Another thing about William Carlos Williams

 One more note on William Carlos Williams: He was influenced by poets I like and influenced poets I like. 

Kenneth Rexroth, in his poem “A letter to William Carlos Williams,” describes the older poet as the first Great Franciscan poet since the Middle Ages — “a real classic, though not loud about it.” Rexroth said Williams was unlike strident Sappho of Lesbos and like the epigrammist Anyte of Tegea,

                        who says

            Just enough, softly, for all

            The thousands of years to remember.

            It’s a wonderful quiet

            You have, a way to keeping

            Still about the world.

The poet pictures a young woman walking by the beautiful Williams River, named after the man who loved it and saw it when it was the filthy Passaic.

            Poets create such sacramental relationships.

Michael Schmidt has pointed out that, in an age when Eliot was supremely influential, Williams seems to have been immune. A good thing, it seems to me.