.
A rumpled sheet
of brown paper
about the length
and apparent bulk
of a man was
rolling with the
wind slowly over
and over in
the street as
a car drove down
upon it and
crushed it to
the ground. Unlike
a man it rose
again rolling
with the wind over
and over to be as
it was before.
The Term: William Carlos Williams, 1937 (from Poems 1936-1939)
Great Depression: unemployed, destitute man leaning against vacant store, San Francisco: Dorothea Lange, 1935 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum)
Great Depression: man dressed in worn coat lying down on pier, New York City docks: photo by Lewis W. Hine, 1935 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum)
Great Depression: unemployed, destitute man leaning against vacant store, San Francisco: Dorothea Lange, 1935 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum)
Great Depression: man dressed in worn coat lying down on pier, New York City docks: photo by Lewis W. Hine, 1935 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum)
words so light they're heavy.
ReplyDeletestones in all my pockets.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Carlos Williams, one of my favourites, perfectly captured the aesthetics of the world that surrounded him. And so effortlessly.
ReplyDeleteAlong the line of what we were saying recently, Tom: literary photographs.
Williams' poems capture America in the same way Robert Frank did with his camera.
Powerful photos, at least
ReplyDeleteAs intense as it is concise.
ReplyDeleteyes the great depression looms
ReplyDeleteagain
without a manufacturing base
Walmart nightmare:
Buy stuff they do not need
that they can't afford
because they're entitled
to have it
and then
the money
runs out
One or two thoughts on this poem.
ReplyDeleteI have always read it as what it obviously is: a loop. As with Weldon Kees' Back. The element of return-to-go in poetry always recalls to me the sources of verse and its turnings in the round-dance.
Greek: terma=a turning.
And speaking of turning points, I have long thought of this period in Williams' work as pivotal in several respects. Obviously a poet so bound into the observation of reality in the practice of his art was not going to be missing the social reality. My speculation has been that the issues of the time, so bleakly immediate, challenged the poet with procedural questions as to the use (or refusal) of allegory, a mode often present, if subtly, if well beneath the surface, in his work up to this time. And perhaps not so much, in the phases that ensued.
Does this poem stand for anything besides itself, or is it entirely self-referential?
>> Does this poem stand for anything besides itself, or is it entirely self-referential? <<
ReplyDeleteI would say it's like symbolism.
Williams solidified his observations of the world around him through use of aesthetics.
As all great art does - it becomes a chronicle of its time.