William Carlos Williams citations

Page 2

“You lethargic, waiting upon me,
waiting for the fire and I
attendant upon you, shaken by your beauty

Shaken by your beauty
Shaken.”

“If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”

“Hold back the edges of your gown, Ladies, we are going through hell.”

“Time is a storm in which we are all lost.”

“It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits”

“Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels.”

“In summer, the song sings itself.”

“As the rain falls
so does
your love

bathe every
open
object of the world”

“Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.”

“I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.”

“If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.”

“That which is possible is inevitable.”

“so much depends
upon a red wheel
barrow glazed with rain
water beside the white
chickens”

“But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden”

“It is almost impossible to state what one in fact believes, because it is almost impossible to hold a belief and to define it at the same time.”

“A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/… the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.”

“beauty’ is related not to ‘loveliness’ but to a state in which reality plays a part.”

“My surface is myself.
Under which
to witness, youth is
buried. Roots?
Everybody has roots.”

“As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.”

“All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.”

“Of asphodel, that greeny flower,

::like a buttercup

::::upon its branching stem —

save that's green and wooden —

::I come, my sweet,

::::to sing to you.

We lived long together,

::a life filled,

::::if you will,

with flowers. So that

::I was cheered

::::when I first came to know

that there were flowers also

::in hell.

::::Today

I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

::that we both loved,

::::even to this poor

colorless thing —

::I saw it

::::when I was a child —

little prized among the living

::but the dead see,

::::asking among themselves:

What do I remember

::that was shaped

::::as this thing is shaped?
while our eyes fill
::with tears.
::::Of love, abiding love
it will be telling
::though too weak a wash of crimson
::::colors it
to make it wholly credible.
::There is something
::::something urgent
I have to say to you
::and you alone
::::but it must wait
while I drink in
::the joy of your approach,
::::perhaps for the last time.
And so
::with fear in my heart
::::I drag it out
and keep on talking
::for I dare not stop.”

“My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy.”

“Among
of
green stiff
old
bright broken
branch
come white
sweet
May again”

“So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.”

“Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact … the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.”

“Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.”

“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.”

“Your case has been reviewed by high-minded
and unprejudiced observers (like hell
they were!) the president of a great
university, the president of a noteworthy
technical school and a judge too old to sit
on the bench, men already rewarded for
their services to pedagogy and the enforcement
of arbitrary statutes. In other words
pimps to tradition”

“Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.”