Ahh... William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)... I remember having his room in the Upper Quad at Penn being pointed out to me when I was a freshman living in the lower Quad. He went on to medical school and practiced family medicine - the old-fashioned way, with house calls! - in northern New Jersey for forty years, while also establishing himself as one of the most authentic and important voices in American poetry, a "must read" in any poetry course covering the 20th Century. I hope that you, dear reader, take the extra few minutes sometime to "click" on his name (at the bottom), which will take you to a good bio sketch about someone a critic called: "...an immensely complicated man: energetic, compassionate, socially conscious, depressive, urbane, provincial, tough, fastidious, capricious, independent, dedicated, completely responsive.... He was the complete human being, and all of the qualities of his personality were fused in his writings." My selection for today is one that needs reading more than once... and slowly, with attention, both aurally and visually, to the line breaks: they really matter. I would have preferred to share another poem of his - Asphodel, That Greenly Flower - but it's too long for here, though a masterpiece. (If you click here, it will take you to an mp3 audio file (!) that's Williams, in 1954, reading the opening lines from it. When you are on that site, go to the right side, to the tan background box in the middle and click on the green smaller box with the white triangle inside to play it without downloading.)
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The Ivy Crown
The whole process is a lie,
unless,
crowned by excess,
it break forcefully,
one way or another,
from its confinement –
or find a deeper well.
Antony and Cleopatra
were right;
they have shown
the way. I love you
or I do not live
at all.
Daffodil time
is past. This is
summer, summer!
the heart says,
and not even the full of it.
No doubts
are permitted –
though they will come
and may
before our time
overwhelm us.
We are only mortal
but being mortal
can defy our fate.
We may
by an outside chance
even win! We do not
look to see
jonquils and violets
come again
but there are,
still,
the roses!
Romance has no part in it.
The business of love is
cruelty which,
by our will,
we transform
to live together.
It has its seasons,
for and against,
whatever the heart
fumbles in the dark
to assert
toward the end of May.
Just as the nature of briars
is to tear flesh,
I have proceeded
through them.
Keep
the briars out,
they say.
You cannot live
and keep free of
briars.
Children pick flowers.
Let them,
Through having them
in hand
they have no further use for them
but leave them crumpled
at the curb’s edge.
At our age the imagination
across the sorry facts
lifts us
to make roses
stand before thorns.
Sure
love is cruel
and selfish
and totally obtuse –
at least, blinded by the light,
young love is.
But we are older,
I to love
and you to be loved,
we have,
no matter how,
by our wills survived
to keep
the jeweled prize
always
at our finger tips.
We will it so
and so it is
past all accident.
William Carlos Williams - American
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