WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

M1=Mariani
M=Mazzaro
W=Wagner
W2=Wagner reference guide


THEMES

- subject of pat: how can you tell the truth abt things? - M63
- woman almost mystically essential; provides energy for mans creativity - w21
- depiction of local: social problems, finance - w21
- worlds of nature, human experience, urban living - w21
- disgust with man; even nature becomes cold and lifeless - w26
- from 1938 to 43, shift from nouns and adjs to verbs, growing emph on pos and love - w29
- growing emph on art - w29
- shift from vituperation to gentleness - w30
- often emphs flowers - w47
- man, nature, art, urban soc - w55
- banal subjects - m1/64
- intimate knowledge of humanity; mix of gentleness, violence - m1/68
- emph on america - m1/84
- shocking bourgeois; revolt vs. suburbia; poetry only salvation - m1/90
- struggle vs. cultural and economic drift of Am - m1/164
- profound philosophical resignation to existence; meets rathan controls objects - m1/210
- effort to handle sentiment and accept feeling while avoiding stock response - m1/213
- affirmation of the finite - m1/214
- local; marriage of reality and imag to create new orders - m1/225
- divorce; sexuality; nature vs. convention; city vs. country - m1/225
- subjects tradly unfit for poetry - m1/229

- America -w2.8
- romantic: rejects accepted sense of things; anti-poetic; affinity to realism - w2.13
- narrowness of scope makes for concentration and meagerness - w2.13
- uncompromising romantic bec of distrust of intellect, exclusive use of concrete - w2.19
- often lost when he tries to treat ideas; half-digested, vague ideas - w2.27
- truth resides in what he has seen directly, immediately where he was born and lives - w2.29
- disintegration of Am life - w2.29
- emphs life, not death, in an act of love - w2.33
- deals too often in abstractions - w2.19
- attention to ugliness - w2.41
- emph on need to heal split between individ and culture - w2.42
- beauty, whether of women or flowers, has the power to right all things - w2.45
- fascination with women - w2.46
- daily existence - w2.52
- emotions that cluster about common things - w2.59
- reverence for fact, for event, for actions, for history, for the creatural - w2.62
- all-importance of the bodily element - w2.70
- strong sense of community - w2.71
- radical independence, emotional exuberance, bodily energy, self-admiration - w2.94
- like whitman, asserts self - w2.94
- man-city, river, mountains, economics, the language themes in Pat - w2.109
- contradicts the despair so pervasive in Eliot - w2.111
- like stevens, hostile to organized religion - w2.120
- franciscan sense of wonder that illuminates the ordinary - w2.133
- reviving the wonder of the near-at-hand - w2.138
- in Pat, refutation of all linear concepts - w2.147
- world is always fresh, full, vivid - w2.152


STYLE

- radical experimentation in form, lang, subject - M6
- exuberant tone, at times bordering on bombast - M6
- affinity for the oracular, esp. in public poems exhorting townspeople - M6
- emph on spontaneous vs. cerebral (assocd w/ Eliot) - M24
- org of Pat is musical to an almost unprecedented degree - M62
- mosaic organizational techniques - m67
- pat gets steadily worse; doesnt seem whole - m68
- directness, flat idiom, clear, objective imagery, simplicity, homely diction - m107
- spontaneity; lang of common man put him in rom trad - m108
- stanzas often similar in struc; his verse far from free - m108
- lack of punc, disarming simplicity, nervous rhythm - m109
- pictures, in imagery and shape - m110
- lack of punc emphs any punc that may occur - m110
- breaks up components; unpoetic vocab makes certain words leap out by contrast - m110
- peculiar directness of approach, often thru lack of grammar - m110-11
- tends to cluster related sounds together; alliteration; even rhyme (esp internal) - m112
- half-rhymes, slant rhyme - m113
- herky-jerky rhytm; poems begin and end abruptly - m113

- uses fig lang sparingly in attempts to capture colloq speech rhythms - w14
- dangers of met, sim used indiscriminately and of inversion, allusion -w14
- one critic claims w concentrates on static objects; other says later poems tend more kinetic - w41
- laconic; brief; colloquial - w44
- idiomatic; vivid images to exemplify abstract concepts - w46
- much emph on abstraction - w47
- avoided symbols as esoteric - w48
- avoids unnec commentary, background, subjective impressions -w50-51
- distrusted fig lang as too personal, often artificial - w54
- metaphors tend to have impt struc positions; non-fig lines antic or elab the metaphors -w57
- montage an impt struc prin in 20s and 30s -w61
- presentation of details w/out comment - w60
- growing emph on prsnl reactions and fig lang - w63
- experimentation for 40 years with meter, rhythm - w75
- avoided long lines bec of nervous nature; excited pace of speech - w77
- direct address; first-person narrative focus - w79

- observant, delicate, haunting -m1/6
- surface; minute fixations; emotions implied -m1/15
- clear, sharp, imagist poems favored by early critics - m1/16
- each action deserving a line - m1/34
- stevens saw him as antipoetic romantic - m1/39
- real/unreal; sentimental/antipoetic - m1/42
- accretion; expansion of prosaic; surprise, telescoping of jocularity - m1/43
- abrupt, clear, frank, incisive, wift contrast, grotesque - m1/45
- absence of rhetoric - m1/66
- lack of syntax, meaning, form - m1/68
- direct observation of individ objects; color contrast; spare use of concrete detail - m1/82
- scraps of dialogue; mimetic sounds; visual reprodictions - m1/82
- commentary; statement of emotion; use of anecdote - m1/83
- flat realism; unswerving sentimentality; inability to work w phil questions - m1/85
- over-reliance on visual to exclusion of sound, rhythm, song - m1/85
- collage of fragments; irony of disjunction - m1/85

- dislikes unnecessary explanation, urbanity (sleekness), searching for right word - w2.12
- anti-poetic; ambiguity produced by bareness; implied image - w2.13
- absence of rhetoric itself a kind of affectation - w2.21
- line length is arbitrary - w2.23
- Pat lacks necessity in its transitions; wilful self-indulgence; impassioned irrelevance - w2.28
- colloq, whimsical lines often enlivened by arrangements for eye - w2.30
- strong verbs - w2.41
- detestation of phil and generalization - w2.41
- american idiom - w2.59
- convincing speech - w2.62
- says only the dullest things and has renounced all the pleasures of English - w2.67
- avoidance of false or forced sentiment - w2.70
- danger of lapsing into faux-naif mode; brits cant hear his rhythms - w2.77
- unanalyzed juxtapositions - w2.82
- flat language and non-existent music - w2.92
- use of trad poetic devices (allit, etc) - w2.96
- limited imagination, numbing self-consciousness - w2.97
- shows evidence of the basic classicism and simplicity of the orient - w2.98
- direct, changing rhythms to suit thought; says simplest things simply and obliquely - w2.106
- triteness of common american style - w2.117
- emphs spontaneity - w2.149
- Pat made by accretion - w2.151
- prosody imitates contours of conversational lang - w2.152