William Carlos Williams

It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

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

Quotes

General sources

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 (February 12, 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 is in tune with the tempo of life — scattered yet welded into the whole, — broken, yet woven together.
- On his work, in an interview in The New York Herald Tribune (January 18, 1932)

The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.
- From A Note on Poetry (c. 1936) quoted in Modern American Poetry (1950) by Louis Untermeyer

Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact … the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.
- Detail & Prosody for the Poem Patterson given to James Laughlin (1939), now at Houghton Library

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 (August 8, 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 it 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 (September 4, 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 (January 14, 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 hunted news I get from some obscure patients' eyes is not trivial. It is profound: whole academies of learning, whole ecclesiastical hierarchies are founded upon it and have developed what they call their dialectic upon nothing else, their lying dialectics. A dialectic is any arbitrary system, which, since all systems are mere inventions, is necessarily in each case a false premise, upon which a closed system is built shutting out those who confine themselves to it from the rest of the world. All men one way or another use a dialectic of some sort into which they are shut, whether it be an Argentina or a Japan. So each group is maimed. Each is enclosed in a dialectic cloud, incommunicado, and for that reason we rush into wars and prides of the most superficial natures.
Do we not see that we are inarticulate? That is what defeats us.
- The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951), Ch. 54: "The Practice"

My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy.
- The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951) [W. W. Norton & Co., 1967, ISBN 978-0811202268]

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!"

I liked this because of the elimination of the essential in the composition. I cut it down and down, and down. This squeezed up to make it vivid.
- Annotation on "Chicory and Daisies" (1915) on John C. Thirlwell's copy of The Collected Earlier Poems (c. 1958)

I thought my friends were damn fools, because they didn't know any better way of conducting their lives. Still they conformed better than I to a code. I wanted to conform but I couldn't so I wrote my poetry.
- Annotations on John C. Thirlwell's copy of The Collected Earlier Poems (c. 1958)

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

Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.
- As quoted in Free Verse. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 2nd ed (1975)

Marriage (1916)

So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.
- Poetry Chicago, 1916)

Al Que Quiere! (1917)

It's a strange courage
you give me ancient star:
Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!

Full text online at Wikisource

Lift your flowers
on bitter stems
chickory!
Lift them up
out of the scorched ground!
Bear no foliage
but give yourself
wholly to that!
Strain under them
you bitter stems
that no beast eats —
and scorn greyness!
- "Chicory and Daisies"

The earth cracks and
is shriveled up;
the wind moans piteously;
the sky goes out
if you should fail.
- "Chicory and Daisies"

Why do I write today?
The beauty of
the terrible faces
of our nonentities
stirs me to it:
colored women
day workers—
old and experienced—
returning home at dusk,
in cast off clothing
faces like
old Florentine oak.
- "Apology"

the set pieces
of your faces stir me —
leading citizens —
but not
in the same way.
- "Apology"

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 published 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)

The War is the first and only thing in the world today.
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field.
- Introduction

Who isn’t frustrated and does not prove it by his actions — if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.
- Introduction

A man isn’t a block that remains stationary though the psychologists treat him so — and most take an insane pride in believing it. Consistency! He varies; Hamlet today, Caesar tomorrow; here, there, somewhere — if he is to retain his sanity, and why not?
The arts have a complex relation to society. The poet isn’t a fixed phenomenon, no more is his work.
- Introduction

There’s nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.
- Introduction

Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.
- Introduction

Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.
- Introduction

When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them — without distortion which would mar their exact significances — into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.
- Introduction

There is no poetry of distinction without formal invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve their exact meaning, in which they most resemble the machine, to give language its highest dignity, its illumination in the environment to which it is native. Such war, as the arts live and breathe by, is continuous.
It may be that my interests as expressed here are pre-art. If so I look for a development along these lines and will be satisfied with nothing else.
- Introduction

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)

René Char
you are a poet who believes
in the power of beauty
to right all wrongs.
I believe it also.

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"

Journey to Love (1955)

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower

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.

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.

Endless wealth,
I thought,
held out its arms to me.

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.

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men…

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.

Quotes about William Carlos Williams

Native American literature should be important to Americans not as a curio, an artifact of the American past that has little pertinence to an American present or future, but rather as a major tradition that informs American writers ranging from Cotton Mather and Nathaniel Hawthorne through Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, and William Faulkner to Adrienne Rich, Toni Cade Bambara, and Judy Grahn.
- Paula Gunn Allen The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions (1986)

In one of his poems William Carlos Williams writes that "destruction and creation are simultaneous." Picasso said a very similar thing. For Williams, that's a way of mythologizing the avant-garde, the cutting edge: you have to destroy.
- Tony Barnstone in Conversations with Bharati Mukherjee Edited by Bradley C. Edwards (2009)

My early identity and love poems were influenced by the imagism of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams.
- Marilyn Chin Preface to A Portrait of the Self as Nation: New and Selected Poems (2018)

When I read Virginia Woolf's Orlando or William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain, I can feel like I'm dying, or I'm stuck, both in life and in work. I read those books, and then I start flowing again. I'm happy that I can do that for other people.
- 1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

When I was reading William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain...I thought, wow, this is it. This is the way to write about America. This is right. This is history, the mythic history. So I'm sure there was going to be a volume two. So I ran to the library and turned this one in, looking for volume two. There isn't a volume two; that's it! That was when I thought, oh. I've got to write volume two. If he didn't do it, then I've got to do it. So that's China Men. They bind the country together with steel, the bands of steel that are the railroads. That's the same kind of missing feeling; after I finished the first two books, I thought, oh! there's more language in me, this other kind of language, this very slangy, American, present-day language. And the other thing that was missing was that, well, I wanted to read some books about the time that the Beatniks went away-those are our forefathers, our immediate forefathers.
- 1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

In the 1920s, he was calling for a book that was worthy of the Americas. He was thinking of a big American novel. He was not confining it to the United States. Williams was thinking of the Americas; he wanted a book that was speaking from the large ground of these two continents.
- 1993 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

fear of embarrassment, fear of sticking your neck out, fear of looking foolish, fear of writing in a way that nobody else is writing (I'm not talking about trying to be extraordinary or avant-garde)... there are people who stick through for twenty years.... I'll give you an example: William Carlos Williams. In his autobiography he says (I'll have to paraphrase this, he said it with a New Jersey accent), "Well, it looks like this guy T. S. Eliot has hit it real big with The Waste Land, it looks like that is the direction for literature." His next line is: "Now I know I will have to wait twenty years to be heard." So he did, he just kept doing what he thought was right, became a powerful influence, stuck to his ideas of the American language. But lots and lots of other people said, "Well, that looks like the way to go," and trotted off, cutting their roots as they went.
- 1979 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley (1997)

What I lacked was even the idea of a twentieth-century tradition of radical or revolutionary poetics as a stream into which a young poet could dip her glass. Among elders, William Carlos Williams wrote from the landscape of ordinary urban, contemporary America, of ordinary poor and working people, and in a diction of everyday speech, plainspoken yet astonishingly musical and flexible. But I don't recall being taken out of my skin by any Williams poem, though later I would work with his phrasing and ways of breaking a line as a means of shedding formal metrics.
- Adrienne Rich What Is Found There (2003)

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