Asked to name the greatest American poet, I’d guess most people would say Whitman. On most days, I’d say William Carlos Williams.
I like many things about him, but here are four:
• He was clear and brief and he drew sharp images. That emphasis on the image seems fundamental to me. It made him sympathetic to the original imagist practice: Go In Fear of Abstraction, as Pound put it. In 1931, the short-lived Objectivist Movement blossomed briefly. He was the old man among Charles Reznikoff, George Oppen and Louis Zukofsky.
• Williams was constantly asking himself what poetry is. He was constantly revising his answer. One of his notions about poetics is the idea of “variable feet.”
• Williams, unlike some poets, was a writer. He kept a notebook in his medical bag and typewriter on his desk in his office. He earned his living as a doctor, and wrote between appointments.
• He wrote a long poem about a place, Paterson.
He wrote so many good poems. One of my favorites is “Tract,” which begins:
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral ...
The poet gets into the details. He wants a rough wagon, or a dray, for the hearse. No need for glass. The dead don’t need to see out.
No wreaths please —
especially no hothouse flowers.
Instead, a memento — old clothes, his books. The mourners should walk behind, exposed “to the weather as to grief.”
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
William Carlos Williams was born on Oct. 17, 1883 in Rutherford, N.J. I’m marking his birthday as a way to honor a writer who influenced me. For more on “Marking the day” see “An activity in lieu of making resolutions,” Dec. 31, 2021.
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