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Morton Marcus: He said: I wanted to write a poem that you would understand, for what good is it to me if you can understand it, but you got to try hard. But, well, you know how the young girls run giggling

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on Park Avenue after dark when they ought to be home in bed? Well, that's the way it is with me somehow. His name was William Carlos Williams, and he was born on September 17th, 1883. And the music you just heard was

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"Fanfare for the Common Man" by Aaron Copeland, and is the fitting introduction to this small town doctor, one of the giants of American poetry, who you, if you are writing poetry today, have been influenced by, whether you know his poetry or

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not. He is from my generation and the generation before me, the master influence, the director of where our poetry should go, and more important, how it should sound. And tonight, I'm going to read a lot of the poems of William Carlos

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Williams so that you get a sense of who he was and what his poem sounded like. William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey on September 17th, 1883. He lived there almost his entire life. He first went to dentistry school, then switched

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to medicine, and became a doctor, and was a baby doctor, a pediatrician, all his life. At the same time, he wrote poetry. He was very, very involved in the theoretical changes that were going on and where poetry should go and what it should be

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in the early 1900s, and Twenties, and Thirties. He had a correspondence with Wallace Stevens, and they talked about images, and they talked about the direction of poetry, and especially about the quality of the imagination. He was a

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lifelong friend for more than sixty years, as a college boy and then after, with Ezra Pound. He was a great friend of Marianne Moore. And he really was a seminal writer and thinker in the whole New York City scene. Rutherford was a very,

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very quick trip across the river, then later in the tunnels under the river, to New York City and Greenwich Village. What you have to know about William Carlos Williams was that he was in all words, a regionalist. In fact, we can even say that he

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was very parochial. He made one trip to Europe, and he was absolutely disgusted with what he saw there. He could not stand being away from Rutherford and went back home and never again tried to go to Europe. And where did he go in Europe? He went to

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Paris. So whereas all American expatriate writers were embracing Paris and the internationalism of Paris, William Carlos Williams did not. He came back to America and here are the themes; he was concerned with the everyday American

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experience. And this, of course, has become so much a part of writers who began writing in the late 1950s, especially. They turned to him more and more because he turned away from European imagery, he turned away from the lauding of the European

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life, and connected American poetry once more with Walt Whitman. He looked for those moments of revelation and wonder that were part of the American scene just walking along a street. He was part of the whole Imagist and Objectivists school,

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that is, he was concerned with looking at images and not ideas. In fact, the great quote that is often quoted that is his from Paterson: "No ideas but in things." And so when your creative writing teacher has told you in the past, or as I

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told you most recently maybe the last few days, "Don't tell, show," this is what he was concerned with and this is his idea. Just do the concrete image, that is what poetry is all about. Try to remove your ego as much as you can from the

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poem; a lot of us have forgotten that one. He really, though he wrote in free verse, he really didn't think that free verse was a legitimate poetry form, and so he searched for a new kind of verse, a verse that would fit

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the American speech pattern, and he finally found it in the late 50s, and it was called "the variable foot." Unfortunately, no one can parse it, no one can actually measure it out. It seems to be somewhere between three and four beats the line,

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but it's impossible to do any more with than that, for most people. He, therefore, would be concerned with music and sound, but the sound was American. And what he said was, and this to me is one of his great gifts to America, he said, "What you have

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to do is listen to the American voice. The British line of poetry, that is their mother line, has ten syllables and five beats and it is iambic pentameter, but we speak a shorter language to the breath. And that language takes a breath

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every three or four beats to a line, or three or four beats to our speech." So he tried to emulate that. And actually his patients would come into his office or he would go on house calls, that was when doctors went on house calls, he would

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listen to what people said and he'd write them down on his prescription pads because they were the American voicebox, they were talking the way he wanted to talk in poetry. So, let me read some William Carlos Williams for you. His short

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poems seem extremely simple and therefore, for years were not paid much attention to by the critics. It was only in the late 40s and early 50s, that he really began to be recognized as a major American poet, and at that point, began to assume the

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influence on most poets who now would be seventy or eighty. And certainly for the next forty years, he exerted a tremendous pressure, and as I said, if you are a young poet out there, your teachers are tremendously influenced by him. Here is where

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he satirizes European imagery, and this European imagery is really romantic imagery and romanticizing subjects and things. And here, he also uses a lot of satire and humor, as I will go into it in the next poem. And he calls this one,

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"Portrait of a Lady," it's a very early poem. And he tries to compare, or the speaker in this poem, tries to compare his love to apple trees, different parts of her body, and he doesn't do the usual you know, your eyes are like stars, your tears are

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like pearls, he does something else. But notice what happens in here, he gets all mixed up in his own imagery, and finally just gives it up, because using all of this standard imagery really doesn't get you anywhere, it's just a load of, as he would

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say, bunk. So, here is an early satiric love poem, in which the speaker gets all mixed up with his own images, and it is called: PORTRAIT OF A LADY

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Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where the painter Watteau hung a lady's slipper. Your knees are a summer breeze -- or a gust of snow. Agh! What sort of man was Fragonard? -- as if that answered anything. Ah,

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yes -- below the knees, since the tune drops that way, it is one of those white summer days, the tall grass of your ankles flickers upon the shore -- which shore? The sand clings to my lips -- Which shore? Agh, petals maybe. Well, how should I know?

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Which shore? Which shore? I said petals from an appletree. Here's a more extended poem, and one in which he speaks about the American experience and tries to again get some of the carnival atmosphere of salesmanship of the early 20s into his voice.

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And it's called, "Tract," and it is a satire on the materialism of America, but it's also on funerals, and how you have someone at a funeral. His ideas, by the way, are seen in various articles that he wrote, but he wrote a terrific study in

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American history, which is more poetic than accurate, but it is a marvelous insight into America and how we have treated this continent and who the real American heroes are, or who they are not. And it is some of the greatest prose written in the

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20th century and the book is called, "In the American Green," and I'm sure it's still available from New Directions in maybe it's twentieth printing. It is an amazing reading experience because the language is so beautiful. Williams also

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wrote short stories, many of which have been anthologized and continue to be anthologized, about the American experience. Here is his satire on materialism: TRACT

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I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral -- for you have it over a troop of artists -- unless one should scour the world -- you have the necessary ground sense necessary. See! the hearse leads. I begin with design for a

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hearse. For Christ's sake not black -- nor white either -- and not polished! Let it be weathere -- like a farm wagon -- with gilt wheels (this could be applied fresh at small expense) or no wheels at all: a rough dray to drag over the ground.

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Knock the glass out! My God-glass, my townspeople! For what purpose? Is it for the dead to look out at us for us to see how well he is housed or to see how the flowers or the lack of them are there, or what? To keep the rain and snow from him? He

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will have a heavy rain soon: pebbles and dirt and whatnot. Let there be no glass -- and no upholstery phew! And no little brass rollers and small easy wheels on the bottom -- my townspeople what are you thinking of? A rough plain

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hearse then with gilt wheels and no top at all. On this the coffin lies by its own weight. No wreathes please -- especially no hot house flowers. Some common memento is better, something he prized and is known by: his old clothes -- a few

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books perhaps -- God knows what! You realize how we are about these things my townspeople -- something will be found -- anything even flowers if he had come to that. So much for the hearse anyway. For heaven's sake though see to the driver! Take

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off the silk hat! In fact, that's no place at all for him -- up there unceremoniously dragging our friend out to his own dignity! Bring him down -- bring him down! Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride on the wagon at all -- damn

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him -- the undertaker's understrapper! Let him hold the reins and walk at the side and inconspicuously too! Then briefly as to yourselves: Walk behind -- as they do in France, seventh class, or if you ride hell take curtains! Go with some

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show of inconvenience; sit openly -- to the weather as to grief. Or do you think you can shut grief in? What, from us? We who have perhaps nothing to lose? Share with us, share with us -- it will be money in your pockets. Go now, I think you are

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ready. Now, Williams would write poems about moments when he saw an object. This is this idea of just almost painting pictures and words. He would use metaphors, but he really just

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liked to describe the event itself, and he did this with a lot of breaking up of lines, and to give a momentary sense of things, he would sort of very discordantly, or kaleidoscopically, just mash a whole lot of different things

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together. But we'll get to those poems a little later. I want to read you this poem to a young housewife. Now, in many ways this is a cavalier love poem in the suburbs of New Jersey, okay? There is very definitely a sense of submerged sex, in fact, I

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think there's a real sense of sadism here. But there's also this sense, well, let me read you the poem and then- then we'll talk about it a little. It's called: THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE

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At ten A.M. the young housewife moves about in negligee behind the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary in my car. Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray

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ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf. The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling. And that is a very interesting poem. You have almost this sense

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of a Peeping Tom, passing in his car, looking at this young housewife who is still in stages of undress in her nightclothes, and she is, notice she's coming from the walls of her husband's house. She is a prisoner in her husband's house. And he then

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enters the picture by passing in his car alone, and then he describes her tucking in stray hairs. She's not made up, she's just all disheveled, and this makes her very, very attractive, though the details he gives gives us a sense of her

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sexuality, but he compares her to a fallen leaf. And then he drives on and he drives over the dried leaves as though destroying them, now what does he mean by that? She is a dried leaf, she is dead, is that what he's saying? Because he can't

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have her, because she is her husband's wife, or because she has been part of the suburban scene in which she is denied her individuality? It is a very, very evocative poem in which, even though there is an eye there, the ego is not there,

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although there is obviously a mental thought going on here as he compares her to the leaf and then runs over. Let me read the poem again, you do with it then what you want in this vocation of just a scene, and what does his bowing and smiling as he

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passes mean. THE YOUNG HOUSEWIFE At ten A.M. the young housewife moves about a negligee a behind the wooden walls of her husband's house. I pass solitary

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in my car. Then again she comes to the curb to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, tucking in stray ends of hair, and I compare her to a fallen leaf. The noiseless wheels of my car rush with a crackling sound over dried

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leaves as I bow and pass smiling. And here's one of my favorite poems by a William Carlos Williams, and again, it is so simple but it is so full of joy, and a sense of loneliness and aloneness in the world, and yet

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the joy of it, and also it's very comic in its own way, though it's very poignant. The names of one of the people in here, the name Kathleen, I should tell you that William Carlos Williams had several children. His wife's name was

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Floss of Florence, he called her Flossie, but to take care of the kids, to help Flossie take care of the kids, they brought in a young girl by the name of Kathleen, and that's who he's referring to here. So here is the, "Danse Russe," and he had

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just seen the Russian ballet, the Dance Russe, or Russian dance ensemble so that is why he is ecstatic. But here is this wonderful celebration poem called the, "Danse Russe," and then again listen to the language, listen to how this

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language mirrors so much of the language that's being spoken today. It is not the poetic language we imagined from the 19th century, it is an attempt to grab the American voicebox of today.

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DANSE RUSSE If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disk in silken mists above shining trees, if I in my north room dance naked,

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grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing to myself softly: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn

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curtains, who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household? And that is the, "Danse Russe," and of course, the comic part of this is, though he seems so free and open and ready to celebrate,

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the fact of the matter is everyone is asleep in the house, he is alone, and even though there's sun outside, when he dances, the blinds are drawn. So he's not really as free as he makes out here and he certainly seems to be laughing at himself.

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Here is him to one of his body parts, in this case, his nose and a poem called, "Smell." And if you read this in the way that I do, he is talking about all the terrible things that his nose brings him, all the terrible odors, and how his nose

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is just poking into all the terrible odors of the world very much as he pokes into all the terrible things of the world, not just as a doctor, but as a poet, because he wants not the uplifting beautiful gossamer princess scenes, but the

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American street scenes, the American everyday experience. So here is: SMELL! Again, a very comic twinge to this. Oh strong-ridged and deeply hollowed nose of mine! What will

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you not be smelling? What tactless asses we are, you and I, boney nose, always indiscriminate, always unashamed, and now it is the souring flowers of the bedraggled poplars: a festering pulp on the wet earth beneath

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them. With what deep thirst we quicken our desires to that rank odor of a passing springtime! Can you not be decent? Can you not reserve your ardors for something less unlovely? What girl will care for us, do you think, if we continue in these

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ways? Must we taste everything? Must we know everything? Must we have a part in everything? And of course, the answer is, yes. Then this long poem that I read the opening part of, and I'll just read you part of it.

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Here's what I mean by what he was concentrating on. And I'll read around two or three sections of: JANUARY MORNING, a suite of poems that he obviously wrote quickly in a notebook for his grandmother. And I'll just read

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part of it. Here's: PART ONE, these are very, very short sections. I have discovered that most of the beauties of travel are due to the strange hours we keep to see them: the domes of the

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Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken [unintelligible]. The domes of the Church of the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken against a smoky dawn -- the heart stirred -- are beautiful as Saint Peters approached after years of anticipation.

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And it seems to me that that little five lines is the heart of Williams' poetry. The domes of this church in Weehawken, New Jersey against a smokey dawn are as beautiful as the revered domes of Saint Peters in Rome, after you would approach it of

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years of anticipation. There is in America an equal beauty to all the beauties of the old world. And that's what he wants to get over in his poetry and his thought: Look at our life here, don't look to other cultures and other places, we

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have the beauty in America. Again, it is no mistake or accident that I chose "Theme for the Common Man," "A Fanfare for the Common Man" by Aaron Copeland, another person who in the 20s and the 30s is looking for music that will exemplify

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the sounds and the being and the experience of America, as many other people were. They, in many ways, their works go hand in glove. And here are just some of the little sections of this: And the sun, dipping into the avenues streaking the tops of

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the irregular red houselets, and the gay shadows dropping and dropping. And a young horse with a green bed-quilt on his withers shaking his head: bared teeth and nozzle high in the air!

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And then the worn blue car rails (like the sky!) gleaming among the cobbles! {Comment] And then he's on a ferry and he says: Exquisite brown waves -- long circlets of silver moving over

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you! Enough with crumbling ice crusts among you! The sky has come down to you, lighter than tiny bubbles, face to face with you! His spirit is a white gull with delicate pink feet and a snowy breast for you to hold your lips delicately!

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[Comment] And then, finally, so overcome is he on the ferry that there's this section: The young doctor is dancing with happiness in the sparkling wind, alone at the prow of the ferry! He notices the curdy barnacles

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and broken ice crusts left the ship's base by the low tide and thinks of summer and green shell-crusted ledges among the emerald eel-grass! And then finally, he goes into the section that I read you

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which is: "All this, which is wanted to write a poem that yo would understand." Now that po m was for his grandmother becau e though he was raised n Rutherford, New Jersey by h s mother and father, his moth r was a very, very disorient

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d woman who really hated Ameri a and wanted to get back to Pari , she had been brought up from t e West Indies. And his mother- h s grandmother really was the o e who raised him and doted on hi . And her name was Emily Dickins n Wellcome, they had nothing to

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o with the poet Emily Dickinso . She was married several time , she was really a strong woma , and I'm going to talk about h s attitude towards women after I read this poem. In fact, maybe I won't read this poem, and I wi l save it as we take our break n

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w and I'll be back. We are readi g the poetry of William Carl s Williams, who was born two da s from now on September 17t , 1883. And we will be back wi h more William Carlos William This is Mort Marcus again on the Poetry Show and we will continue

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with our talk about William Carlos Williams' poetry, reading from his poetry, but some PSAs. First of all, we want to thank everyone out there, all of our listeners and supporters who have kept us on the air for some thirty odd years. We thank you

00:28:44.130 - 00:29:01.860

and we want all of you to know we appreciate your appreciation of us at KUSP. "First Perso Singular" is KUSP's Op Ed Pa e for Airwaves airing eve y Monday, Wednesday, and Friday t 7:33am and 5:33pm. "First Per on Singular" features so

00:29:01.860 - 00:29:20.790

ial commentary, pers nal observation, and opinion. Yo 've got something to say, thi is your chance to be heard To submit a commentary, email, and here's the addr ss: commentary@kusp.org. Again, ery easy, commentary@kusp.or

00:29:23.370 - 00:29:35.940

. I want to remind you hat following this pro ram immediately, "From the Books elf," hosted by the brillia t and charming Gary Shapiro, wh will read one of the hil rious stories about his li e and times, that is

00:29:35.970 - 00:29:52.230

t 9pm immediately following this show. And my only announcement o get people ready out th re on October 7th, at the Bo kshop Santa Cruz, yours truly Mort Marcus will read from my brand new book, which is c lled, "Shouting Down the Si

00:29:52.230 - 00:30:09.120

ence: Verse Poems, 1988-2001." I 's my first book of verse poems since 1988. This has nothing to do with a book that I pub ished this spring, it just so h ppens due to two different publ shers and a big mix up that both books have come out this year.

00:30:09.120 - 00:30:22.950

And I hope to see you there. hat's the Bookshop Santa Cruz a 7:30 on October the seventh, th t's a Monday, and you'll be h aring more about that as this p ogram is announced the next s veral

00:30:24.490 - 00:30:40.360

Okay, back to William Carlos Williams who was born September 17th, 1883. And what we've talked about with Williams is that he is very much concerned with the image with making things concrete, he really abhors abstractions. And you

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young writers who have had creative writing teachers, or have been reading American poetry for the last forty, fifty years, you know that this has been one of the singular themes of American poetry. The other is the real attempt to grab the way

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Americans speech- speak, not the way British people speak. Again, Williams threw out the idea of a five beat iambic pentameter line, in fact, any of the metrics that were being used in English verse, and wrote mostly in free verse, although he was

00:31:13.240 - 00:31:31.630

always looking for an American series of metrics, which he finally thought he found called the "variable foot." His work is usually filled with a lot of humor, but it concentrates on everyday minutiae of American experience, so that is the

00:31:31.630 - 00:31:48.640

important thing to remember. He, though his friend was Ezra Pound through his whole life, he took great exception to Pound and especially T.S. Eliot, who embraced European culture and culture outside of this country's culture. Well, we were

00:31:48.640 - 00:32:07.000

about- I was about to read his really, his eulogy, a memorial to the grandmother who raised him, Emily Dickinson Wellcome, this is in Rutherford and here is this wonderful poem. And to me, it's wonderful because, again, the American speech

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patterns that he catches here, even more so than, "Tract," that poem I'd read earlier about how we should conduct a funeral, really concerning ourselves of the dead. Here is his concern with dedicating a plot of ground to his grandmother. And here we

00:32:27.100 - 00:32:43.660

go, just think of poets like Philip Levine, who certainly were influenced by poems like this -- so many American poets -- I mean, I don't know one who wasn't, who's been writing in the last forty or fifty years has not been enormously

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influenced by William Carlos Williams. THIS PLOT OF GROUND Facing the waters of this inlet is dedicated to the living presence of Emily Dickinson Wellcome who was born in

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England; married; lost her husband and with her five year old son sailed for New York in a two-master; was driven to the Azores; ran adrift on Fire Island shoal, met her second husband in a Brooklyn boarding house, went with him to Puerto

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Rico bore three more children, lost her second husband, lived hard for eight years in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed the oldest son to New York, lost her daughter, lost her "baby," seized the two boys of the oldest son by the

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second marriage mothered them -- they being motherless -- fought for them against the other grandmother and the aunts, brought them here summer after summer, defended herself here against thieves, storms, sun, fire, against flies, against

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girls that came smelling about, against drought, against weeds, storm-tides, neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens, against the weakness of our own hands, against the growing strength of the boys, against wind, against the stones, against trespasser,

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against rents, against her own mind. She grubbed this earth with her own hands, domineering over this grass plot, blackguarded her oldest son into buying it, lived here fifteen years, attained a final loneliness and -- if you can

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bring nothing to this place but your carcass, keep out. So there is Williams as the tough duck, you know, and here's another Williams. Again, he was a doctor, a baby doctor, all his life, raised in Rutherford, New Jersey, died there on March 4th,

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1963. Here's a poem called: COMPLAINT, it's a double meaning. It's his complaint of having to go out late at night, but also the complaint of the person he is going to visit, the patient.

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They call me and I go. It is a frozen road past midnight, a dust of snow caught in the rigid wheeltracks. The door opens. I smile, enter and shake off the cold. Here is a great woman on her side in the bed. She is sick, perhaps vomiting, perhaps

00:35:21.260 - 00:35:41.300

laboring to give birth to a tenth child. Joy! Joy! Night is a room darkened for lovers, through the jealousies the sun has sent one golden needle! I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.

00:35:43.040 - 00:36:01.400

Well, there's another doctor, there's another William Carlos Williams, the William Carlos Williams who feels enormous compassion for women -- strong women, weak women, women who have become alcoholics and drug addicts -- a Williams who really

00:36:01.400 - 00:36:18.410

feels a tremendous tenderness and connection with women. Now, he remained married to his wife, Flossie, they had a very complicated life together, because Williams' fascination with women was certainly tied up with a very, very strong sexual

00:36:19.160 - 00:36:35.960

side of him, and he had many, many affairs. He would leave Rutherford and go over to New York to pursue his poetry career, to have talks and evenings with friends and things would happen, so keep that in mind. He also, according to W.H.

00:36:35.960 - 00:36:51.230

Auden, wrote one of the greatest love poems of all time and it is magnificent, and you should read it. It is way too long for us to go in here and it is called, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," and it it is an apology and yet a great statement of love to his

00:36:51.230 - 00:37:07.670

wife, Flossie. Here's another kind of woman's poem that he wrote, and you people who know poetry of the great American poet, Theodore Roethke, we'll see what I mean by direct influence. Theodore Roethke, that last name is spelled,

00:37:07.700 - 00:37:24.380

R-O-E-T-H-K-E, and he is one of our great poets. Most of his poems being written in the 50s in the 60s, and then he dies in the early 70s. This is William Carlos Williams' poem called: THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME, and I'll tell you,

00:37:24.530 - 00:37:47.220

if you don't know Roethke's work, how it influences Roethke, and here Williams speaks in the voice of the young widow. Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round

00:37:47.220 - 00:38:08.910

me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plum tree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for

00:38:08.910 - 00:38:29.490

though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turn away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go

00:38:29.490 - 00:38:47.180

there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them. And of course, instead of, in this wonderful springtime, a sense of renewed life, for this widow there is only a sense and

00:38:47.180 - 00:39:09.230

a yearning for death. And I say young, well, obviously she's not young, she's been married to her husband for thirty-five years. This poem inspired Theodore Roethke to write five widows' laments, which are magnificent poems, and each one is around

00:39:09.230 - 00:39:23.210

three or four pages long, and it was some of the greatest work Theodore Roethke ever did towards the end of his life, actually within the last ten years of his life, and I would suggest you go to that, but have in mind that it was inspired by

00:39:23.210 - 00:39:38.540

this poem. And again, when we talk about William Carlos Williams, we are talking about the major influence on American poetry -- the language, the subject matter, the way we write -- with a concrete image and not the abstraction. Notice that

00:39:38.540 - 00:39:54.770

nothing here is symbolized out of European symbology, nothing is taken from European experience, it's all American. Here's another way that works and I'll read the poem first, and then I'll talk about it and it's called:

00:39:54.800 - 00:40:17.090

THE TERM, and I think here it is terminology that you have to get. It's a very short poem, again, it is an observed moment, an observed moment of everyday American experience. A rumpled sheet of brown paper about the length and apparent

00:40:17.090 - 00:40:39.110

bulk of a man was rolling with the wind slowly over and over in the street as a car drove down upon it and crushed it to the ground. Unlike a man it rose again rolling with the wind over and over to be as it was before.

00:40:41.220 - 00:41:02.220

That one is such a simple poem but what Williams is saying is, I am making a comparison between the way- the bulk and the way this brown paper moves to the body of a man. But then when it is run over, it does not act like a man. So therefore he's

00:41:02.220 - 00:41:22.440

saying, my metaphor is not legitimate, it is not symbolic of everything, it has its limitations. Let me read it to you again because what it does is in the end, in denies, almost denies the poetic experience of making something more than

00:41:22.440 - 00:41:37.910

itself through metaphor or simile. Again: THE TERM A rumpled sheet of brown paper about the length and apparent bulk of a man was rolling with the wind slowly over and over in

00:41:37.910 - 00:42:01.970

the street as a car drove down upon it and crushed it to the ground. Unlike a man it rose again rolling with the wind over and over to be as it was before. And of course what it was before was just a piece of brown paper.

00:42:06.020 - 00:42:26.150

Now here's another poem of the English grandmothers, and this is recording on the end of her life and I think if you've ever had really old people and lived with them and died with them, this is again, full of just insights and observations. And I

00:42:26.150 - 00:42:42.930

read it to you- I realize time is going when you're having fun here. Okay, here we go. There was some dirty dishes and a glass of milk beside her on a small table near the rank, disheveled bed -- wrinkled and

00:42:42.930 - 00:43:00.030

nearly blind she lay and snored rousing with anger in her tones to cry for food, give me something to eat-- they're starving me-- I'm all right-- I won't go to the hospital. No, no, no, no, give me something to eat! Let me take you to the

00:43:00.030 - 00:43:17.820

hospital, I said and after your well you can do as you please. She smiled, yes you do what you please first then I can do what I please. Oh, oh, oh! she cried as the ambulance men lifted her to the stretcher-- Is this what you call making me comfortable?

00:43:18.600 - 00:43:34.740

By now her mind was clear-- Oh, you think you're smart you young people, she said, but I'll tell you you don't know anything. Then we started. On the way we passed a long row of elms. She looked at them awhile out of the ambulance window and said, what

00:43:34.740 - 00:44:08.800

are those fuzzy looking things out there? Trees? Well, I'm tired of them and rolled her head away. And again, that sense of the American voicebox, that's the big sense that you have here. Then there were many poems that

00:44:09.670 - 00:44:38.230

were just portraits of things -- and I did have them here, and there they are -- such as this one. The momentary poems when things are caught as in a photograph, the images is all, no inner ideas, but things, and there are many poems that he

00:44:38.230 - 00:44:52.800

writes that are just this perfect moment of beauty in our everyday world. This is just simply called: POEM, and the reason that I read his poems the way that I do is because what he does with line, he ends lines in very strange

00:44:52.800 - 00:45:13.380

places to make you pause and slow down in the way you read these very short poems. As the cat climbed over the top of the jam closet, first the right, forefoot, carefully, then the hind stepped down into the

00:45:13.380 - 00:45:35.040

pit of the empty flowerpot. I'll read that again, again just a moment caught. As the cat climbed over the top of the jam closet, first the right, forefoot, carefully, then the hind stepped down into the

00:45:35.040 - 00:45:51.870

pit of the empty flowerpot. Here's another one of those short ones, it's called: BETWEEN WALLS The back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie

00:45:51.870 - 00:46:12.850

cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle. Here's one that I love, just, again, no ideas but things, but of course, by just giving us things, ideas come out. So here's Nantucket, the great little whaling town, and it's

00:46:12.850 - 00:46:30.510

just looking through the window or looking at the room and the window of the room and you get a whole sense of the society and the people who lived here. The real Puritan lifestyle. NANTUCKET

00:46:31.980 - 00:47:00.870

Flowers through the window lavender and yellow changed by white curtains-- smell of cleanliness-- sunshine of late afternoon-- on the glass tray a glass pitcher, the tumbler turned down, by which a key is lying-- and the immaculate white

00:47:01.770 - 00:47:15.410

bed. Let me read that again, and I think what you'll see is that he's giving you first nature out the window, but nature noticed, here's the important word, it's changed by the white curtains,

00:47:16.040 - 00:47:36.800

white, the color or non-color of death. Then everything inside -- the picture the tray, the key -- meaning things are locked, right? Giving you that sense what these words suggest. This has become so much an important part of American poetry, give

00:47:36.800 - 00:47:52.010

you this sense of the altering of nature and the locked-in quality of the Puritan ethic, not the Puritan work ethic, the Puritan ethic of life, of closing yourself off and in, and that's why it's so interesting. He even describes this as a

00:47:52.010 - 00:48:07.220

room, nothing is outside but those flowers and like a camera, he draws us in from those flowers, through the window, first of all, into the white curtains, all the color is outside the lavender and the yellow, all right, inside there

00:48:07.220 - 00:48:27.980

is no color. So let's read it again: NANTUCKET by William Carlos Williams Flowers through the window lavender and yellow changed by white curtains-- smell of cleanliness-- sunshine of late

00:48:27.980 - 00:48:49.650

afternoon-- on the glass tray, a glass pitcher, the tumbler turned down, by which a key is lying-- and the immaculate white bed. And need we say anything about that bed which again,

00:48:49.680 - 00:49:08.910

immaculate, it's not disheveled, it's as though no one slept in it, and of course no procreation or earthly love can happen there. One of my other lovely little poems here, and just the sounds of this are so amazing when you think about how he is

00:49:08.910 - 00:49:21.570

using the sounds. This was actually a note he left for his wife who came in late one night, and he left this note for her, but it becomes a wonderful little poem, again, because of the way the lines are arranged and the sounds. And listen to

00:49:21.570 - 00:49:36.210

the E and the O sounds, especially the E and the O sounds. Okay? THIS IS JUST TO SAY I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were

00:49:36.210 - 00:50:00.480

probably saving for breakfast. Forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet, and so cold. Now all of this is being read by the Robert Blys, the Phil Levines, the Don Justices, the Allen Ginsbergs because Allen

00:50:00.480 - 00:50:17.160

Ginsberg, as many of you know, comes from New Jersey. And as a young man, he showed his poems to William Carlos Williams, who was also an influence on him, and William Carlos Williams virtually adopted Ginsberg. In fact, he was so excited about

00:50:17.160 - 00:50:35.880

Ginsberg's early work that he mentions him, talks about Ginsberg in his great long five book poem called, "Paterson," the father and the son, in which he mythologized the history and the everyday life of New Jersey. In Book Three, as I remember,

00:50:36.090 - 00:51:02.400

Allen Ginsberg begins to emerge as the young poet. So again, this influence by this man is is just gigantic over American poetry. Let me see. Here, again, another way of looking at this is that William Carlos Williams refused to romanticize anything,

00:51:03.420 - 00:51:19.350

that he just wanted to show you the cat, he wanted to show you the glass, the green glass, the shattered green glass and the cinders behind the hospital. But what about when he talks about death? Here he is talking about death and deromanticizing it,

00:51:19.650 - 00:51:30.630

right? It's not some wonderful thing that we sail on a ship to the Isle of the Dead, or something like that. And here again using the American voicebox. DEATH

00:51:32.130 - 00:51:51.000

He's dead. The dog won't have to sleep on his potatoes anymore to keep them from freezing. He's dead the old bastard. He's a bastard because there's nothing legitimate in him anymore. He's dead, he's sick dead. He's a godforsaken curio without any

00:51:51.000 - 00:52:11.850

breath in it. He's nothing at all. He's dead, shrunken up to skin. Put his head on one chair and his feet on another he'll lie there like an acrobat-- love's beaten. He beat it. That's why he's insufferable-- because he's here needing a

00:52:11.850 - 00:52:34.590

shave and making love an inside howl of anguish and defeat-- 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.

00:52:43.550 - 00:52:49.770

And again, these wonderful little observances on the street, here is a poem called: To a poor old woman munching a plum on the street a bag of them TO A POOR OLD WOMAN

00:53:02.340 - 00:53:25.920

in her hand. They taste good to her, they taste good to her. They taste good to her. You can see it by the way she gives herself to the one half sucked out in her hand, comforted, solace of ripe plums seeming t fill the air. They taste good t

00:53:25.920 - 00:53:56.290

her And I will read two more poems. And this one is trying to make a Bruegel painting and he loved- did I say -- and there are of course these constant contradictions in poets' work

00:53:56.290 - 00:54:11.290

and thought -- he loved a lot of European work and he especially loved the work of Pieter Bruegel, the great painter, and here is the "Dance in Open Air" and he would write a whole book of Bruegel poems. And here is his poem:

00:54:11.320 - 00:54:23.560

THE DANCE, and I can't describe to you how these lines just roll into another, but he wants to bring a sense of movement to the still life of the painting, and the still life of language, the dance.

00:54:24.670 - 00:54:41.320

And Bruegel's great picture, "The Kermess," the dancers go round, they go round and around, a squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound)

00:54:41.830 - 00:54:58.270

their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance in Bruegel's great picture, "The

00:54:58.270 - 00:55:14.800

Kermess." We've been talking about William Carlos Williams tonight and in one minute I'm going to read this last celebratory poem of him, by him, the great American influential poet, it's called:

00:55:14.810 - 00:55:28.770

THE CATHOLIC BELLS, and here is the music of William Carlos Williams, again spoken but so musical. Though I'm no Catholic I listen hard when the bells in the yellow-brick tower of their new church ring down the leaves,

00:55:28.860 - 00:55:44.280

ring in the frost upon them and the death of the flowers ring out the grackle toward the south, the sky darkened by them, ring in the new baby of Mr. And Mrs. Krantz which cannot for the fat of its cheeks open well its eyes, ring out the parrot under

00:55:44.280 - 00:56:01.260

its hood jealous of the child. Ring in Sunday morning and old age which adds as it takes away. Let them ring only ring! Over the oil painting of a young priest on the church wall advertising last week's Novena to St. Anthony, ring for the

00:56:01.260 - 00:56:17.670

lame young man in black with gaunt cheeks and wearing a Derby hat, who is hurrying to 11 o'clock Mass (the grapes still hanging to the vines along the nearby Concordia Halle like broken teeth in the head of an old man). Let them ring for the

00:56:17.670 - 00:56:32.580

eyes and ring for the hands and ring for the children of my friend who no longer hears them ring but with a smile and in a low voice speaks of the decisions of her daughter and the proposals and betrayals of her husband's friends. Oh bells

00:56:32.580 - 00:56:57.360

ring for the ringing! The beginning and the end of ringing! Ring, ring, ring ring ring ring ring! Catholic bells! William Carlos Williams, born this day, September 17th, 1883. This is Mort Marcus. I'll be back in three weeks with on

00:56:57.390 - 00:57:12.210

October 6th with Patrice Vecchione. I've just been handed a little reminder, however, that on this Tuesday night at the Cabrillo College Watsonville Center, there will be a special reading sponsored by Poetry Santa Cruz and Cabrillo of

00:57:12.210 - 00:57:26.010

Francisco X. Alarcon and [unidentified] Garcia, do go to it, they are marvelous poets, and that again is at the Watsonville Center. Stay tuned now for Gary Shapiro on "From th Bookshelf