William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems, 1921-1931.
Objectivist Press. $2.
The poems of Williams belong to the history of American Poetry and therefore, Literature. This is not meant to be a highfalutin’ statement; it may be wrong but it’s careful. Of late, Williams has written inferior things; but a man’s work is his whole work. In this book, “The Red Wheel barrow” is as good as the author says it is: it is mystical, physical, and musical; and gives you a good case of poetic shivers. And many other things of Williams get to heaven and caves at once. Again carefully: in the person of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford, N.J., now with us[,] we have a better poet than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow or James Russell Lowell. Williams is big time—any time in American Poetry.
Eli Siegel.
1934