William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams

and

the Visual Arts

Contact—the art and poetry magazine

Marsden Hartley

Photograph by Alfred Stieglitz

Marsden Hartley, 1915-1916

Marsden Hartley

The Aero, 1914

“The Red Wheelbarrow”

so much dependsupon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens.

Imagination

In his introduction to Spring and All, Williams declares that he is addressing his poems to the imagination. He explains that his approach is meant to tie the writer and reader together, when he writes the following:

In the imagination, we are from henceforth (so long as you read) locked in a fraternal embrace, the classic caress of author and reader. We are one. Whenever I say, “I” I mean also, “you.” And so, together, as one, we shall begin. (89)

“Pot of Flowers”

Charles Demuth,

Tuberoses, 1922

John Marin

Lower Manhattan: Composing Derived from the top of Woolworth, 1922

John Marin

Brooklyn Bridge, 1912

“Young Love (IX)”What about all this writing?O "kiki"O miss margaret jarvisthe backhandspringI: cleancleanclean: yes..New YorkWrigley's, appendicitis, John Marin:skyscraper soup--Either that or a bullet!Onceanything might have happenedYou lay relaxed on my knees--the starry nightspread out warm and blindabove the hospital--Pah!It is uncleanwhich is not straight to the mark--

In my life the furniture eats methe chairs, the floorthe wallswhich heard your sobsdrank up my emotion--they which alone know everythingand snitched on us in the morning--What to want?Drunk we go forward surelyNot Ibeds, beds, bedselevators, fruit, night tablesbreasts to see, white and blue--to hold in the hand, to nozzleIt is not onion soupYour sobs soaked through the wallsbreaking the hospital to piecesEverything--windows, chairsobscenely drunk, spinning--white, blue, orange--hot with our passion

wild tears, desperate rejoindersmy legs, turning slowlyend over end in the air!But what would you have?All I said was:there, you see, it is brokenstockings, shoes, hairpinsyour bed, I wrapped myself round you--I watched.You sobbed, you beat your pillowyou tore your hairyou dug your nails into your sidesI was your nightgownI watched!

Clean is he aloneafter whom streamthe broken pieces of the city--flying apart at his approachesbut I merelycaress you curiouslyfifteen years agoand you stillgo about the city, they saypatching up sick school children

“The Rose”

Juan Gris

Flowers, 1914

“The Rose”The rose is obsolete but each petal ends in an edge, the double facet cementing the grooved columns of air--The edge cuts without cutting meets--nothing--renews itself in metal or porcelain–

whither? It ends–

But if it ends the start is begun so that to engage roses becomes a geometry–

Sharper, neater, more cutting figured in majolica-- the broken plate glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense makes copper roses steel roses–

The rose carried weight of love but love is at an end--of roses

It is at the edge of the petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat laboredness--fragile plucked, moist, half-raised cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal's edge and the

From the petal's edge a line starts that being of steel infinitely fine, infinitely rigid penetrates the Milky Way without contact--lifting from it--neither hanging nor pushing--

The fragility of the flower unbruised penetrates space

“This is just to say”This is just to say

I have eatenthe plumsthat were inthe icebox

and whichyou were probablySavingfor breakfast

Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold