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Liked It “A fantastic and thorough collection of this magnificent poet's works. A great introduction to Williams' poetry for those new to his work and a marvelous read for fans. |
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“A fantastic and thorough collection of this magnificent poet's works. A great introduction to Williams' poetry for those new to his work and a marvelous read for fans.
Iceangel9 wrote this review Monday, August 20, 2012. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
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“Interested in capturing the "American idiom," how language and words are regularly spoken in America as opposed to the European tradition. Used the "variable foot" and the "stepped triadic line," which divides a line into three parts. Williams is considered an imagist and this is notable in The Red Wheelbarrow, though by then it's claimed that he was already more aligned with the modernists. Williams disliked Eliot and Pound because of their constant use of foreign and "high" references. He preferred the "local," which is really so American.
Green wrote this review Tuesday, August 10, 2010. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
Danse Russe
Man is in is house at night while his kid and wife are sleeping. Dances naked in front of the mirror, cries that he is lonely and proclaims that he is the master--"guardian spirit"--of the house. But this poem all begins with a conditional--"If" and ends with a conditional question: "Who shall say I am not/the happy genius of my household?" A poignant moment is when he looks in the mirror and sings "I am lonely, lonely./I was born to be lonely,/I am best so!" Does his being the "happy genius of his household" rest on the fact that he admires his "grotesque body?" Is it that he celebrates all of the bad--his ugly body, his loneliness, etc...?
Portrait of a Lady
This is sort of a blazon in distress, a blazon who doesn't know his referrent. So, "your thighs are appletress/whose blossoms touch the sky"--clear enough, but then he asks "Which sky?" He responds with a sky painted--i.e. already a representation--by Watteau (or by Fragonard), but knows "as if that answered anything." And so the poem continues describing the lady's body parts--odd parts, like the spot below her knees, which he associates with the shore, though then of course asks "which shore?" It's as if all of the former, abstracted and generalized knowledge that goes into making a blazon gets called into question here and also gets complicated by the speaker's need for a specific, local referrent. The shore, that is, can't just be the platonic ideal of shore, but he needs to know "Which shore?"
The Red Wheelbarrow
This is an example of Williams's imagist sensibility. "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow," which is to say that life is not made up of massive ideologies, etc. but of the common idioms and stuff--the American stuff like that so recognizable image of a red wheelbarrow.
This is Just to Say
Says that he's eaten the plums that were in the ice box that whomever was saving for breakfast and asks for forgiveness--not quite sincere--and says, "they were delicious." This poem and The Red Wheelbarrow and "Poem" are all made up very short lines and short stanzas.
Poem
Describes a cat who jumps carefully into a flowerpot.
Asphodel, The Greeny Flower, Book 1
Poem to his wife, uses the greeny asphodel flowers that line the fields of heel as a memory or memento of their love now that she is gone.
Paterson”
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