As you read Williams' poetry, think about the following questions and post your responses below:
1) How does Williams play with interrelations among "the sister arts" (painting, photography, music)?
2) How do his poems use simple words that become meaningful when placed in juxtaposition or when placed in a highly visual composition?
3) Like Frost's work, many of these poems directly or indirectly address the writing of poetry. How? What do they say?
4) How does Williams construct his speakers? What kind of voice do we find in these poems? How would you characterize his language?
Here's Brueghel's "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," which is what Williams based his poem on of the same name:
![[icarus.jpg]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrP7Gie76rVmKFeJTTIH2o4WtibPD3yb2mwQNuh7RBF4lLDcNRYbTji5ly9nJKlG8AJxpgDojwZ2s-bfG1dcKXjwTrKakVzhADRlrtgjYhoIA1cnpQUIWNmXCg_V85NY8PyohBUMNq6c69/s1600/icarus.jpg)
The most obvious way Williams plays with the sister arts is by literally turning a painting into poetry, as he does with Bruegel. But he also uses very vivid language to the point where on can imagine the scene. The fact that Williams uses such a simple vocabulary, I believe, makes his poetry that much more meaningful. He often isolates words to make one think about why it is isolated and the words above it and after it. The voice I get from his poetry is that of a very observant, simple, and a little sadistic. Overall, I definetly "get" Williams' poetry better than the previous writers we have looked at.
ReplyDelete-Sam Newbod
Williams, to me, has always been about what is not said in his writing. What is in the seeming gaps of thought and text is where the heart of his writings lies. This is a very modern idea. The world around the individual was changing rapidly. There was now too much information, too much culture to absorb. One was left with a small smattering of input from which to extrapolate some sort of paradigm. This equates to Williams' minimalist style. His words are the only input we have, and we, the reader, must extrapolate a sort of paradigm of gaps from what is left unsaid.
ReplyDeleteThe fall of Icarus is an example of this sort of exposition of lack. Icarus and Daedalus are famous mytho-poetical figures. The fall of Icarus is well recognized and has been written about very much. Yet, the body of Williams' work is not about that fall. It is mostly concerned about the landscape of the farmer in the painting.
This is perhaps a reflection of the emerging monoculture of modernity. Communication and transportation devices were advancing by leaps and bounds. In a figurative sense, the world was growing smaller. Cultures were beginning to merge and blend. This is the idea of monoculture. Yet, this was only in its inception. There were still considerable gaps. Entire cultures could die in some of the far-flung parts of the world and the average person might never know. In this way, I think Williams was very in touch with the modernity and its "growing pains."
I think Williams uses simple words so the reader can create a picture of what’s going on. Williams could be addressing the writing of poetry by his format for the poems. The poems were all short and the lines were broken apart fast. I think Williams is trying to make us think twice about what we’re reading, instead of just keeping all of the words together in a bigger paragraph. His speakers seem observant, but they also dwell on simple objects such as the wheel barrow or plums from an ice box.
ReplyDeleteMy my my! FINALLY! It makes sense!
ReplyDeleteThe last classes were absolutely terrible for me: no matter how many times I read Frost and Stevens, I could hardly get what they meant (it is even worse for Frost). Poetry in French is already hard to understand sometimes so yes, in another language, it is terrible. Now Williams IS understandable and this is mostly due to his use of simple words and metaphors that are more speaking than Frost and Stevens, he makes poetry "Reachable" for people who just want to read a poem and not have to read it 20 times to partially get the meaning. I don't believe that the use of simple words and very short verses make him any less "impressive" than the two others, for me it sounds like an even tougher work; doing the same thing, but more accessible.
Ben B
Personally I think the Red Wheelbarrow is absolutely ridiculous. I think he's trying to be profound but the poem itself is just silly. I've thought this ever since reading it in high school. Maybe I'm missing something important he's shooting for but every time I read it it's like I can't take him seriously.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't to put down his other works, however. I was shocked when I read his poems about death, particularly The Dead Baby which is about exactly what the title says. For me the this poem as well as his poem Death are much more emotional. He explores a very dark subject and seems to express what feelings this may bring about very succinctly.
In contrast The Red Wheelbarrow is just nonsense. I enjoy his poems that I can actually take a meaning from. That just isn't one of them.
I have waited for this day since signing up for blogging. Upon seeing the syllabus, my eyes immediately saw "The Fall of Icarus" and set it against Auden's "La Musee des Beaux Arts", which is infinitely better on many grounds. However, I'll stay away from bashing Williams for the sake of constructive blogging. The minimalism that he implores in the poem relates to the barrenness of the painting, the suffering of Icarus ("About suffering, they were never wrong,/The Old Masters"), and the negligence to human agony which it portrays. Williams does a favor to those not keen on poetry by skipping the stated philosophical jazz that one loves about poetry, but it aids in helping the layman see the pain, in a mere description of the painting, that Icarus experiences and the omnipresent feeling that something could have been done to save him if only we cared about others not ourselves (which Auden did better). I will stop here for I fear any further would be a comparison of the texts and a bashing of Williams style. However, I urge you to read this: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mus-eacute-e-des-beaux-arts/
ReplyDeleteAuden's was well before Williams'
I really enjoy how Williams can use one word to put the whole poem under the influence of just that one word. In his poem The Red Wheel Barrow, Williams uses the word glaze as a turning point in the poem to captivate the reader into a feeling of nostalgia for pastoral America. Its not that William Carlos Williams is only concerned with that realm of American life, but he wants to capture his own image in his own words. Glaze does this beautifully because it not only gives the reader a correlation to a painting, one of the sister arts, but it also puts a balmy film over the picture in our minds, as though we were looking at an old painting of a rural landscape.
ReplyDeleteOK. Since my last attempt at posting a parody was a definite Fail, and since everyone else is saying such smart things, I will post a parody of Williams by Kenneth Koch.
ReplyDelete"Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams"
1. I chopped down the house that you had been saving to live in next summer. I am sorry, but it was morning, and I had nothing to do and its wooden beams were so inviting.
2. We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.
3. I gave away the money that you had been saving to live on for the next ten years. The man who asked for it was shabby and the firm March wind was so juicy and so cold.
4. Last evening we went dancing and I broke your leg. Forgive me. I was clumsy and I wanted you in the wards, where I am the doctor!