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Rating: 
Summary: by a poet of instinct and high sensibility
Review: Dr. Williams was not trained as a poet, unlike the case of Pound (his friend) or Eliot (his "enemy"). He was thus fortunatrly refrained from any academic formula that might prevent one from being a great writer. Emily Dickison was that way made a great poet as was the case of Williams. But instinct and high sensitivity can provide one with fleeting inspiration for writing poetry usually of short piece, instead of "long-winded" ones. Paterson has some technical flaws. Yet taken into seperate parts, it still destinguishes itself. One doubt whether these poets can be great novelists at the same time. Writing novels needs more knowledge in composition, needs "operations" on the skills. In this sense, Williams and Dickinson differ from Eliot and Pound.
Rating: 
Summary: Intense Words and Feelings
Review: How can one describe William Carlos Williams, a great brilliant writer. His words are so in depth and so meaning and can relate to any particular situation one might be in. His use of language is superior above others. Not until recently did I read something of his in a collection of poems that I had borrowed, and I saw one poem that stuck out to me. This poem is called Romance Moderne. This is a truly excellent poem and led me to be such a great admirer of William Carlos Williams. I've borrowed his collection of poems almost a thousand times from the library, and I still haven't finished reading all of his poems. It takes a necessary amount of time to soak in his words, and with such a great number of poems, I'd like to soak them all in, thus I will be buying the book for myself to have.
Rating:
Summary: one of our great poets
Review: how do you discuss 23 years, the last half of a great poet's long career, in such a short allotment of space. you really can't. i will say that some of his better works is in the first volume. that isn't much more i can say than pick up his collected works.
Rating: 
Summary: I've a grudging respect for the man as a poet.
Review: I don't know what it is about WCW that just makes me want to puke. Perhaps it's his nice-guy, nice "poet" pretensions. I do see the sense in those aphorisms about which he was constantly pontificating: "No ideas but in things", "For there to be a new mind, there must be a new line" (sic). I do see the technical innovations in such poems as "Iris" or "The Red Wheelbarrow", how the enjambment for which he's famous serves to direct the eye and the mind to things which you would not have noticed had these prose poems been unchopped: "So much depends Upon A red wheel Barrow, Glazed with rain Water Beside the white Chickens." Very nice. The vivid white of the chickens and the shining-glass image of the water that "glazes" (one of WCW's favorite words) the wheelbarrow is imbued with immediacy and novelty: fresh experiences with commonplace things. That's great. However, I have trouble with his "variable foot". (Employed, for example, in a poem called, I believe, "Mr. T" though not of A-Team fame.) The whole point of meter is to emulate the measure-bars in music: a constant beat to which the tune may be set. However, the triadic line sporting his variable feet, ostensibly to account for the "rapidity of American speech", just doesn't work. The only way for it to work is if you were reading Mr. T, or if the speaker gave infinitesimally shorter pauses between the triad-fragments so that the listener can detect the difference between a line-break and a pause separating the feet. WCW focused so much on the visual aspect of his poems that it makes you wonder, as a formalist friend of mine once put it, why he bothered to read his poems at all: why didn't WCW just give slideshows? On top of that, WCW had the gall to assault formalist poetry: I quote to the best of my recollection: "The sonnet is the form of the tyrant" and "You cannot write a sonnet without making gestures of loyalty to the court of Elizabeth I." In response to some of the garbage being spouted by WCW, both on the page and otherwise, Dylan Thomas once referred to WCW as one of the modern poets who was responsible for the Death of the Ear. And, hearing about all his arty posturings, I imagine how WCW would stand up to the likes of Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest, Elizabeth Jennings, and the other Movement poets, who would have lit into him like Alex's droogs in Burgess' _A Clockwork Orange_. Too bad they never met.
Rating:
Summary: by a poet of instinct and high sensibility
Review: The overall strength of Williams' work lies in his power to summon image from where there was previously nothing. Forget about the conventional tactics of poetry (meter, rhyme, etc.). Williams effectively occupies the outer regions of the land which is not prose. His power always properly lay in the simple yet vivid images (visual, aural, tactile, etc.) behind the words.
Rating:
Summary: Intense
Review: The overall strength of Williams' work lies in his power to summon image from where there was previously nothing. Forget about the conventional tactics of poetry (meter, rhyme, etc.). Williams effectively occupies the outer regions of the land which is not prose. His power always properly lay in the simple yet vivid images (visual, aural, tactile, etc.) behind the words.
Rating:
Summary: U 2 can write a decent poem.
Review: Whew, check out that list. & I bet you haven't read half of them even if you are a Williams fan via his selected & Pictures from Brughel.
This is the development of Williams' daily art, punctuated by an occasional masterpiece or near-surrealistic gemstone. Someone once asked John Cage, "With your methods, couldn't anyone compose music?" Cage replied, "Yes, but they don't." With Williams, it almost seems that everyone did. Williams, like every really fine poet/teacher I've ever met, was better at setting examples than at methods. He learned as he wrote, & I suspect his talk & his letters had a great deal more influence than his occasional stabs at poetics.
Williams stripped down American poesy & reconstructed it as a form of talk, which it had been all along beneath Whitman's yawping & Dickinson's obsessive editing & Frost plodding heavily though New England snow five steps at a time. Uncle Bill just didn't know any better. He didn't know he was supposed to be a somebodyelse; maybe a Stephen Benet, a William Vaughn Moody, an Edwin Arlington Robinson. Poor Bill. This is roughly the first half of The Doc's amazin' journey. You'll know if you need it. Any intelligent poet friend will love it as a gift.
Rating:
Summary: U 2 can write a decent poem.
Review: Whew, check out that list. & I bet you haven't read half of them even if you are a Williams fan via his selected & Pictures from Brughel.
This is the development of Williams' daily art, punctuated by an occasional masterpiece or near-surrealistic gemstone. Someone once asked John Cage, "With your methods, couldn't anyone compose music?" Cage replied, "Yes, but they don't." With Williams, it almost seems that everyone did. Williams, like every really fine poet/teacher I've ever met, was better at setting examples than at methods. He learned as he wrote, & I suspect his talk & his letters had a great deal more influence than his occasional stabs at poetics.
Williams stripped down American poesy & reconstructed it as a form of talk, which it had been all along beneath Whitman's yawping & Dickinson's obsessive editing & Frost plodding heavily though New England snow five steps at a time. Uncle Bill just didn't know any better. He didn't know he was supposed to be a somebodyelse; maybe a Stephen Benet, a William Vaughn Moody, an Edwin Arlington Robinson. Poor Bill. This is roughly the first half of The Doc's amazin' journey. You'll know if you need it. Any intelligent poet friend will love it as a gift.
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