Well, I can't seem to like Williams. I like some of his lines, but I can't imagine going through a collection of his work. I don't know especially why; just something in me that doesn't see it. I do appreciate very much your discussion of the way the poem works _as poem_; that's helpful.
Where in metrical verse we learn to flow the lines where meter and rhyme build subtly to some moment, Williams' free verse uses the pause to stop our attention--I love the hanging "a"s. What seems to be at work in the first portion is something like recollection, a slowing down, a recalling to mind, this "dew moistened [pause/beat] summer morning." We feel its weight because we know it already though we have never "seen it", so like a koan they drop into the pond of imagination. A ripple. What indeed shall I wear?
This is helpful. I confess myself usually baffled, if not downright irritated, at lines ending in articles. (A lot irritates me in free verse actually, though I write it myself. I am becoming curmudgeonly.)
If I think of machine broadly--"a constructed thing whether material or immaterial," as Merriam-Webster puts in a sense deemed archaic--I like the metaphor, since it seems to focus on poetry as craft. This reading turns Williams' likely meaning on its head, recalling as it does (again, from Merriam-Webster) the language of Natural Theology: "with what beauty, art and contrivance, particular creatures are made, and how the several parts of this great machine are fitted to each other, and make a regular and uniform world …" (William Sherlock).
Today, while sitting in a hospital room (not mine, just to be clear), I remembered Thomas Hardy's great phrase, "original air-blue gown" in "The Voice." One of the pleasures in reading a new poem (new to me) is being reminded of poems I know.
Always a great reminder that free verse is not just “chopped up prose” and that the words chosen make the rhythm in themselves. I admit I have a hard time with Williams sometimes…understanding where he’s going. But I am always rewarded when I hang in there.
Well, I can't seem to like Williams. I like some of his lines, but I can't imagine going through a collection of his work. I don't know especially why; just something in me that doesn't see it. I do appreciate very much your discussion of the way the poem works _as poem_; that's helpful.
Where in metrical verse we learn to flow the lines where meter and rhyme build subtly to some moment, Williams' free verse uses the pause to stop our attention--I love the hanging "a"s. What seems to be at work in the first portion is something like recollection, a slowing down, a recalling to mind, this "dew moistened [pause/beat] summer morning." We feel its weight because we know it already though we have never "seen it", so like a koan they drop into the pond of imagination. A ripple. What indeed shall I wear?
This is helpful. I confess myself usually baffled, if not downright irritated, at lines ending in articles. (A lot irritates me in free verse actually, though I write it myself. I am becoming curmudgeonly.)
Williams is a master. I have been reading him since the day I discovered him in my undergraduate library over forty years ago.
If I think of machine broadly--"a constructed thing whether material or immaterial," as Merriam-Webster puts in a sense deemed archaic--I like the metaphor, since it seems to focus on poetry as craft. This reading turns Williams' likely meaning on its head, recalling as it does (again, from Merriam-Webster) the language of Natural Theology: "with what beauty, art and contrivance, particular creatures are made, and how the several parts of this great machine are fitted to each other, and make a regular and uniform world …" (William Sherlock).
Today, while sitting in a hospital room (not mine, just to be clear), I remembered Thomas Hardy's great phrase, "original air-blue gown" in "The Voice." One of the pleasures in reading a new poem (new to me) is being reminded of poems I know.
Well, that put a faintly ironical smile on my face.
Always a great reminder that free verse is not just “chopped up prose” and that the words chosen make the rhythm in themselves. I admit I have a hard time with Williams sometimes…understanding where he’s going. But I am always rewarded when I hang in there.
Free verse sucks. And yet a part of me is both broken and restored by the beauty of knowing . . .
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens