William Carlos Williams

“The HurricaneThe tree lay downon the garage roof and stretched, You have your heaven, it said, go to it.”

“The past above, the future belowand the present pouring down: the roar,the roar of the present, a speech--is, of necessity, my sole concern.”

“After some years of varied experience with the bodies of the rich and the poor a man finds little to distinguish between them, bulks them as one and bases his working judgements on other matters.”

“Filth and vermin though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet to excessive cleanliness.”

“so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.”

“The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost.”

“I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is.”

“I think these days when there is so little to believe in——when the old loyalties——God, country, and the hope of Heaven——aren't very real, we are more dependent than we should be on our friends. The only thing left to believe in——someone who seems beautiful.”

“What power has love but forgiveness?In other wordsby its interventionwhat has been donecan be undone.What good is it otherwise?”

“THE THOUGHTFUL LOVERDeny yourself allhalf things. Have itor leave it.But it will keep—orit is not worththe having.Never startanything you can'tfinish—However do not losefaith because youare starved!She loves youshe says. Believe it —tomorrow.But todaythe particularsof poetrythat difficult artrequireyour whole attention.”

“I prefer not to starve, to live by the practice of medicine, which combines the best features of both science and philosophy with that imponderable and enlightening element, disease, unknown in its normality to either. But, like Pasteur, when he was young, or anyone else who has something to do, I wish I had more money for my literary experiments.”William Carlos Williams, c. 1931”

“And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom-- feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind.”

“So most of my life has been lived in hell.”

“It's just a moment, we die every night.”

“The business of love is cruelty which,by our wills, we transform to live together.”

“My surface is myself.Under whichto witness, youth isburied. Roots?Everybody has roots.”

“Saxifrage is my flower that splits the rocks.”

“Fools have big wombs.”

“We laughed at the hollyhocks together and then I sprayed them with lye. Forgive me. I simply do not know what I am doing.”

“Your thighs are apple trees. Your knees are the southern breeze.”

“If there is progress then there is a novel.”

“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.”

“Death will be late to bring us aid”

“At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts usto make roses stand before thorns. Surelove is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse—at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older,I to love and you to be loved, we have,no matter how, by our wills survived to keepthe jeweled prize always at our finger tips.We will it so and so it is past all accident.”

“The Last Words of My English GrandmotherThere were some dirty platesand a glass of milkbeside her on a small tablenear the rank, disheveled bed--Wrinkled and nearly blindshe lay and snoredrousing with anger in her tonesto cry for food,Gimme something to eat--They're starving me--I'm all right--I won't goto the hospital. No, no, noGive me something to eat!Let me take youto the hospital, I saidand after you are wellyou can do as you please.She smiled, Yesyou do what you please firstthen I can do what I please--Oh, oh, oh! she criedas the ambulance men liftedher to the stretcher--Is this what you callmaking me comfortable?By now her mind was clear--Oh you think you're smartyou young people,she said, but I'll tell youyou don't know anything.Then we started.On the waywe passed a long rowof elms. She looked at themawhile out ofthe ambulance window and said,What are all thosefuzzy looking things out there?Trees? Well, I'm tiredof them and rolled her head away.”

“The noiseless wheels of my carrush with a crackling sound overdried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.”

“The descent beckonsas the ascent beckoned”

“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 new music is a new mind.”

“The pure products of Americago crazy......[] No one to witnessand adjust, no one to drive the car”

“For the beginning is assuredlythe end- since we know nothing, pureand simple, beyondour own complexities.”

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

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

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

“Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.”

“Lifeless in appearance, sluggishdazed spring approaches-They enter the new world naked,cold, uncertain of allsave that they enter. All about themthe cold, familiar wind-Now the grass, tomorrowthe stiff curl of wildcarrot leafOne by one objects are defined-It quickens: clarity, outline of leafBut now the stark dignity ofentrance-Still, the profound changehas come upon them: rooted, theygrip down and begin to awaken”

“You're a romanticist. What do you think a man is, a papaya? To digest your dinner? In pill form?”

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

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

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

“You remember I had a strong inclination all my life to be a painter. Under different circumstances I would rather have been a painter than to bother with these god-damn words. I never actually thought of myself as a poet but I knew I had to be an artist in some way.”

“The beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“And this moral? As with the deformed Aesop, morals are the memory of success that no longer succeeds.”

“Danse Russe If I when my wife is sleeping and the baby and Kathleen are sleeping and the sun is a flame-white disc in silken mists above shining trees,-- if I in my north room dance naked, grotesquely before my mirror waving my shirt round my head and singing softly to myself: "I am lonely, lonely. I was born to be lonely, I am best so!" If I admire my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks against the yellow drawn shades,-- Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?”

“There is nothing sacred about literature, it is damned from one end to the other. There is nothing in literature but change and change is mockery. I'll write whatever I damn please, whenever I damn please and as I damn please and it'll be good if the authentic spirit of change is on it.”

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

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

“You lethargic, waiting upon me,waiting for the fire and Iattendant upon you, shaken by your beautyShaken by your beauty Shaken.”

“That which is possible is inevitable.”

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