William Carlos Williams, "The artist works to express perceptions rather than attain standards..."

According to Williams, the object of writing is "the triumph of sense---the ability to set a thing up against the moment and have it escape banality... The sense is not carried as an extraneous 'meaning,' but is constituted by the work itself. One does not write a poem to say something but to write a poem... "

Williams, who closely followed some of the painters we are discussing, noted that "abstraction... has renew[ed] and reclarif[ied] pure form... The writer attempts to present the sense of the moment, revealed in climaxes of intelligence (beauty) through continually refreshed crystallizations of form."

Consider, in light of these rather complicated remarks, his interest in perception and time (Duchamp's Nude), and how this influences form in Williams' work.

THE GREAT FIGURE

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.

Pastoral

WHEN I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk back streets

admiring the houses

of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate,

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best of all colors.

No one

will believe this

of vast import to the nation.

Portrait of a Lady

YOUR thighs are appletrees

whose blossoms touch the sky.

Which sky? The sky

where Watteau hung a lady's

slipper. Your knees

are a southern breeze--or

a gust of snow. Agh! what

sort of man was Fragonard?

--as if that answered

anything. Ah, yes--below

the knees, since the tune

drops that way, it is

one of those white summer days,

the tall grass of your ankles

flickers upon the shore--

Which shore?--

the sand clings to my lips--

Which shore?

Agh, petals maybe. How

should I know?

Which shore? Which shore?

I said petals from an appletree.

The Young Housewife

AT ten A.M. the young housewife

moves about in negligee behind

the wooden walls of her husband's house.

I pass solitary in my car.

Then again she comes to the curb

to call the ice-man, fish-man, and stands

shy, uncorseted, tucking in

stray ends of hair, and I compare her

to a fallen leaf.

The noiseless wheels of my car

rush with a crackling sound over

dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

THE WIDOW'S LAMENT IN SPRINGTIME

ORROW is my own yard

where the new grass

flames as it has flamed

often before but not

with the cold fire

that closes round me this year.

Thirtyfive years

I lived with my husband.

The plumtree is white today

with masses of flowers.

Masses of flowers

load the cherry branches

and color some bushes

yellow and some red

but the grief in my heart

is stronger than they

for though they were my joy

formerly, today I notice them

and turned away forgetting.

Today my son told me

that in the meadows,

at the edge of the heavy woods

in the distance, he saw

trees of white flowers.

I feel that I would like

to go there

and fall into those flowers

and sink into the marsh near them.