SPRING AND ALL XXII by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 6*, art, being, categories, chickens, education, existence, form, imagination, interdependent origination, knowledge, life, nature, poetry, quote, rain, reality, red, water, wheelbarrow, white, William Carlos Williams

                so much depends
                upon

                a red wheel
                barrow

                glazed with rain
                water

                beside the white
                chickens

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “wait, is that it, one of his most famous and quoted poems, and that’s it?”; well, no … this poem was actually nested within a whole weave of contemplations and exclamations to the contrary (quoted liberally, tatteredly and patch-workly – sorry, Bill): “the fixed categories into which life is divided … exist – … not as dead dissections … but in a different condition when energised by the imagination … but at present [early 1920s, America, and hence the upcoming androcentrist reference, I do apologise] knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative … the inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge … it is on imagination on which reality rides … it is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass and therefore can never be discovered by its anatomisation … it is for this reason that I have always placed art first … art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality – Poetry … poetry has to do with the crystallisation of the imagination – the perfection of new forms as additions to nature …”

 

taken from Ali Shapiro at http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/poetic-analytics/: I hope she doesn’t mind – those venn circles, they were so cold and so sweet

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & life wormhole: on facing the Have
education wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – On Doing Nothing
knowledge wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
poetry wormhole: oh, alright then
rain wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reality wormhole: coagulating
red wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
water wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
white wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

 

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SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 7*, balcony, blue, boy, car, driving, face, girl, house, laughing, law, leg, looking, man, mind, no-mind, passing, roads, smile, travelling, watch, William Carlos Williams, woman

                XI

                In passing with my mind
                on nothing in the world

                but the right of way
                I enjoy on the road by

                virtue of the law–
                I saw

                an elderly man who
                smiled and looked away

                to the north past a house–
                a woman in blue

                who was laughing and
                leaning forward to look up

                into the man’s half
                averted face

                and a boy of eight who was
                looking at the middle of

                the man’s belly
                at a watchchain–

                The supreme importance
                of this nameless spectacle

                sped me by them
                without a word–

                Why bother where I went?
                for I went spinning on the

                four wheels of my car
                along the wet road until

                I saw a girl with one leg
                over the rail of a balcony

 

from Spring and All, 1923; “In passing with my mind …”, the perfect beginning, middle and end of a poem; I read this when I was younger, possibly a bit impatient that I wanted something more to happen to call it a happening and also a little annoyed at the snagged details in passing thinking them too particular to so little that was happening … but I liked it; and this liking slipped in between my pomposity and fussiness and worked its way out over following decades through poems exploring this same sense of passing not being the start of something and its almost immediate dissolution, but its almost-not-being-there being its universal reality: vivid, important and sufficient unto itself – “the supreme importance / of this nameless spectacle”; it wasn’t until later I read more of the text in which WCW embedded these poems, raised beds, nonetheless, with earth so finely nourished and turned over that you could sink your fist into it up to your elbow: “When in the condition of imaginative suspense only will the writing have reality … Not to attempt, at that time, to set values on the word being used, according to presupposed measures, but to write down that which happens at that time / To perfect the ability to record at the moment when the consciousness is enlarged by the sympathies and the unity of understanding which the imagination gives, to practise skill in recording the force moving, then to know it, in the largeness of its proportions …”

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

blue wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams
girl wormhole: ash leaves
house wormhole: presence
looking & travelling wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
mind wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
passing & roads wormhole: La Route de Louveciennes, 1870
smile wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
woman wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold

 

SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1923, 5*, being, doing, energy, Have, identity, meaning, non-doing, speech, talking to myself, William Carlos Williams, words

                VI

                No that is not it
                nothing that I have done
                nothing
                I have done

                is made up of
                nothing
                and the dipthong

                ae

                together with
                the first person
                singular
                indicative

                of the auxiliary
                verb
                to have

                everything
                I have done
                is the same

                if to do
                is capable
                of an
                infinity of
                combinations

                involving the
                moral
                physical
                and religious

                codes

                for everything
                and nothing
                are synonymous
                when

                energy in vacuo
                has the power
                of confusion

                which only to
                have done nothing
                can make
                perfect

 

from Spring and All, 1923
I’d have loved to have sculpted this into a circular poem so that the beginning line slipped off the end line at the apex of a circle and could be read round and around in circles until nothing was achieved; but it’s not my place to

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being & Have & speech wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
doing & talking to myself wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
identity wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra
meaning wormhole: being / doing
William Carlos Williams wormhole: SPRING AND ALL I BY William Carlos Williams
words wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

 

SPRING AND ALL I by William Carlos Williams

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

 

Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23

Tags

1922, 1923, 2015, air, being, clouds, dimension, Edward Hopper, form, function, grass, light, plane, reaching, trees, years

 

 

 

                                Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23

                                so it is always the latent light
                                transmitted through cloud

                                or orbit that depicts manufacture
                                from function to dimension,

                                from light to not light in all degrees
                                of plane and completed form,

                                novel from the slow trees and grass
                                that know no distinction but the

                                quantum happenstance
                                of air and reach, but no way

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: Evening Wind, 1921
being wormhole: now, have I forgotten anything
clouds wormhole: Ashdown Forest / 080213 14:47
Edward Hopper & years wormhole: House by the Railroad, 1925
light wormhole: prayer to my self
trees wormhole: gre[wh]y / has Daddy left us?