Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0206
Stephen Hahn
This essay examines how Williams’s approach to the subject of aging in his poetry developed over time, from an early and inchoate desire for deeper knowledge of life to a complex celebration of aging as an integral part of the life process. It argues that Williams’s treatment of aging subjects (whether identified with the lyric speaker of a poem or a person characterized in a poem) is distinct from that of other major poets, encouraging the reader’s empathetic engagement while also pointing up the aging subject’s resistance to care. The essay concludes that Williams’s distinctive view of death, represented in a poem such as “The Descent,” is one of relinquishment rather than resistance.
{"title":"William Carlos Williams and the Subject of Aging","authors":"Stephen Hahn","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0206","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay examines how Williams’s approach to the subject of aging in his poetry developed over time, from an early and inchoate desire for deeper knowledge of life to a complex celebration of aging as an integral part of the life process. It argues that Williams’s treatment of aging subjects (whether identified with the lyric speaker of a poem or a person characterized in a poem) is distinct from that of other major poets, encouraging the reader’s empathetic engagement while also pointing up the aging subject’s resistance to care. The essay concludes that Williams’s distinctive view of death, represented in a poem such as “The Descent,” is one of relinquishment rather than resistance.","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":"20 15","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138624416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0165
Florian Gargaillo
Although Williams has been praised for depicting working-class life in verse, many of his poems on the subject are marked by curious evasions. This essay considers three aspects of his approach that have received little attention. First, Williams minimizes or erases working-class people in settings where they would presumably be central. Second, he avoids depicting manual labor entirely or treats it as a metaphor for other forms of work. Third, he opposes any attempts to read his poems about the working class politically, by evoking and then quickly revoking the potential for political allegory. These evasions can be traced back to Williams’s distaste for poetry that places politics over form, as well as his objections to Marxist thought. But the poems also betray doubts about his ability to understand and represent working-class life in light of his more privileged social situation. By close reading a range of canonical and lesser-known poems, this article demonstrates that Williams’s portrayal of the working class is far more slippery, avoidant, and conflicted than the scholarship has acknowledged.
{"title":"Invisible Labor in William Carlos Williams","authors":"Florian Gargaillo","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0165","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Although Williams has been praised for depicting working-class life in verse, many of his poems on the subject are marked by curious evasions. This essay considers three aspects of his approach that have received little attention. First, Williams minimizes or erases working-class people in settings where they would presumably be central. Second, he avoids depicting manual labor entirely or treats it as a metaphor for other forms of work. Third, he opposes any attempts to read his poems about the working class politically, by evoking and then quickly revoking the potential for political allegory. These evasions can be traced back to Williams’s distaste for poetry that places politics over form, as well as his objections to Marxist thought. But the poems also betray doubts about his ability to understand and represent working-class life in light of his more privileged social situation. By close reading a range of canonical and lesser-known poems, this article demonstrates that Williams’s portrayal of the working class is far more slippery, avoidant, and conflicted than the scholarship has acknowledged.","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":" 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138613471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0243
Olivier Bochettaz
This essay highlights the numerous evidences of Chinese influences on Williams’s poetry, and particularly on the composition of Spring and All. What was it in Chinese poetry that could help Williams accomplish his poetic modernization which Pound was urging him to perform? In which ways and to which extent did Williams use Chinese poetic forms and concepts to compose his modernist masterpiece? As a continuation of the research of Wai-Lim Yip and Zhaoming Qian, two of the very few scholars who have focused their attention on this topic, this essay asks how much of what is seen by Western critics as poetic innovations by Williams can actually be seen as appropriations or derivations from Chinese language and poetics. It highlights that many of the poetic devices used in Spring and All, Williams’s breakthrough volume as a modernist, are actually either borrowed from traditional Chinese poetics, or result from the fusion of the English language with ideogramic linguistic concepts.
{"title":"A New Language for a New Perception: A Study of the Influence of Chinese Poetry on the Composition of Spring and All","authors":"Olivier Bochettaz","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0243","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0243","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This essay highlights the numerous evidences of Chinese influences on Williams’s poetry, and particularly on the composition of Spring and All. What was it in Chinese poetry that could help Williams accomplish his poetic modernization which Pound was urging him to perform? In which ways and to which extent did Williams use Chinese poetic forms and concepts to compose his modernist masterpiece? As a continuation of the research of Wai-Lim Yip and Zhaoming Qian, two of the very few scholars who have focused their attention on this topic, this essay asks how much of what is seen by Western critics as poetic innovations by Williams can actually be seen as appropriations or derivations from Chinese language and poetics. It highlights that many of the poetic devices used in Spring and All, Williams’s breakthrough volume as a modernist, are actually either borrowed from traditional Chinese poetics, or result from the fusion of the English language with ideogramic linguistic concepts.","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":" 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138614653","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0262
Simon D. Trüb
{"title":"William Carlos Williams Bibliography 2022","authors":"Simon D. Trüb","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0262","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0262","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":" 34","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138620647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0186
Brandon James O’Neil
Emily Dickinson Wellcome has been called the “essential muse” of her grandson, William Carlos Williams. Paul Mariani, when bestowing this sobriquet, further states that Williams identified her “with nothing less than the deepest promptings of his unconscious self” (8). To look more deeply into Williams’s unconscious self and detect Emily’s presence, this essay relies on a close reading of three poems—“Dedication for a Plot of Ground,” “The Last Words of My English Grandmother,” and “An Exultation”—against the psychic structures proposed by Jungian analytical psychology. Emily’s adherence to Christian Science alluded to in the poems and referenced in Williams biographies will be demonstrated as a crucial component of the contra-sexual unconscious complex Carl Gustav Jung terms the anima, contrasted against the consciously constructed persona of the medically oriented ‘Doctor Williams.’
{"title":"William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickinson Wellcome: The Conflict of the Doctor Persona and the Christian Science Anima","authors":"Brandon James O’Neil","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.2.0186","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Emily Dickinson Wellcome has been called the “essential muse” of her grandson, William Carlos Williams. Paul Mariani, when bestowing this sobriquet, further states that Williams identified her “with nothing less than the deepest promptings of his unconscious self” (8). To look more deeply into Williams’s unconscious self and detect Emily’s presence, this essay relies on a close reading of three poems—“Dedication for a Plot of Ground,” “The Last Words of My English Grandmother,” and “An Exultation”—against the psychic structures proposed by Jungian analytical psychology. Emily’s adherence to Christian Science alluded to in the poems and referenced in Williams biographies will be demonstrated as a crucial component of the contra-sexual unconscious complex Carl Gustav Jung terms the anima, contrasted against the consciously constructed persona of the medically oriented ‘Doctor Williams.’","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":" 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138615304","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0077
W. Mohr
abstract:This essay focuses on the impact of the period of William Carlos Williams's literary career in which he was most publicly visible on the West Coast, primarily through a pair of reading tours, and his subsequent influence on a set of poets who worked as editors or co-editors of poetry magazines in Southern California. In particular, literary activists who were poets, editors, and publishers, such as Paul Vangelisti and Lyn Hejinian, championed the work of those who largely absorbed Williams's impact after his death. These poets are radically diverse, ranging from Charles Bukowski to Rae Armantrout, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman, and Larry Eigner. All of these poets contributed to the maturation of the West Coast Poetry Renaissance through the remainder of the last century.
{"title":"Mentoring Mavericks: The Influence of William Carlos Williams on the West Coast Poetry Renaissance","authors":"W. Mohr","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0077","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay focuses on the impact of the period of William Carlos Williams's literary career in which he was most publicly visible on the West Coast, primarily through a pair of reading tours, and his subsequent influence on a set of poets who worked as editors or co-editors of poetry magazines in Southern California. In particular, literary activists who were poets, editors, and publishers, such as Paul Vangelisti and Lyn Hejinian, championed the work of those who largely absorbed Williams's impact after his death. These poets are radically diverse, ranging from Charles Bukowski to Rae Armantrout, Kit Robinson, Ron Silliman, and Larry Eigner. All of these poets contributed to the maturation of the West Coast Poetry Renaissance through the remainder of the last century.","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":"40 1","pages":"77 - 97"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42269654","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0098
Kevin Craft
abstract:This article explores the legacy of William Carlos Williams among poets living and working in the Pacific Northwest. It takes up the question of a "regional poetics" that often surfaces in discussions of the Northwest, favoring an expansive definition of place as "elsewhere" in the twenty-first century American experience. In the Northwest, wilderness is the substantive elsewhere that informs regional identity. Examining the consequential relationship Williams had with Theodore Roethke and others such Denise Levertov, and his influence among subsequent generations of poets such as Rae Armantrout and Heather McHugh, I argue for a poetics of regeneration commensurate with wilderness values to preserve the vitality of land and language alike.
{"title":"Journey to Love: William Carlos Williams in the Pacific Northwest","authors":"Kevin Craft","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0098","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0098","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article explores the legacy of William Carlos Williams among poets living and working in the Pacific Northwest. It takes up the question of a \"regional poetics\" that often surfaces in discussions of the Northwest, favoring an expansive definition of place as \"elsewhere\" in the twenty-first century American experience. In the Northwest, wilderness is the substantive elsewhere that informs regional identity. Examining the consequential relationship Williams had with Theodore Roethke and others such Denise Levertov, and his influence among subsequent generations of poets such as Rae Armantrout and Heather McHugh, I argue for a poetics of regeneration commensurate with wilderness values to preserve the vitality of land and language alike.","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":"40 1","pages":"121 - 98"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46302382","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0161
C. Macgowan
{"title":"Hugh Witemeyer (1939–2022)","authors":"C. Macgowan","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0161","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41610143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0163
Ian D. Copestake
{"title":"John T. Lowney (1957–2022)","authors":"Ian D. Copestake","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0163","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43470311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0007
Alan Soldofsky
abstract:This article aims to show the pervasive influence of William Carlos Williams's later more "personalist" work, in particular, on the poetry of Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Whalen, and Joanne Kyger. I analyze how Williams's later poetics influence West Coast poets, particularly Kenneth Rexroth, whose idea of a "personalist" poetics stands opposed to the "impersonalist" aesthetics of T.S. Eliot-Ezra Pound wing of modernism. I then introduce close readings of several poems of Philip Whalen, whose personalist style is more internal and less extraverted than the other poets and represents another step away from the modernist Williams and toward a highly subjective personalist aesthetic where the poem can become a graph of the poet's "mind moving." I go on to argue that Joanne Kyger's poetic practice is much influenced by Whalen's innovative take on Williams's discursive poetics and contend that Kyger's Zen-influenced "poetics of interconnectedness" contribute to her reframing Bolinas as an aesthetic site strongly connected to Williams's post-Paterson sensibilities.
{"title":"William Carlos Williams and West Coast Poetic Culture: Personalist Poetics from Paterson to Bolinas Mesa","authors":"Alan Soldofsky","doi":"10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5325/willcarlwillrevi.40.1.0007","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article aims to show the pervasive influence of William Carlos Williams's later more \"personalist\" work, in particular, on the poetry of Kenneth Rexroth, Philip Whalen, and Joanne Kyger. I analyze how Williams's later poetics influence West Coast poets, particularly Kenneth Rexroth, whose idea of a \"personalist\" poetics stands opposed to the \"impersonalist\" aesthetics of T.S. Eliot-Ezra Pound wing of modernism. I then introduce close readings of several poems of Philip Whalen, whose personalist style is more internal and less extraverted than the other poets and represents another step away from the modernist Williams and toward a highly subjective personalist aesthetic where the poem can become a graph of the poet's \"mind moving.\" I go on to argue that Joanne Kyger's poetic practice is much influenced by Whalen's innovative take on Williams's discursive poetics and contend that Kyger's Zen-influenced \"poetics of interconnectedness\" contribute to her reframing Bolinas as an aesthetic site strongly connected to Williams's post-Paterson sensibilities.","PeriodicalId":53869,"journal":{"name":"WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS REVIEW","volume":"40 1","pages":"50 - 7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47867057","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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