful, for a while
Not knowing what to feel or if I understand
Or whether wise or foolish, tardy or too soon...
Would she not have the advantage, after all?
This music is successful with a “dying fall”
Now that we talk of dying—
And should I have the right to smile?

***

Lengthy, no?

[quasimodo1]

Dedication for a Plot of Ground


This plot of ground
facing the waters of this inlet
is dedicated to the living presence of
Emily Dickinson Wellcome
who was born in England; married;
lost her husband and with
her five year old son
sailed for New York in a two-master;
was driven to the Azores;
ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,
met her second husband
in a Brooklyn boarding house,
went with him to Puerto Rico
bore three more children, lost
her second husband, lived hard
for eight years in St. Thomas,
Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed
the oldest son to New York,
lost her daughter, lost her "baby,"
seized the two boys of
the oldest son by the second marriage
mothered them — they being
motherless — fought for them
against the other grandmother
and the aunts, brought them here
summer after summer, defended
herself here against thieves,
storms, sun, fire,
against flies, against girls
that came smelling about, against
drought, against weeds, storm-tides,
neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,
against the weakness of her own hands,
against the growing strength of
the boys, against wind, against
the stones, against trespassers,
against rents, against her own mind. ... {excerpt}

[book_jones]

I think his point was to find little bits of beauty in everyday life. I've always felt that his poems are meant to be taken at face value. The plums in the poem are just that, plums. I've always heard that this poem was meant to be read as a note posted on a fridge. I heard a really interesting segment on This American Life once where many of their contributors wrote parodies of that poem. The whole point was that the narrator is apologizing but is not really sorry. It's an interesting little poem.

[Leo The Lion]

I guess that your interpretation is based on your approach to each poem; i've always enjoyed believing that it was up to the reader to drive deep the shovel of thought into the soil of the poem, pulling out only what resonates with him or her so.
So, with my perspective, I like to believe that their is heavy symbolism in WCW's poems.

One of my favorites;

The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.


Notice the stance of the words, and how they are placed as wheelbarrows.
I like to think that their is something special here.

[paperleaves]

Now, I'm sure one could go into great detail about symbolism and what did the plums represent and maybe it's a poem about loss, or maybe loss of a love, or maybe the insight gained into the inner workings or a relationship and what does it mean to leave such a note and what does that say about the person who wrote it or about the person who it is presumably written for, or what it says about how the person who wrote it regards the person who is to receive it, or all kinds of things that might give the poem some depth.

But every time I read it, it just seems to be about plums. And that's okay. But when I read a poem I'd prefer to have some reaction beyond 'so what.'

Maybe "Nantucket" is the same. I don't know. He's always mentioned and he's always in anthologies so his stuff has to be really good. Right?

I'm glad you mentioned the fact that "it just seems to be about plums". I am a young poet and my writing is much inspired by people like WCW and Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac, etc. , and if you have read any of their simpler works, especially Kerouac's haikus, they seem awfully simple. And sometimes I believe that some poems may not be incredibly symbolic. Maybe the beauty in those lines is that he is outlining an event, and that humanity is beautiful. eating plums is beautiful. And the fact that we can pick apart everything is beautiful. Thank you for bringing that up, it really provoked some ideas in my head regarding purpose. In Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" he emphasizes author purpose, that everyone writes "for an audience" and I wonder who/what WCW was writing for...

[quasimodo1]

Blizzard

Snow falls:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down --
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes --
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there --
his solitary track stretched outhttp://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz321/quasimodo1/william_carlos_williams_03.jpg
upon the world.