WEBVTT 00:12.480 --> 00:14.500 Professor Langdon Hammer: I'm going to talk 00:14.501 --> 00:16.071 about William Carlos Williams today. 00:16.070 --> 00:20.210 It may be that I end up carrying a little bit of 00:20.210 --> 00:24.440 Williams over to next time--to Marianne Moore, 00:24.440 --> 00:33.450 his friend, contemporary, and really close collaborator, 00:33.451 --> 00:43.611 in a sense, in the New York scene of modernism in the teens, 00:43.610 --> 00:47.660 twenties, thirties, forties, and on into the 00:47.658 --> 00:50.448 fifties. This is the man, 00:50.452 --> 00:55.202 as a young man, William Carlos Williams. 00:55.200 --> 01:03.840 If you open your anthologies to page 284, in the long and useful 01:03.839 --> 01:10.009 head-note that Jahan Ramazani provides you, 01:10.010 --> 01:15.980 there's this quotation from a letter in the middle of page 284 01:15.983 --> 01:19.903 that Williams wrote to Harriet Monroe, 01:19.900 --> 01:24.750 the editor of Poetry whom thirteen years later Hart 01:24.753 --> 01:28.673 Crane would write to in defense of his poem, 01:28.670 --> 01:31.050 "At Melville's Tomb." 01:31.049 --> 01:33.849 And Williams says in this letter to Monroe: 01:33.849 --> 01:38.839 Most current verse is dead from the point of view of 01:38.837 --> 01:41.897 art… [It's dead, it's lifeless; 01:41.900 --> 01:47.330 and what Williams cares about is something he calls "life."] 01:47.333 --> 01:52.863 Now life is above all things else at any moment subversive of 01:52.858 --> 01:58.658 life as it was the moment before [and I think that's how we know 01:58.660 --> 02:03.540 it in Williams's life: whatever is subverting whatever 02:03.541 --> 02:06.121 was a moment before. 02:06.120 --> 02:13.850 And subversive is probably an important and suggestive word 02:13.846 --> 02:18.106 there]--always new, irregular. 02:18.110 --> 02:22.730 [He wants what is new, and what is new is going to be 02:22.733 --> 02:26.823 what is irregular, and what is irregular has in 02:26.824 --> 02:31.274 some sense subverted what was in place before. 02:31.270 --> 02:36.220 He continues.] Verse to be alive [to have what 02:36.222 --> 02:40.292 Pound, I think, would have called "the 02:40.294 --> 02:44.044 impulse"] must have infused into it 02:44.036 --> 02:50.746 something of the same order [it has to have life in it, 02:50.750 --> 02:54.180 or what he calls] some tincture of 02:54.178 --> 02:58.958 disestablishment, something in the nature of an 02:58.958 --> 03:04.498 impalpable revolution, an ethereal reversal, 03:04.498 --> 03:07.758 let me say. I am speaking of modern 03:07.755 --> 03:11.405 verse. Like certain of our other 03:11.411 --> 03:16.221 poets, Williams is self-consciously modern. 03:16.219 --> 03:22.039 He's defining what "modern" means, and he's defining it as a 03:22.040 --> 03:26.480 quality of experience that he calls "life," 03:26.479 --> 03:33.379 that has the quality of disrupting whatever was in 03:33.383 --> 03:36.063 existence before. 03:36.060 --> 03:42.930 And this is a quality and energy that he wants to have in 03:42.934 --> 03:45.394 his poetry itself. 03:45.389 --> 03:51.519 This is Williams a little bit older, Williams in 1924, 03:51.524 --> 03:58.474 when he has established himself through the poems in a volume 03:58.470 --> 04:06.150 called Spring and All, as one of the major modern 04:06.148 --> 04:08.818 poets in America. 04:08.819 --> 04:14.339 He is the author of a poem – have you ever seen it? 04:14.340 --> 04:17.830 – called "The Red Wheelbarrow." 04:17.829 --> 04:21.449 And that might be a good place to begin. 04:21.450 --> 04:24.820 That's on pages 294 to 295. 04:24.820 --> 04:26.970 Of course, I'm joking. 04:26.970 --> 04:31.870 Probably that's the one poem everybody in this class has read 04:31.873 --> 04:34.573 before they came to this class. 04:34.569 --> 04:39.379 It is better known than "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" or 04:39.376 --> 04:43.556 "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," even. 04:43.560 --> 04:48.030 It is also distinguished, I think, as being the second 04:48.026 --> 04:52.826 shortest modern poem after "In a Station of the Metro," 04:52.829 --> 04:56.119 a poem that it's related to in certain ways. 04:56.120 --> 05:00.980 In fact, a link between Williams and Pound is important, 05:00.984 --> 05:05.444 it's relevant. Pound was a friend and rival 05:05.444 --> 05:09.364 for Williams throughout his career. 05:09.360 --> 05:16.520 Williams is sometimes seen in his early stages as a kind of 05:16.522 --> 05:23.562 Imagist or at any rate as a poet influenced by the Imagist 05:23.561 --> 05:28.131 aesthetic. Imagism is, of course, 05:28.130 --> 05:33.940 a visual metaphor, and Williams is above all a 05:33.940 --> 05:38.330 visual poet, a poet of the eye. 05:38.329 --> 05:41.669 so much depends upon a red wheel barrow 05:41.670 --> 05:49.030 glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. 05:49.029 --> 05:55.409 Well, I think you have to see that poem to start to really be 05:55.414 --> 05:58.794 able to read it. It, I think, 05:58.788 --> 06:04.988 probably does involve some subtle vocal and auditory 06:04.988 --> 06:09.208 experience, but it's first of all a poem 06:09.213 --> 06:13.813 that meets you and challenges you through the eye, 06:13.810 --> 06:18.790 as a visual object in some sense on the page. 06:18.790 --> 06:25.120 The kind of seeing that Williams's poems call for is--we 06:25.115 --> 06:30.745 can think of it as a way of reading that his poems 06:30.750 --> 06:33.280 themselves demand. 06:33.279 --> 06:36.549 In other words, there's a kind of link between 06:36.549 --> 06:40.909 how he sees the world and the way in which he asks us to read 06:40.908 --> 06:43.988 him. His poems model a kind of 06:43.990 --> 06:47.820 seeing. Unlike "In a Station of the 06:47.816 --> 06:54.426 Metro," "The Red Wheelbarrow," or let me call it instead "So 06:54.428 --> 06:59.358 Much Depends," is a poem without a title. 06:59.360 --> 07:02.960 This title, "The Red Wheelbarrow," was like the title 07:02.960 --> 07:06.150 "This is Just to Say" in the poem that follows, 07:06.146 --> 07:08.566 the almost equally famous poem. 07:08.569 --> 07:14.329 These are titles Williams added later to his work. 07:14.329 --> 07:20.139 In Spring and All--that volume, the first edition, 07:20.138 --> 07:26.048 1923 – the poem appears simply as a text on the page. 07:26.050 --> 07:28.600 And that's important. 07:28.600 --> 07:32.600 It's part of--it's as important as the title is for "In a 07:32.596 --> 07:34.306 Station of the Metro." 07:34.310 --> 07:37.570 Simply presenting the poem on the page to us, 07:37.569 --> 07:40.679 as Williams does, doing without a title, 07:40.680 --> 07:43.640 Williams asks us to, in some sense, 07:43.639 --> 07:47.729 read and encounter this poem without a frame, 07:47.730 --> 07:52.950 without some kind of pre-established boundary or 07:52.945 --> 07:56.935 explanatory introduction or entry. 07:56.940 --> 08:02.620 That choice increases the immediacy of our experience. 08:02.620 --> 08:09.020 It's as if Williams were asking you to kind of press up close to 08:09.022 --> 08:13.902 the poem, face it, just as he is facing the thing 08:13.900 --> 08:19.310 he is writing about; or asks us to face not the 08:19.309 --> 08:26.389 thing that he's writing about so much as his act of writing and 08:26.392 --> 08:33.362 seeing, his act of writing as it embodies a way of seeing. 08:33.360 --> 08:40.780 The poem has a suggestion that it requires as a poem the same 08:40.783 --> 08:47.463 kind of calm intensity of concentration that the poet's 08:47.464 --> 08:53.284 observation of the wheelbarrow exemplifies. 08:53.279 --> 09:00.389 So again, I think the kind of seeing that the poem does models 09:00.394 --> 09:02.614 a way of reading. 09:02.610 --> 09:09.370 Well, what is that way of reading? 09:09.370 --> 09:15.550 How does the poem embody in its construction – which it calls 09:15.552 --> 09:21.142 attention to – how does it embody in its construction a 09:21.136 --> 09:26.136 mode of perception, a way of seeing? 09:26.139 --> 09:32.369 How has Williams organized this language on the page, 09:32.365 --> 09:34.875 by what principles? 09:34.879 --> 09:40.309 Looking at it, well, as I suggested before, 09:40.313 --> 09:45.623 it's not a poem, I think, that we begin by 09:45.617 --> 09:49.397 hearing, and we have to start reading it 09:49.399 --> 09:53.929 and seeing it before we can even think about how to really speak 09:53.931 --> 09:58.061 it properly. It is not a metrical poem. 09:58.060 --> 10:00.560 This is not iambic pentameter. 10:00.560 --> 10:04.840 It is a free verse poem. 10:04.840 --> 10:12.420 In the prologue to Kora In Hell, which is the prose I 10:12.416 --> 10:19.346 asked you to read for today at the back of the book, 10:19.350 --> 10:28.300 there are a number of sentences and ideas that are important. 10:28.299 --> 10:31.039 I'll call attention to just a few. 10:31.039 --> 10:34.119 On page 958, Williams says, 10:34.124 --> 10:37.924 "Nothing is good save the new. 10:37.920 --> 10:41.540 10:41.539 --> 10:45.789 If a thing have novelty, it stands intrinsically beside 10:45.786 --> 10:49.086 every other work of artistic excellence. 10:49.090 --> 10:52.260 If it have not that, no loveliness or heroic 10:52.259 --> 10:55.429 proportion or grand manner will save it." 10:55.429 --> 11:01.209 And he identifies here, as elsewhere, 11:01.205 --> 11:11.305 this property of novelty with a kind of verse that eschews rhyme 11:11.313 --> 11:16.723 and meter, a whole host of existing poetic 11:16.716 --> 11:22.936 conventions. Again, in the head note to the 11:22.936 --> 11:29.956 Williams selection, there's a quotation from 11:29.955 --> 11:39.415 Williams on the subject of meter on page 285 from his prose 11:39.421 --> 11:44.211 statement, "The Poem as a Field of Action." 11:44.210 --> 11:46.750 He says: I propose sweeping 11:46.754 --> 11:51.214 changes from top to bottom of the poetic structure…. 11:51.210 --> 11:55.260 I say we are through with the iambic pentameter as presently 11:55.257 --> 11:58.067 conceived, at least for dramatic verse; 11:58.070 --> 12:01.310 through with the measured quatrain, the staid 12:01.308 --> 12:04.468 concatenation of sounds in the usual stanza, 12:04.474 --> 12:09.574 the sonnet. So much for "The Silken Tent," 12:09.572 --> 12:14.312 Hart Crane, Wallace Stevens, et cetera. 12:14.309 --> 12:20.249 Williams is insisting that modern verse, 12:20.246 --> 12:29.526 the kind of verse he describes, has to break with these models 12:29.531 --> 12:38.361 and has to proceed by patterns that it itself invents. 12:38.360 --> 12:47.040 Free verse is in that sense Williams's chosen medium; 12:47.039 --> 12:53.109 free verse meaning a poem not patterned by metrical scheme or 12:53.114 --> 12:58.384 rhyme, or indeed some other, in a sense, pre-existing 12:58.378 --> 13:00.908 principle or pattern. 13:00.909 --> 13:04.719 Nonetheless, free verse does always have 13:04.719 --> 13:10.189 some kind of operative pattern, sometimes very strict and 13:10.188 --> 13:15.318 structuring ones, and this short poem is a good 13:15.315 --> 13:18.815 example. In fact, as you examine it, 13:18.824 --> 13:23.844 you see a series of four stanzas, four two-line groups 13:23.840 --> 13:29.420 – since Williams might not like the word "stanza" – four 13:29.422 --> 13:35.752 two-line groups. And the pattern is long-short, 13:35.749 --> 13:41.679 three or four syllables followed by two. 13:41.679 --> 13:51.669 And this is itself almost like a metrical or rhyme scheme. 13:51.669 --> 13:55.799 In fact, you could say this poem is more strict than a 13:55.803 --> 14:00.563 sonnet, that it's more limited in the range of choices that it 14:00.562 --> 14:03.862 allows. It isn't, however, 14:03.860 --> 14:11.860 presented to us as sonnets are, as an instance of a received 14:11.861 --> 14:19.861 verse form that is at least in its general pattern invariant 14:19.862 --> 14:23.662 and again pre-existing. 14:23.659 --> 14:28.709 Instead, the poem presents itself as a kind of ad-hoc 14:28.711 --> 14:33.761 arrangement, as a kind of structure that the poet has 14:33.764 --> 14:39.404 chosen to work within, reflecting the contingencies of 14:39.397 --> 14:44.107 this moment, the occasion, the poem's purpose. 14:44.110 --> 14:50.710 The poem's shape – and this is one reason it's hard to 14:50.713 --> 14:57.923 speak, it's hard to hear – organizes Williams's speech in a 14:57.916 --> 15:05.356 manner that disregards or disrupts normal familiar syntax. 15:05.360 --> 15:14.180 It does so specifically through enjambment, by carrying one line 15:14.179 --> 15:16.839 over to the next. 15:16.840 --> 15:23.150 Williams's enjambments have here, as throughout his poetry, 15:23.146 --> 15:28.906 the effect of breaking up language: breaking it up; 15:28.909 --> 15:33.309 forcing us to, in fact, slow down our reading; 15:33.309 --> 15:38.949 to stop taking language's sense-making for granted; 15:38.950 --> 15:44.300 and, in a sense, to get into the poem. 15:44.299 --> 15:48.939 The white space in a Williams's poem is--you can think of it as 15:48.935 --> 15:53.655 a space for thought, a space where we are invited, 15:53.664 --> 15:57.924 allowed, required to think about choices, 15:57.918 --> 16:04.188 to ask ourselves about what possible connections can be made 16:04.193 --> 16:06.643 at a given moment. 16:06.639 --> 16:11.669 In this poem Williams specifically breaks words up 16:11.668 --> 16:15.668 into their component parts – wheel, 16:15.669 --> 16:20.269 barrow, rain, water – without hyphens, 16:20.272 --> 16:26.532 as if what he was looking at – a red wheelbarrow – 16:26.527 --> 16:31.717 consisted of those three terms: redness, 16:31.720 --> 16:34.410 the wheel, the barrow. 16:34.409 --> 16:38.669 These are its component elements. 16:38.669 --> 16:42.929 He points out, in effect, in this device, 16:42.931 --> 16:48.901 how in this case two nouns that are made of compounds – 16:48.898 --> 16:54.548 they're really compounds – represent things that are 16:54.545 --> 16:58.525 compounds, things that are made up of 16:58.534 --> 17:01.174 other things that have parts. 17:01.169 --> 17:06.599 As he establishes this pattern, "so much depends / upon / a red 17:06.599 --> 17:10.539 wheel / barrow / glazed with rain / water," 17:10.539 --> 17:13.579 you want to carry it forward, don't you – now that we've 17:13.579 --> 17:16.299 learned what he's doing – into the next stanza, 17:16.299 --> 17:22.159 'beside the white / chickens," as if "white chickens" were the 17:22.160 --> 17:26.390 same kind of compound as "rainwater" and "red 17:26.386 --> 17:30.566 wheelbarrow." But they're not quite, 17:30.573 --> 17:35.103 and Williams is, in a way, teasing us. 17:35.099 --> 17:38.259 White chickens aren't made up of "white"-ness and 17:38.263 --> 17:42.353 "chicken"-ness in the same way that a wheelbarrow is made up of 17:42.348 --> 17:44.258 a "wheel" and a "barrow." 17:44.259 --> 17:48.929 He's doing something a little different here. 17:48.930 --> 17:53.660 No sooner has he, in effect, established a 17:53.656 --> 18:00.226 certain pattern of cognition – showed us how to read his 18:00.226 --> 18:05.756 enjambments – than he breaks that pattern. 18:05.760 --> 18:08.800 He revises how it works. 18:08.799 --> 18:12.929 It's just been put in place and now it's changed and in fact 18:12.930 --> 18:14.540 it's over, it's done. 18:14.540 --> 18:17.550 The poem is done. 18:17.549 --> 18:24.359 If the first lines of the poem and the first stanzas are, 18:24.357 --> 18:31.647 in a sense, made to interrupt and disrupt and thereby freshen 18:31.650 --> 18:37.590 our habits of seeing, to make us see these things in 18:37.590 --> 18:41.850 some new way, this last stanza does away with 18:41.845 --> 18:46.485 the habit of seeing that the poem itself has just 18:46.486 --> 18:50.246 constructed, just introduced us to. 18:50.250 --> 18:55.490 Williams prevents us from settling into a convention of 18:55.490 --> 19:01.600 perception, even in a poem that is as small and as brief as this 19:01.603 --> 19:04.923 one. There's really only enough time 19:04.918 --> 19:09.258 in the poem's essentially introduction and three parts 19:09.257 --> 19:13.267 following to establish a pattern and break it. 19:13.269 --> 19:21.149 What this brief moment of heightened perception allows us 19:21.150 --> 19:28.750 to see, to experience, is something small and large. 19:28.750 --> 19:33.100 What is it that depends on the red wheelbarrow? 19:33.099 --> 19:40.179 Williams only says "so much," "so much." 19:40.180 --> 19:44.020 The idea is, I think, the beautiful one that 19:44.021 --> 19:49.201 the world, when it's glazed with rain water--it's a kind of 19:49.203 --> 19:52.303 aesthetic effect, an aesthetic effect that 19:52.300 --> 19:55.400 implies a light that does the glazing, that's somewhere behind 19:55.402 --> 19:59.072 our shoulders and the poet's, as he looks at these objects, 19:59.066 --> 20:03.486 this light, which comes after rain and is a product of change, 20:03.490 --> 20:07.510 of the energy of the world as it transforms; 20:07.509 --> 20:14.609 suddenly allows this world to be seen in visible detail, 20:14.607 --> 20:19.637 apprehensible in its component parts; 20:19.640 --> 20:27.900 and the ordinary gestalt of perception is interrupted, 20:27.896 --> 20:31.746 freshened and re-oriented. 20:31.750 --> 20:35.560 We see something, something ordinary, 20:35.555 --> 20:37.665 newly and freshly. 20:37.670 --> 20:42.140 It stands out. And what we see in miniature in 20:42.142 --> 20:46.622 the limited space of the moment, or of the poem, 20:46.619 --> 20:53.779 is a world, well, what we see is the elements out 20:53.782 --> 21:00.522 of which the world is made, elements ordinarily held in a 21:00.524 --> 21:05.024 kind of complex mutual dependency: a kind of complex of 21:05.020 --> 21:10.100 relations that we simply take for granted in the words that we 21:10.099 --> 21:13.679 use and in the way that we see things, 21:13.680 --> 21:18.250 just as we put together "wheel" and "barrow" and "rain" and 21:18.246 --> 21:21.156 "water," without thinking about it. 21:21.160 --> 21:26.720 What the red wheelbarrow holds, then, and what in that sense 21:26.716 --> 21:30.386 depends on it is something pretty heavy, 21:30.390 --> 21:34.440 and that is the sense of a whole world; 21:34.440 --> 21:40.750 or better, the sense of the world in its wholeness, 21:40.751 --> 21:47.691 which is something affirmed in this attractively modest, 21:47.694 --> 21:51.864 momentary, poetic perception. 21:51.859 --> 21:55.499 So much for "The Red Wheelbarrow." 21:55.500 --> 22:01.430 Spring and All: and there's that idea again, 22:01.427 --> 22:06.517 in the title, spring as a season of newness: 22:06.524 --> 22:10.414 for Williams, beginning his career, 22:10.407 --> 22:14.767 spring registering his own beginnings, registering 22:14.765 --> 22:20.015 modernness, a vision of the world in its 22:20.020 --> 22:23.780 newness. Well, Spring and All is 22:23.776 --> 22:27.386 a beautiful book, and one I wish I could show 22:27.394 --> 22:29.524 you, but the last time I saw it at 22:29.516 --> 22:32.766 the Beinecke it disappeared and no one has seen it in a couple 22:32.769 --> 22:35.959 of years. They have a lot of paper over 22:35.955 --> 22:38.435 there. I guess it's easy to lose 22:38.441 --> 22:41.291 things. Maybe it's available again, 22:41.286 --> 22:42.946 we'll look and see. 22:42.950 --> 22:49.570 It's a beautiful, plain book, robin's egg blue 22:49.569 --> 22:53.099 for spring, I suppose. 22:53.100 --> 23:00.980 It seems--it's not large; it's small. 23:00.980 --> 23:04.390 It almost has no ornament. 23:04.390 --> 23:08.800 In all of this, it seems to exemplify the 23:08.797 --> 23:15.627 American virtues of plainness and directness and simplicity; 23:15.630 --> 23:19.050 again, a long way from Hart Crane. 23:19.049 --> 23:24.749 And the book is really so American that it was published 23:24.750 --> 23:28.420 in Dijon. Williams is a polemically 23:28.418 --> 23:32.968 American poet, even more than Crane in certain 23:32.970 --> 23:35.930 ways, more than Frost even, 23:35.929 --> 23:41.969 and yet Williams has a very important and vital relationship 23:41.970 --> 23:48.420 to European modernism and to French modernism in particular, 23:48.420 --> 23:53.070 and more particularly to French painting. 23:53.069 --> 23:57.919 And to understand how Williams is writing, what he's trying to 23:57.919 --> 24:02.529 get at, it's helpful to remember what he was looking at. 24:02.529 --> 24:07.799 Here's a Braque, Georges Braque, 24:07.799 --> 24:11.689 1908. It's on the way to cubism and, 24:11.694 --> 24:16.834 I think, sort of helpfully on the way to cubism because it 24:16.833 --> 24:20.983 looks back to a realist tradition with its, 24:20.980 --> 24:26.640 in a sense, conventional, perspectival space that's yet 24:26.643 --> 24:33.863 being broken up into planes, that allow us to register the 24:33.857 --> 24:39.467 painting as a painting, that force us to, 24:39.467 --> 24:43.767 really. And I suppose even more 24:43.772 --> 24:49.702 striking is this: one of many great late Cezanne 24:49.703 --> 24:56.143 paintings of Le Mont Sainte-Victoire where here, 24:56.140 --> 25:04.610 again, the perspectival space of the painting is being turned 25:04.611 --> 25:12.661 into almost a kind of abstract field of color patterns. 25:12.660 --> 25:17.470 Again, these are painters interested in foregrounding 25:17.470 --> 25:22.280 their action of seeing through the ways in which they 25:22.279 --> 25:27.739 foreground self-consciously the materiality of the medium in 25:27.737 --> 25:30.417 which they are working. 25:30.420 --> 25:36.430 The aim in postimpressionist painting, and then in cubism, 25:36.434 --> 25:41.714 really, is to again break up that gestalt of 25:41.711 --> 25:47.201 perception that Williams is also opposing himself to: 25:47.198 --> 25:52.068 to break it up and grasp, in some sense, 25:52.070 --> 25:58.130 the dynamism in the world before us, precisely through 25:58.128 --> 26:04.298 acts of seeing that call attention to themselves and to 26:04.301 --> 26:09.561 the way in which that seeing is rendered. 26:09.559 --> 26:14.809 If you have read the prologue to Kora in Hell, 26:14.812 --> 26:21.592 which starts on page 954, you know that Williams begins 26:21.586 --> 26:29.676 with an anecdote about Marcel Duchamp, part of the New York 26:29.680 --> 26:37.360 art world that Williams also participated in through his 26:37.355 --> 26:41.225 friend, the dealer and taste maker 26:41.232 --> 26:45.132 Walter Arensberg: "Once when I was taking lunch 26:45.128 --> 26:50.378 with Walter Arensberg… I asked him if he could state what the 26:50.379 --> 26:54.779 more modern painters were about…" And then he gives 26:54.783 --> 26:58.853 several as examples, including Duchamp, 26:58.845 --> 27:02.885 all of whom were then in New York, and: 27:02.890 --> 27:05.770 [Arensberg] replied by saying that the only 27:05.766 --> 27:08.876 way man differed from every other creature was in his 27:08.882 --> 27:11.102 ability to improvise novelty and, 27:11.099 --> 27:13.279 since the pictorial artist was under discussion, 27:13.278 --> 27:15.038 anything in paint that is truly new, 27:15.039 --> 27:18.079 truly a fresh creation is good art. 27:18.079 --> 27:21.589 Thus, according to Duchamp, who was Arensberg's champion at 27:21.588 --> 27:25.038 the time, a stained glassed window that had fallen out and 27:25.036 --> 27:28.416 lay more or less together on the ground was a far greater 27:28.423 --> 27:31.573 interest than the thing conventionally composed in 27:31.568 --> 27:37.198 situ. Which is an interesting model 27:37.202 --> 27:45.982 for what Williams himself might be seen as doing in poetry, 27:45.980 --> 27:48.990 that in some sense he's taking the stained glass window and 27:48.993 --> 27:53.593 seeing it laid out on the floor, maybe broken on the floor. 27:53.589 --> 28:00.169 Duchamp painted this famous work, Nude Descending a 28:00.170 --> 28:05.260 Staircase, and it is clearly all about 28:05.260 --> 28:12.830 here rendering in pictorial form the kind of multiframe vision 28:12.834 --> 28:20.164 that photography and motion pictures allow us to see, 28:20.160 --> 28:26.750 to again here grasp in representation some sense of the 28:26.747 --> 28:34.917 movement and energy that compose the world that we see before us. 28:34.920 --> 28:42.630 The other dimension of the Duchamp anecdote that's nice, 28:42.632 --> 28:49.302 and about Williams is telling, is that a stained glass window 28:49.303 --> 28:53.383 that has fallen out is something you come upon or find. 28:53.380 --> 28:58.460 And Duchamp is, of course, most famous for his 28:58.463 --> 29:04.793 – let me turn to the next image – his ready-mades. 29:04.789 --> 29:12.699 This a facsimile of the--or that is another version of his 29:12.695 --> 29:21.285 most famous ready-made fountain, a urinal, which he signed with 29:21.293 --> 29:23.513 the pseudonym, R. 29:23.512 --> 29:30.172 Mutt 1917, and presented as a work of art. 29:30.170 --> 29:36.890 The Art Gallery has this work. 29:36.890 --> 29:41.120 This too is, as it were, a facsimile of the 29:41.119 --> 29:44.439 original, now lost: a snow shovel, 29:44.443 --> 29:50.023 another ready-made; this one with the excellent 29:50.015 --> 29:55.315 title, In Advance of the Broken Arm. 29:55.319 --> 30:02.439 Duchamp takes postimpressionism to New York in the form of dada 30:02.444 --> 30:08.194 – a movement with its importance for Williams, 30:08.190 --> 30:11.310 too, including, I think, Duchamp's 30:11.312 --> 30:15.952 mischievousness and his willingness to provoke the 30:15.949 --> 30:20.959 subversive – to take Williams's word – and to play 30:20.964 --> 30:25.794 with expectations about what constitutes art, 30:25.789 --> 30:30.119 as Williams in certain ways would play with our expectations 30:30.118 --> 30:34.298 about what could constitute a poem or poetic statement. 30:34.299 --> 30:40.449 In New York and elsewhere, Williams is in contact with a 30:40.446 --> 30:46.476 whole range of modernist American artists influenced by 30:46.481 --> 30:52.071 the European art I've just been talking about, 30:52.069 --> 30:58.389 but also working in a distinctively American mode. 30:58.390 --> 31:05.610 This is a work by Charles Demuth, 1921. 31:05.609 --> 31:08.839 I'm sorry, I'm behind on producing my image lists but 31:08.838 --> 31:10.388 I'll get those for you. 31:10.390 --> 31:13.380 And here's another. 31:13.380 --> 31:18.110 And again here: an urban scene, 31:18.110 --> 31:25.680 that is realist in its mode of representation, 31:25.680 --> 31:32.470 and yet the foregrounding of the lines created by the 31:32.474 --> 31:39.664 different shapes of the buildings call attention to this 31:39.660 --> 31:47.500 as indeed a kind of constructed image that seems to be moving 31:47.500 --> 31:55.210 out of the realm of realist representation to something more 31:55.209 --> 32:03.309 symbolic and certainly avowedly created by the artist. 32:03.309 --> 32:09.829 Demuth goes further in the same direction in what is probably 32:09.829 --> 32:12.219 his best known work. 32:12.220 --> 32:18.950 This is called The Great Figure Number 5. 32:18.950 --> 32:24.880 If Williams was busy looking at these artists I've just been 32:24.883 --> 32:29.613 talking about, they also were looking at him, 32:29.609 --> 32:36.229 and Demuth's painting is a tribute to Williams and a little 32:36.232 --> 32:38.422 homage; also, I think, 32:38.416 --> 32:43.286 a little joke about Williams's own poem, also from Spring 32:43.287 --> 32:48.487 and All, that we know as "The Great Figure" on page 291. 32:48.490 --> 32:52.860 32:52.860 --> 32:59.330 Well, I'll read this; again, rain and light: 32:59.330 --> 33:02.420 Among the rain and lights 33:02.420 --> 33:05.680 I saw the figure 5 in gold 33:05.680 --> 33:08.320 on a red firetruck moving 33:08.320 --> 33:11.540 with weight and urgency tense 33:11.540 --> 33:14.090 unheeded to gong clangs 33:14.090 --> 33:16.010 siren howls and wheels rumbling 33:16.010 --> 33:22.790 through the dark city. And this is Demuth's rendering 33:22.786 --> 33:31.056 of that moment that draws out the way in which the poem finds 33:31.059 --> 33:39.469 and makes an exalted symbol from this ordinary perception, 33:39.470 --> 33:45.280 and it's got "Bill" up top, and "W.C.W." down in the 33:45.279 --> 33:52.339 bottom, and "Carlos" underneath the 5, as part of this friendly 33:52.342 --> 33:56.132 tribute. The poem's interesting to look 33:56.133 --> 33:58.883 at next to "The Red Wheelbarrow." 33:58.880 --> 34:01.450 Here's something else that's red, right? 34:01.450 --> 34:07.660 And again, the poem is concerned with a moment of 34:07.658 --> 34:12.598 perception. Here, the poem really tries to 34:12.603 --> 34:18.263 render the process by which perception takes place, 34:18.260 --> 34:20.530 or rather the kind of context in which it does, 34:20.527 --> 34:22.397 which "The Red Wheelbarrow" doesn't. 34:22.400 --> 34:26.550 "The Red Wheelbarrow" really kind of takes something seen, 34:26.545 --> 34:30.515 almost fragmented, out of a continuum of 34:30.517 --> 34:37.467 perception that we can feel implied but isn't made explicit 34:37.471 --> 34:40.751 in the poem. In this case, 34:40.747 --> 34:46.877 we are given the kind of context out of which a detail, 34:46.884 --> 34:52.004 something arbitrary, contingent, and ordinary, 34:51.998 --> 34:56.588 springs out; springs out of the rush of 34:56.585 --> 35:01.995 things and catches the eye and the imagination and the 35:01.997 --> 35:04.547 intention of the poet. 35:04.550 --> 35:09.400 "In a Station of the Metro" is a poem about metropolitan, 35:09.395 --> 35:11.035 urban perception. 35:11.040 --> 35:13.350 So, is this poem. 35:13.349 --> 35:19.449 Here, instead of a present moment that's briefly suspended, 35:19.445 --> 35:24.485 as in Pound's poem or as in "So Much Depends," 35:24.489 --> 35:31.329 this poem is just as much about memory in the rush of ongoing 35:31.334 --> 35:38.524 experience, of a kind of ongoing temporality figured here by the 35:38.521 --> 35:45.481 firetruck "moving" – and there's that participial word, 35:45.480 --> 35:48.850 "moving" – a kind of ongoing action. 35:48.849 --> 35:53.919 In the midst of this, something catches the poet's 35:53.918 --> 36:00.008 attention. He acts as a perceiver. 36:00.010 --> 36:06.270 He says "I saw" in that action, expressed in a verb in the past 36:06.271 --> 36:10.541 tense; intervenes in and cuts into 36:10.542 --> 36:17.602 this blurry, perceptual, participial flow of things that 36:17.596 --> 36:21.696 is the fire truck rushing by. 36:21.699 --> 36:27.009 It fixes on a figure, in this case a number, 36:27.007 --> 36:33.177 and carries that away and out of the experience. 36:33.179 --> 36:39.699 That "5" on the fire truck, it's something utterly ordinary 36:39.697 --> 36:44.747 like a wheelbarrow or a shovel, a snow shovel, 36:44.754 --> 36:48.804 and it's a kind of found object. 36:48.800 --> 36:55.410 And yet here for Williams--he makes something of it, 36:55.410 --> 37:02.150 or plays with the act of making something with it. 37:02.150 --> 37:06.750 It is something he calls, with some joking, 37:06.746 --> 37:10.686 some seriousness, "the great figure": 37:10.686 --> 37:13.856 a great figure, a symbol. 37:13.860 --> 37:17.580 But a symbol of what exactly? 37:17.579 --> 37:23.679 Well, perhaps a symbol of the very capacity of the ordinary to 37:23.675 --> 37:29.765 arrest our attention and become significant, become objects of 37:29.771 --> 37:34.441 perception; perhaps a symbol of the five 37:34.439 --> 37:36.589 senses themselves. 37:36.590 --> 37:39.200 What do you think? 37:39.200 --> 37:43.020 That seems possible, too. 37:43.019 --> 37:49.149 The five senses whose powers are behind, for Williams, 37:49.146 --> 37:53.766 the way we create figurative language, 37:53.769 --> 38:00.849 the way we create figures and poems and discover symbols and 38:00.847 --> 38:07.797 discover meaning in the world around us: "Now life is above 38:07.804 --> 38:15.124 all things else at any moment subversive of life as it was the 38:15.122 --> 38:20.762 moment before – always new, irregular." 38:20.760 --> 38:26.240 The poem that's placed just after this in the anthology is 38:26.239 --> 38:29.699 one of Williams's greatest and it, 38:29.699 --> 38:34.599 too, as it appears in the volume Spring and All has 38:34.601 --> 38:39.851 no title but is given a title here – the title of the volume 38:39.847 --> 38:45.007 itself – but was known rather for a long time simply by its 38:45.007 --> 38:50.657 first line, "By the road to the contagious 38:50.655 --> 38:54.825 hospital." The poem is about the continual 38:54.834 --> 38:59.014 newness that Williams calls life, something that's 38:59.014 --> 39:03.114 continually constructing the world around us. 39:03.110 --> 39:07.440 And the poet in this poem gets at it – like the 39:07.436 --> 39:12.926 postimpressionist painter, even perhaps like the dadaist 39:12.927 --> 39:17.937 – by calling his and our attention to the act of 39:17.941 --> 39:22.821 constructing his poem, and in particular as that 39:22.816 --> 39:27.536 construction is felt, as it's kind of brought to our 39:27.543 --> 39:30.883 consciousness through enjambment. 39:30.880 --> 39:36.400 Williams's poetry, like the world he sees, 39:36.402 --> 39:44.082 is constantly enjambed, segmented, renewed by that act. 39:44.079 --> 39:47.819 Let's look at how enjambment works here. 39:47.820 --> 39:50.950 By the road to the contagious hospital 39:50.950 --> 39:55.820 under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the 39:55.820 --> 39:58.450 northeast--a cold wind. 39:58.450 --> 40:02.360 Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields 40:02.360 --> 40:06.090 brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen 40:06.090 --> 40:11.870 patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees 40:11.870 --> 40:16.420 All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, 40:16.421 --> 40:20.771 upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes and small trees 40:20.769 --> 40:23.159 with dead, brown leaves under them 40:23.160 --> 40:27.650 leafless vines -- Lifeless [again, 40:27.653 --> 40:30.793 dead] in appearance, 40:30.792 --> 40:35.502 sluggish dazed spring approaches [that 40:35.500 --> 40:38.990 is the first verb in the poem] – 40:38.989 --> 40:43.669 They [he now says, suggesting all of these things] 40:43.666 --> 40:51.126 enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all 40:51.130 --> 40:52.970 save that they enter. 40:52.969 --> 40:57.209 All about them [these things, the things of the 40:57.210 --> 40:59.480 world] the cold, familiar wind -- 40:59.480 --> 41:03.790 Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot 41:03.793 --> 41:07.133 leaf One by one objects are defined 41:07.125 --> 41:10.475 [like a series of Imagist poems]-- 41:10.480 --> 41:16.770 It [now not "they" but "it," which is again now here a world 41:16.773 --> 41:19.303 felt in its wholeness] 41:19.295 --> 41:23.265 quickens: clarity, outline of leaf 41:23.270 --> 41:27.580 But now the stark dignity of entrance-- Still, 41:27.579 --> 41:31.649 the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they 41:31.650 --> 41:34.480 grip down and begin to awaken. 41:34.480 --> 41:41.780 It's a great poem, and enjambment is a key part of 41:41.782 --> 41:46.272 its energy. The first enjambment that is 41:46.272 --> 41:51.562 striking, is bold – it's one of the really famous ones, 41:51.559 --> 41:56.319 in fact, in modern poetry – is that second line, 41:56.320 --> 41:59.430 "under the surge of the blue." 41:59.429 --> 42:04.279 It invites us to read "the blue" as a noun, 42:04.279 --> 42:08.319 and to feel and hear that phrase, 42:08.320 --> 42:13.050 "the surge of the blue," as a kind of conventional expression 42:13.054 --> 42:15.504 of lyric romantic exaltation. 42:15.500 --> 42:20.320 But we're wrong. "Blue" is an adjective, 42:20.317 --> 42:26.827 and we learn this as the poem turns and the enjambment 42:26.833 --> 42:32.123 supplies the information that this blue, 42:32.119 --> 42:39.029 this kind of exalted thing is actually "mottled," marred or 42:39.027 --> 42:42.597 flawed, even, in some sense. 42:42.599 --> 42:50.129 And here the newness that the poem is going to celebrate is 42:50.130 --> 42:57.660 going to be something we might feel mottled – that is, 42:57.659 --> 43:03.099 cold, flawed – which is part of its claim to be new, 43:03.102 --> 43:08.752 part of its claim to represent something really real; 43:08.750 --> 43:13.220 not to be found in previous books of poetry, 43:13.222 --> 43:17.592 but something to be found in the living. 43:17.590 --> 43:22.280 So, at this moment it seems enjambment means 43:22.280 --> 43:27.080 disestablishment, that word of Williams's, 43:27.079 --> 43:32.599 the subversion of life as it just was, a surprise of 43:32.602 --> 43:35.702 perception. But as in "The Red 43:35.702 --> 43:41.252 Wheelbarrow," if you think we've now learned what enjambment 43:41.248 --> 43:45.758 means in a given context, Williams is going to do 43:45.760 --> 43:51.270 something else. The next lines are also sharply 43:51.269 --> 43:58.289 enjambed: "mottled clouds driven from the / northeast--a cold 43:58.293 --> 44:01.943 wind. Beyond, the / waste of broad, 44:01.938 --> 44:06.228 muddy fields." That is itself a bold thing to 44:06.227 --> 44:10.657 have done in poetry, to break off a line at the 44:10.655 --> 44:12.575 definite article. 44:12.579 --> 44:18.189 I'm not sure that there's an example in poetry previously to 44:18.190 --> 44:23.230 align these examples of lines ending in "the" with. 44:23.230 --> 44:28.970 There may well be, but it's yet a novel and bold 44:28.971 --> 44:32.271 thing for Williams to do. 44:32.269 --> 44:40.019 But it works differently from the previous example where the 44:40.020 --> 44:47.640 "blue" invited us to read that phrase as a kind of noun, 44:47.639 --> 44:51.539 expressive of romantic exaltation, and then gave us the 44:51.535 --> 44:55.065 surprise that no, it doesn't function that way, 44:55.070 --> 44:59.650 and what you thought was pure and exalted is in fact mottled 44:59.648 --> 45:02.978 and messy. These enjambments don't have 45:02.977 --> 45:06.827 any kind of interpretive surprise like that. 45:06.829 --> 45:09.909 The lines are just broken that way. 45:09.909 --> 45:14.759 They don't change how we read the grammar of the phrases, 45:14.757 --> 45:18.997 they don't force us to recast our expectations. 45:19.000 --> 45:21.900 Together, though, as a series of enjambments, 45:21.896 --> 45:25.446 these lines evoke a state in which the world is freshly 45:25.450 --> 45:29.200 taking shape, coming at us in forms that we 45:29.199 --> 45:33.369 have to confront, that give us abrupt insistent 45:33.369 --> 45:37.159 impressions, which are sometimes full of 45:37.159 --> 45:39.589 meaning and sometimes not. 45:39.590 --> 45:43.710 The way Williams is constructing this poem is a 45:43.705 --> 45:48.625 poetic version of the action that the poem's describing: 45:48.626 --> 45:53.186 the going forward into spring against the cold, 45:53.190 --> 45:58.190 through which eventually, one by one, objects are 45:58.188 --> 46:01.528 defined; defined and organized and 46:01.530 --> 46:05.580 energized and animated as Williams sees it. 46:05.579 --> 46:12.029 As I say, the verb does not come in the poem until we see 46:12.026 --> 46:17.416 that phrase "spring approaches," almost at the middle or 46:17.422 --> 46:20.002 slightly beyond the middle of the poem. 46:20.000 --> 46:25.080 And then there is that next sentence, "they enter the new 46:25.083 --> 46:28.533 world naked": "they" being deliberately 46:28.532 --> 46:32.532 vague, evoking the things of the world 46:32.528 --> 46:37.708 but in a humanized way, a humanized way as we come to 46:37.709 --> 46:40.299 feel them and see them. 46:40.300 --> 46:43.690 They enter the world just as we do, naked. 46:43.690 --> 46:49.600 And we re-enter it naked with them, you could say. 46:49.599 --> 46:55.759 This is a poem about emergence that identifies modern poetry 46:55.764 --> 46:59.944 – modern verse, as Williams calls it in his 46:59.936 --> 47:05.036 letter to Monroe – identifies modern verse with the process by 47:05.038 --> 47:08.438 which the perceptual world takes shape, 47:08.440 --> 47:14.110 grips down, rooting itself in ordinary fact and things, 47:14.110 --> 47:21.040 and from which a kind of energy is drawn and we begin to awaken. 47:21.039 --> 47:27.389 This is probably a good place to end. 47:27.389 --> 47:34.729 I want to stress the resonance and suggestiveness of Williams's 47:34.728 --> 47:38.278 investment in what is naked. 47:38.280 --> 47:44.850 It's a way of envisioning the world in its primary terms. 47:44.849 --> 47:51.259 It's also a way of calling forth a kind of human energy 47:51.259 --> 47:57.189 that is primary and again, as Williams imagines it, 47:57.194 --> 48:01.314 modern. And here he is in the buff; 48:01.309 --> 48:07.429 I guess, skinny dipping in New Jersey with a couple of sticks 48:07.434 --> 48:09.684 to pretend he's Pan. 48:09.679 --> 48:15.349 So, go enjoy the spring day, keep your clothes on, 48:15.351 --> 48:21.371 and we'll talk about maybe a little more Williams but 48:21.370 --> 48:26.000 definitely Marianne Moore next time.