Tags
1923, 5*, birth, blue, brown, bushes, clouds, fields, grass, growth, hospital, leaves, purple, red, roads, roots, Spring, trees, water, weeds, William Carlos Williams, wind
SPRING AND ALL
By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast – a cold wind. Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen
patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees
All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines –
Lifeless in appearence, sluggish
dazed spring approaches –
They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter. All about them
the cold, familiar wind –
Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined –
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf
But now the stark dignity of
entrance – Still, the profound change
had come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken
from Spring and All, 1923, from which Paul Mariani’s excellent biography of William Carlos Williams got its name “A New World Naked”; being is to break and contrast, it is primordial but also cyclical, WCW doesn’t bother with the cosmic, he deals in twigs
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
blue wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
brown wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
clouds wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
leaves & Spring & trees wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
purple wormhole: … the underleaves show
red & William Carlos Williams wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
roads wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
wind wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
Thanks for this WCW. Is there anything really more than “twiggy stuff”? I don’t think there is.
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certainly WCW didn’t think so, at least he didn’t go charging off to Europe looking for non-twiggy stuff
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“It is discovering the young child’s and the sage’s power to perceive awesome mystery in even the most ordinary objects and events. True art is an epiphany, an enlightening spark dancing in the perceived gap between ourselves an everything else.”
–Gross and Shapiro
(emphasis mine)
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DOH! Emphasis mis-placed….supposed to be:
“dancing in the perceived gap”
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