Sunday, March 20, 2011

A poem for the day


Related posts (really)
Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27

4 comments:

  1. This seems doubly appropriate, as we emerge from an extremely trying winter, and as the world seems to be crumbling a bit at the edges around us.

    I've often wondered if this might not be Williams' response to The Waste Land, published in 1922.

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  2. What a great way, on an overcast March day, to spend a few minutes (savoring this poem, that is).

    Thanks.

    --Richard

    P.S. How strange Williams' poems must have seemed when they first appeared.

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  3. I’d say that it is. WCW’s hostility to TSE is well documented. The phrase “a reply to Greek and Latin with the bare hands” in SaA suggests TSE to me.

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  4. Richard, I didn’t see your comment earlier. Williams can still look mighty strange: when I teach something like “At the Faucet of June,” my students don’t know what hit them. He’s not the simple guy with the wheelbarrow they might have expected. (Not that “The Red Wheelbarrow” is exactly simple either.)

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