what William Carlos Williams had to say...

"The thing has been with me to work the language in order to find what new may be done with it."

"Poetry should be brought into the world where we live and not be so recondite, so removed from people."

he wanted his poetry to "refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live."

he considered art to be a form or action...the "artist must possess his world, live in it, take responsibility for it, and use it for his imaginative pleasure"...art should be an "addition to nature"

I'm still researching what Williams said and felt as a poet...meanwhile, here are some of my favorite lines and images from his poetry.

"Your thighs are appletrees / whose blossoms touch the sky." - from "Portrait of a Lady"

"It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there." - from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"

"Now the grass, tomorrow / the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf" - from "Spring and All"

And one of my favorite Williams poems, it makes me smile everytime (in addition to his poem, "This Is Just To Say").

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,--
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
"I am lonely, lonely,
I was born to be so lonely.
I am best so!"
If I admire my arms, my face
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
against the yellow drawn shades,--

who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?