from THE WILLIAMS-SIEGEL DOCUMENTARY
Edited by Martha Baird & Ellen Reiss
Williams’ Poetry Talked about by Eli Siegel, and William Carlos Williams Present and Talking: March 5, 1952
(continued from third section)
As I said, there is very much to say about this work. I have talked lengthily on “The Red Wheelbarrow,” which is an anthology piece now, but as Williams says (he uses cuss words very often), that doesn’t mean a damn—it is still good, whether it’s printed a hundred times. Even if it got on television, it would still be what it is. You can’t spoil a thing simply because you repeat it often. Hamlet, for example, has gone through ever so many forms, but it’s still as new as tomorrow’s plums.
In “The Red Wheelbarrow” there is religion. There is a mingling, in short, of qualities: visual, musical, in a sense mystical. I think that Williams’ poem is better, but I am going to read Tennyson’s “Flower in the Crannied Wall” because the two poems have a similarity of purpose. This is very good, but it has some meretriciousness to it. The absence of the meretricious in the Williams poem is notable.—This is Tennyson:
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Instead of putting it in rhyme, Williams says, “So much depends.” That way is better. Tennyson begins with the flower and says, “Look, I would know what the whole world means if I knew what this flower is!” What Williams says is, “So much depends on this red wheelbarrow.” The direction is different, but the trip has a similarity.
This is a great poem. It can be anthologized, and people can get sick of hearing it (in quotes) and Williams himself can get sick of hearing about it—the fact remains. Williams uses a phrase “saw the god” in A Voyage to Pagany; well, here all the gods are seen. And so it is only right that “The Red Wheelbarrow” be read once more. This is seemingly one of the most innocent little poems; it’s just creeping like a waif into a big mansion.
so much depends upon60
The value of the world depends upon that red wheelbarrow. It is in keeping with Williams’ other ideas, that if one thing can be seen straight, we shall come to a notion of a world truly of us. The technique, however, is what makes it; technique in the best sense. Technique I define generally as a way of dealing honestly with an object, so that the utmost impression can be had by the person then seeing it. And there are various ways of doing this. In other words, to bring out the power of an object is the purpose of technique.
Now, the syllables here are different. It is hard to say why “depends upon” falls differently from “a red wheelbarrow,” but from one point of view, it is very easy. “N” is a grudging sound, “upon” is grudging; “red” and “wheel,” particularly, are more round. One is grudging and the other is luscious. And then we have the relation of the visual to the form. A circle is usually seen as quite pallid. A circle is geometric. But giving it red takes the eternity of the circle (the circle does stand for eternity—it is represented in the old legends by the snake with its tail in its mouth) and gives it motion. Consequently, to say that there is red in this wheelbarrow, and also the feeling of solidity, brings together all the weight and lightness that Williams has been looking for in his work. And it is done very subtly. I could talk about this a great deal, including the meaning of the wheel, also the relation of the wheel to the other part of the barrow, and the fact that it is handled by a person.
“Glazed with rain”—here again we have the feeling of polish and roughness. Take silk. Silk is admirable because it shines; tweed can be admirable because it doesn’t shine. There is a relation between polish and roughness. The red wheelbarrow, of course, is still a wheelbarrow; then it’s glazed with rain—which means that the roughness of the world, the ordinariness of the world, has taken on a polish. It takes on a Veronese quality.
All this has motion in it, but the word “beside” is very still; and then “the white chickens,” whether they’re white or not, are still very much in motion: they flutter around like those sparrows.
So this whole poem is a study in what the nature of reality is. I’m not trying to be portentous. I remember a statement in the New York Times Book Review that ·Williams was very much taken with this poem, “The Red Wheelbarrow.” I read it, and I felt he had a right to be, as I said in my review.
This is a major poem, but again it should be seen as related to other poems. It is related to the flower poem of Tennyson; it is related to a poem that now sounds so old-fashioned, of T. E. Brown. Brown himself was a Manxman and he went around with the rough people of the Isle of Man, but this sounds awfully sentimental, and it has been used by the gardeners sickeningly. However, I don’t care how a poem has been used, I want to see the poem itself. I don’t care whether it says “God wot” or “God knows.” This poem is not as good as the Williams poem, and it is not as good as the Tennyson poem, but it is in the same field:
A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern’d grot—
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
‘Tis very sure God walks in mine.61
Well, God walked beside the white chickens—something like God.
I have to conclude shortly, but I am going to read what Mr. Keats would call in Endymion certain samples of the “joy forever.”
This has suspense. It is a little bit like that music they used to use when the villain came in. It is called “Poem”:
as the cat
climbed over
the top of
the jam closet62
That is a poem of suspense!
Then there is a poem about a flower radiating and going everywhere. I can’t read all of it, but this is very nice:
One petal goes eight blocks
past two churches and a brick school beyond
the edge of the park where under trees
leafless now, women having nothing else to do
sit in summer—to the small house
in which I happen to have been born.63
There is a use, which can be overdone, of typographical effects. Cummings uses these effects, and I can’t go for them: you’re not going to make a poem by capitals or punctuation or even spaces. However, the following poem is very good. It gets in the collage effect, which painters use—that is, getting newspaper headlines and things in. (There is a business about horses in the Voyage to Pagany: about horses representing the beauty of the world too. There is a time when Dev Evans, who has a certain similarity to the writer, is going with Miss Black to the Reitschülein Vienna, where they make horses do lovely things.) This is from “Rapid Transit”:
THE HORSESblack
&
PRANCEDwhite
Outings in New York City
Ho for the open country
Take the Pelham Bay Park Branch
of the Lexington Ave. (East Side)
Line and you are there in a few
minutes
Interborough Rapid Transit Co.64
Then there is a lovely effect in a poem, “Fine Work with Pitch and Copper,” which I don’t believe is as good as “Rapid Transit” with its finality; but this gives a prelude to the tough language when it’s at its best in the stories:
One still chewing
picks up a copper strip
and runs his eye along it65
This is also preluded in Kora in Hell, because it has to do with the vertical and the horizontal. There is a motion going up and down—the chewing—and then there is the looking at the copper strip.
And there is a poem which is simple description (if Zola loved poetry, he’d lovc this) called “The Sun Bathers”:
A tramp thawing out
on a doorstep
against an east wall
Nov. 1, 193366
That is straight stuff.
And there is the “Two Pendants”; as I said, I wish I could read that.
But I am going to close with a poem—it is a good poem—which is autobiographic (it has a right to be); and it is the poet defiant. The word cure can have various meanings: we can be cured of heartache, we can be cured of financial ills, we can be cured of anything that is inaccurate. —Occasionally, Williams has been too humble. I think he was too humble as to Eliot—well, many people were. And there was this feeling of Williams that there was something going on in himself which didn’t seem to be in the Eliot field, even in that of Edwin Arlington Robinson. Many people were very much impressed by him, but there is more poetry in that “Red Wheelbarrow” than in all of Robinson’s Tristram.
This is a poem which is definitely autobiographic; it is called “The Cure”:
Sometimes I envy others, fear them
a little too, if they write well.
But they have no access to my sources.
where we walk daily and from which
among the rest you have sprung
and opened flower-like to my hand.67
It is a true poem. Williams says that he is honoring earth, including the earth of New Jersey and the earth of all time, and that somehow earth feels honored in him, and that occasionally there is petulance and uncertainty (as there’s been, I’m sure, a lot of). But out of it all have come two things: at the moment there is a great deal of fame, and I hope that Dr. Williams enjoys it; but most of all, the fame is deserved. And the poetry has helped the America that he has wanted so much to care for.
EDITORS’ NOTE. William Carlos Williams rose, shook Eli Siegel’s hand, and said: “I am astonished. I value your words.” Then he sat down again and continued.
WILLIAMS. I can see your direction through it, and it’s very important.
SIEGEL. Well, I think poetry should make one happy.
WILLIAMS. Well, it seems that the poetry that has been written in the past only leads you to something else that you want to do. When you’re restless, and you don’t know where you’re going, you feel distressed, that’s all. Practically, I feel more distress than happiness, and as far as the fame is concerned—well, I got left out of the anthology of Mr. Oscar Williams.
SIEGEL. No, there’s one you’re in. And that’s a questionable Oscar anyway.
WILLIAMS. Yes.
SIEGEL. I know you’re in the New Poems, with a photograph.
SHELDON KRANZ. “The Yachts” is in that one.
SIEGEL. About that poem, I disagree with some of the critics; it doesn’t go along with your customary joy.
WILLIAMS. Well, that’s something that stands apart—I mean it’s something that I never particularly enjoyed.
SIEGEL. It’s in the Oxford anthology, Matthiessen uses it.
WILLIAMS. I think it’s because it’s more conventional.
SIEGEL. Maybe.
WILLIAMS. That’s why they liked it. It was more or less of a stunt, although it came up at the end.
SIEGEL. It’s got that tragedy in it.
WILLIAMS. Yeah, they liked that.
SIEGEL. I like things in Kora in Hell better.
WILLIAMS. Yes.—I don’t know what to say, about your whole talk—certainly you’re a rare person. It’s just as important—it’s as if everything I’ve ever done has been for you. You come up with it, and so few people come up with anything. They don’t come up with it at all. They praise the wrong things, for the wrong reasons very often, although it seems plain enough; and when you say it, it’s plain. You make it plain. And it’s very forceful.
SIEGEL. What I’d like some time is a closer examination of certain passages—if you’d like.
WILLIAMS. Yes.
SIEGEL. I wish that could be.
WILLIAMS. It’s wonderful, what you’ve covered. I never thought anybody had ever looked at the stuff like that. I never thought—
SIEGEL. I’ve got lots more. For instance, I wanted to discuss your review of Antheil—do you remember, that was in Transition?
WILLIAMS. Yes, yes. You mean about the concert in Carnegie Hall?
SIEGEL. Yes, there are certain statements in the Transition review. And then in the Voyage to Pagany there are many things, particularly about your dealings with the Venus and sculpture, and your feeling about sculpture. I mentioned to Barbara Lekberg that you had said in the Autobiography that wherever you see sculpture, you just wish it were the original stone still, or something like that. But then, in the Voyage to Pagany you have this great intensity.
WILLIAMS. That was referring to myself, as far as I was concerned. I really did go through a stage when I wanted to do something and I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I considered sculpture. But it wasn’t for me, that was all.
SIEGEL. Do you want to hear that passage?
WILLIAMS. Sure. I guess.
SIEGEL. It’s a good passage.
WILLIAMS. Yeah? All right.
SIEGEL. It’s very good. In fact, the parts about your reaction to those things in Rome and Naples—
WILLIAMS. Oh, I can remember one of the statues at Rome, but that wasn’t my feeling toward sculpture, it was my feeling toward Venus.
SIEGEL. It doesn’t sound just like that. There’s a changing from stone to Venus. Well, anyway:
Rome starting alive from the rock. He felt it, he could touch the fragments. There IS the Venus. There it is. Where? There, crouching at the top of the stairs. But that is a stone. No, it is Venus! It is she. No, it is a stone. It is she, I say. Venus! The presence is over the stone.
Evans was near mad with it. He felt himself possessed, bewitched, or else he saw the god.68
Maybe you changed to the red wheelbarrow, but that’s all right.
WILLIAMS. Of course I was in despair of ever seeing “the god.” It’s the thing that depresses me always. And I need this sort of talk, to give me more courage, to go ahead.
SIEGEL. I hope so.
WILLIAMS. But, you see, nothing happens, nothing seems to happen in the world. We go off by ourselves. But it doesn’t seem to happen. All that happens is what’s In the Presspapers and what’s in Korea; and no one realizes that the poem is related to Korea, and related to everything in life. They don’t care, and if they don’t care—“nothing happens.”
SIEGEL. What you’re saying is that the poem is related to the original energy of the world which will not be denied.
WILLIAMS. Good. That’s fine, that’s fine. In other words, you’ve got to believe it above all that, and you sometimes lose faith—well, not faith, you don’t lose faith, you lose courage, that’s all. And as you get older and your powers become less, you feel—well, what has happened? nothing much.
SIEGEL. Well, I should like to deal with Paterson in extenso. And I can say this about that letter, which most of the Society here know: when I saw you write that—I just trembled with it.
WILLIAMS. Well, I felt it.
SIEGEL. Well, but I still tremble.
WILLIAMS. I wrote that very excited. You talk about the volcano: well, of course, we go around sitting on the volcano all the time. And some people have the wrong kind of volcano, and they blow them to hell. But in this terrible feeling of having this volcano in you, and having to discipline it—ink on the page, of a piece of paper, that’s a big thing—you just tremble to make that thing stay in there.
SIEGEL. But you’ve done it, that’s the point.
WILLIAMS. Yes, but I’ve been kicked around for it. Because, like the old Baroness said to rne, “Dr. Williams, come to me! and I will give you syphilis, and you will be a great man!” I mean that idea that you have to throw yourself into the world, let yourself go, and at the same time you’ve got to hold yourself down.
SIEGEL. Yes, yes.
WILLIAMS. But you see, it’s unsatisfactory. You want to run away, and at the same time you have to stay.
SIEGEL. Well, there’s nothing that you endure that a magnet doesn’t.
WILLIAMS (laughs). Well, you have a lovely large way of putting things. It really is beyond what I see. You do. And I respect it, and I value it.
SIEGEL. Well, I tell you, I should like it if your position as poet—as I said, you’re right now the most talked of person writing poetry in America.
WILLIAMS. You think so.
SIEGEL. Yes. 1 don’t go in for schmoozing.
WILLIAMS. No, no; I know. I know that, and I’m not questioning that.
SIEGEL. I’m saying it because I’ve followed this very carefully. There is a friend of the Society who said, even before we met here, “You know, more people are talking about Williams now than they do of Eliot,” and he said it with a customary kind of intensity. And I’ve noticed it. And the fact that there are these poems in the collected form, and the lectures that you write about. But I’m worrying whether I’m tiring you.
WILLIAMS. No.
SIEGEL. I hope not. Do you want some time to hear some work dealt with more textually?
WILLIAMS. Yes; and not only mine, but I’ll come again when you talk about some other poets.
SIEGEL. Would you like to come when I talk on “Hamlet Revisited”?
WILLIAMS. I’d love to!
SIEGEL. You’re invited. I believe it’ll be two Fridays after the twenty-sixth. Is that all right for you? The Friday after the twenty-sixth will be the twenty-eighth—the Friday after that.
WILLIAMS. I think I could come, I don’t know anything that would stop me at all. I’d love to come, I’d enjoy it thoroughly.
SIEGEL. I’d like you to see where some of the rhythms that are in that [Hamlet] have a kinship to rhythms here [in Williams].
WILLIAMS. I don’t look for that.
SIEGEL. I mean what I say here; I know when there’s music in lines, when a person has seen happily the rock bottom and light of things.
WILLIAMS. Yes.
SIEGEL. I know that. It’s there; and I just hope that you see that there are many friends you have.
WILLIAMS. After I read The Sea Around Us, I feel like I want to shoot myself. That doesn’t seem to offer any hope of anything at all. That’s just the most depressing book I ever read in my life. It just simply talks about—just casually—about what the world’s going to be, and it’s going to cool off, and everybody’s going to be dead. And this part of the world is going to be 250 feet under water anyhow, all around New York.
SIEGEL. Well, I have never recommended that book. In fact, Barbara Lekberg once brought some passages of it from the New Yorker, and you remember, perhaps, that my reception of it wasn’t too enthusiastic?
BARBARA LEKBERG. Yes.
WILLIAMS. Those things—well, it is of course the problem of religion, in a general way. I notice when you talk about “God or,” you say something of that sort. What is the—
SIEGEL. God is the thing that connects objects. That’s what you’re writing about.
WILLIAMS. Yes, but how long do we last, ourselves? Immortally? It’s not our business to ask.
SIEGEL. A person interested in poetry is interested in the nature of immortality.
WILLIAMS. Yes, he is, very definitely. But he’s defeated.
SIEGEL. Well, I’m not saying that. I’m not saying. But whatever cheerful things I say, I’m not going to say without any basis. Now I know you’re against sonnets—
WILLIAMS. No, I’m not.
SIEGEL. Well, you say so.
WILLIAMS. I know I do, because you have to say so in order to throw the other thing into a better light, that’s all. People have the idea that a sonnet is synonymous with a poem. A lot of people have that: “A sonnet is The Poem at its highest reach.” Well, hell, it has nothing to do with the poem. And I simply insist that it’s one of the things you can do if you happen to want to imitate somebody that did it better than you can ever do it. And if you want to do that—fine. Go ahead, have fun. But there is another—
SIEGEL. Could you mention (pardon me, if you don’t mind?)—can you mention one sonnet you’ve liked?
WILLIAMS. Well, sure. I like many of Shakespeare’s sonnets, although they’re not the Italian sonnet. Even Wordsworth’s on London Bridge—you know, the famous one.
SIEGEL. I know you quote Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us,” and you say, —”it’s not half enough.”
WILLIAMS. Yes.
SIEGEL. And do you know what you also do?
WILLIAMS. What?
SIEGEL. You have a motto from Dryden. It’s for the last part of the Autobiography. You have here:
Old though I am, for lady’s love unfit,
the power of beauty I remember yet.69
WILLIAMS. That’s from Chaucer, I never can find it.
SIEGEL. It’s not from Chaucer.
WILLIAMS. It’s not? My God! Where does that come from?
SIEGEL. It’s from the first few lines of Dryden’s “Cymon and Iphigenia.”
WILLIAMS. My God, no wonder I couldn’t find it. I thought it was Chaucer.
SIEGEL. Martha, have you got that Hazlitt?—Here, I think it’s in here.
MARTHA BAIRD. No, that’s not it. Here—Elegant Extracts.
WILLIAMS. You have such an encyclopedic knowledge of poetry!
SIEGEL. I’m just interested in poetry. Do you want to see it, or shall it be read to you?
WILLIAMS. Read it, I want to hear it. I want to see it besides.
SIEGEL. Lou Dienes, you can take part, you can read it.
LOUIS DIENES (reads).
Old as I am, for ladies’ love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet,
Which once inflamed my soul, and still inspires my wit.70
WILLIAMS. Well, it does. That’s right to the point.
SIEGEL. It’s a retelling of a story from Boccaccio.
WILLIAMS (looking at the passage). Oh, it is misquoted. “Old though I am,” I have; it’s “Old as I am.” Well, it was a very real thing to me.
SIEGEL. It’s a very fine triplet.
WILLIAMS. Yes, because I certainly do remember it. Well, thank God they didn’t put “Chaucer” after it. They left it blank, anyhow.
SIEGEL. Since you’re interested, I’m going to ask Martha to read this sonnet, because I think it’s the most hopeful thing in Shakespeare nearly. I talked about it a lot. Sonnet 107 of Shakespeare. Could you read it, Martha?
MARTHA BAIRD (reads).
Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love control,
Suppos’d as forfeit to a confin’d doom.
The mortal moon hath her eclipse endur’d,
And the sad augurs mock their own presage;
Incertainties now crown themselves assur’d,
And peace proclaims olives of endless age.
Now with the drops of this most balmy time
My love looks fresh, and Death to me subscribes,
Since, spite of him, I’ll live in this poor rhyme,
While he insults o’er dull and speechless tribes;
And thou in this shalt find thy monument,
When tyrants’ crests and tombs of brass are spent.
SIEGEL. I know it’s hard to follow, but I talked a lot about that sonnet.
WILLIAMS. No, no, I followed it.
SIEGEL. Well, I’m glad, but you know sometimes those sonnets are. You see, one of the things I did was to take up all the Sonnets, and try to show what they were about, and how the grandest sonnets were on the whole the most joyous.
WILLIAMS. I think that’s the key to the whole thing.
SIEGEL. It is.
WILLIAMS. It’s wonderful to feel it. There was the man, the one person of all time—that spoke in our language—who had that knack of words, that supreme knack of words. Half his power is just the wonderful words. You almost don’t care what he says, the words come out so magnificently. I can just listen to them all day long.
SIEGEL. There’s also how he went after things. You see, I think that if there is this friendliness, to use the—well, he’s Elizabethan—I hope you’ll see yourself as friendlier.71 Sheldon Kranz, do you want to say something?
SHELDON KRANZ. Well, I have been reading Dr. Williams’ poetry quite closely, and the thing I am most moved by is that somehow the real purpose of poetry seems to have been achieved. After reading the poems, you get a feeling that the world is more exciting than you thought it was before. And I feel that Dr. Williams’ poetry, like all good poetry, does seem to say that the world is exciting and wonderful.
SIEGEL. Nancy Starrels, do you want to say something?
NANCY STARRELS. Yes. One thing I’d like to say is that during the months that you discussed the Shakespeare sonnets and all the other poets that you’ve discussed, one of the things I’ve always wished is that some of them could have heard what was said. I feel that it is a very moving occasion to have Dr. Williams hear his work discussed. A general trend in all of his work was made much clearer to me. One of the things that stood out, that I missed very much in the Vivienne Koch book, was this structural good time that you talked of. One sentence you said described very much my feeling about many of the poems: the feeling that if you dig, you’ll get to freedom. I also was especially interested in your discussion of Kora in Hell.
SIEGEL. I think the author himself underestimated that.
WILLIAMS. It almost struck me as funny. Of course they were improvisations, and they seemed sort of romantic.
SIEGEL. Romantic?
WILLIAMS. Loose statements, they’re too loose. I really wrote the thing just as I say: they were improvisations. I tell you just this: at one time, wanting to practice—and it’s always a good thing to loosen up the fingers, in anything you’re doing, just to let the thing ride, let it flow—I made up my mind I would write something every day, without any knowledge at all of what I was going to say.
SIEGEL. Well, you had a demon by you.
WILLIAMS. There was a demon, all right; yes, there was a demon. But I couldn’t capture him, so I thought I’d let him reveal himself.
SIEGEL. A demon with a good ruler.
WILLIAMS. And every night when I came home, I would write, and not look at it; just write and put it in the drawer—
SIEGEL. I guess I should be sorry I did look at it?
WILLIAMS. Just put it down, and put it in the drawer. At the end of the year I threw away a lot of things—maybe I shouldn’t have, but I did, because it was too bulky and there was too much there, and sometimes it was just silly, it was nothing. Then of course the comments at the bottom were put in afterwards, because I thought no one would know what I was writing about at all.
SIEGEL. That was during the First World War, apparently. It’s a poem of intricate hope.
WILLIAMS. But I’ve never touched it since, and never read it aloud.
SIEGEL. Sorry: I interfered.
WILLIAMS. No, I suppose I ought to. I’ve been thinking recently it would be a good hour’s talk.
SIEGEL (showing book). For those who want to—this is that first edition, the only edition; it’s so different from the later poems.—Well, I’ll ask Barbara Lekberg to say something, because she represents an art which I—well, talked about.
BARBARA LEKBERG. I was struck by the fury and excitement in the poems, and also the organization. I saw more clearly that it’s a problem that is at the basis of sculpture, too. And seeing it solved in the poems this way really taught me a great deal. I was very affected by seeing it.
WILLI.AMS. It was very effective. You’ve opened up a lot of new territory for me.
SIEGEL. So you’re going to be here on—April fourth, that will be?
WILLIAMS. I wanted to tell you about that one about Portrait of Myself. That has a queer history. I wrote that very excited—and you read it very well, you probably read it better than any of them, it went off very well, and it really astonished me—but I wrote it, and you know, no one wants to reveal too much of himself. We all dream of being out in the street with the pants off, you know—that’s a common dream. And I wrote that thing and—”Uh-uh, no.” And I crumpled it up and threw it in the wastebasket. Bob McAlmon was in the house at the time, and he fished it out, and showed it. Well.
SIEGEL. That’s a very good thing, it’s got love and mathematics. That’s a combination. —So I hope we see each other, then, the first Friday in April. I’m going to talk on Hamlet.
61. T. E. Brown, “My Garden.”62. The whole poem was read. Text is in CEP, p. 340.63. “The Flower,” lines 14-19. CEP, p. 236.64. Lines 1-4, 13-17. The first seventeen lines of the poem were read. Text is in CEP, p 282.65. “Fine Work with Pitch and Copper,” lines 16-18. CEP, p. 368.66. Lines 1-4. The whole poem was read. Text is in CEP, p. 45767. Lines 1-2, 5, 10-12. The whole poem was read. Text is in Collected Later Poems, p. 23.68. A Voyage to Pagany, p. 147.69. Autobiography, p. 277.70. As quoted in Hazlitt’s New Elegant Extracts (London: 1824), p. 242. 71. This refers to Williams’ statement about Elizabethan English, p. 8.AcknowledgmentsOur thanks for permission to use extensive quotations from the following:”Vistas,” from The Selected Poems of Alfred Kreymborg 1912-1944, © 1945, by Alfred Kreymborg. Reprinted by permission of E. P. Dutton & Co.Lines from “The Hollow Men” in Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, © 1936, by Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.: © 1963, 1964 by T. S. Eliot. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
Passages from Kora in Hell, © 1957 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books.