On a Williams Carlos Williams kick
Posted by Aaron - 31/07/10 at 07:07:16 pm
William Carlos Williams
A few days ago, I stumbled across this piece on McSweeny’s.
This is Just to Say
That I’m Tired
of Sharing an
Apartment With
William Carlos Williams.
By Laura Jayne MartinWill, you are a dick. You’re goddamn right I was saving those plums for breakfast.
Fine, it’s not like they’re my favorite food in the world, but I mean, they’re a seasonal fruit, you scumbag. Buy your own food for a change. All you do is sit around the house all day writing about red wheelbarrows and junk…
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I had a good chuckle (I really think I did chuckle, not laugh) while reading it, imagining, in part, what it would be like to share an apartment with such an eccentric.
It got me thinking back to some of my favorite William Carlos Williams poems. None of these should come as a surprise; they are probably among his most famous, but that’s just because they are so good.
I’m going to share them (ps the great thing about WCW’s poems, most of them are short, except Paterson, which is six books long). Not sure if this is legal or not, but if some bloggers can get away with posting mp3s, I’m sure a little poetry won’t throw anyone into a tizzy.
The first, of course, is The Red Wheelbarrow.
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upona red wheel
barrowglazed with rain
waterbeside the white
chickens.
Why so much depends upon a wheelbarrow or what it is doing beside the white chickens, I’ll never know. I did, though, come close to understanding the poem my senior year of high school. For a poetry a project, I picked Williams and The Red Wheelbarrow (I think my first choice was Bob Dylan and one of his songs but Ms. Kigar quickly put a stop to that). Somehow, I put together probably 10 pages or so about this 16-word poem. Not bad, eh?
The Figure 5 in Gold by Charles Demuth
Next is The Great Figure. This poem has tremendous potential energy (look at that, getting all sciency). It just builds and builds throughout and then rumbles away.
The Great Figure
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.
And finally … This is Just to Say. I don’t even like plums.
This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the iceboxand which
you were probably
saving
for breakfastForgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
All of these poems were copied from Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams, which I own, but left at my parents house, so I used the library’s copy.
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