Happy 125th Birthday William Carlos Williams
I was asleep at the wheel, or maybe I was asleep on the wheel. So September 17th, the 125th anniversary of the birth of poet William Carlos Williams, came and went--unremarked in most places, including my house. We needed such a birthday. My calendar is bereft of holiday worthies.
Certainly, we ought to replace upcoming Columbus Day and celebrate the birth of a real discoverer. Next year, when we hold our annual bank holiday for that genocidal plunderer, I'll substitute a ceremony for American poetry's greatest 20th century explorer, William Carlos Williams. And I won't lower the flags to half mast; I'll remove them entirely because the world is too battered and divided for any large, draping reminders of separation and enmity.
WCW is essential to me because I entered 20th century poetry through the doorway of his poem written during World War I, "Tract," which is a poem of advice from the dead to the living about how to perform funerals. Everything about this poem startled and moved me--its man-on-the-street tone, its wisdom, its compassion, its irony, its anger and, above all, its freedom of speech. Years later I realized Williams was writing the poetry Wordsworth dreamed of writing. Back then, however, I didn't know until the day I read this poem that poetry was allowed to speak to me so plainly, so clearly and with such urgency. I didn't know a poem could give me such profound, admittedly intrusive advice for an occasion my teenage immortality refused to accept except on the then still-limited basis of philosophical correctness. Somehow I knew this poem was as much for me as anybody--although its meaning had to be stowed away so I could savor the force of its language and the originality of its voice. Until I joined those townspeople and threw dirt on the graves of friends buried in the cemetery where I hope to be laid to rest and whose protocols follow Williams, that poem was simply the marker of an awakening that changed my whole life. Now that mountains are once again mountains, it is a letter of advice.
After "Tract," I give you America's National Haiku, "The Red Wheelbarrow." Sit softly at attention and repeat these lines:
TRACT
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral--
for you have it over a troop
of artists--
unless one should scour the world--
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black--
nor white either--and not polished!
Let it be weathered--like a farm wagon--
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.
Knock the glass out!
My God--glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
how well he is housed or to see
the flowers or the lack of them--
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass--
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom--
my townspeople what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.
No wreaths please--
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes--a few books perhaps--
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople--
something will be found--anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.
For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him--
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down--bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all--damn him--
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!
Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind--as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly--
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What--from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us--it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.
THE RED WHEELBARROW
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
--William Carlos Williams
Certainly, we ought to replace upcoming Columbus Day and celebrate the birth of a real discoverer. Next year, when we hold our annual bank holiday for that genocidal plunderer, I'll substitute a ceremony for American poetry's greatest 20th century explorer, William Carlos Williams. And I won't lower the flags to half mast; I'll remove them entirely because the world is too battered and divided for any large, draping reminders of separation and enmity.
WCW is essential to me because I entered 20th century poetry through the doorway of his poem written during World War I, "Tract," which is a poem of advice from the dead to the living about how to perform funerals. Everything about this poem startled and moved me--its man-on-the-street tone, its wisdom, its compassion, its irony, its anger and, above all, its freedom of speech. Years later I realized Williams was writing the poetry Wordsworth dreamed of writing. Back then, however, I didn't know until the day I read this poem that poetry was allowed to speak to me so plainly, so clearly and with such urgency. I didn't know a poem could give me such profound, admittedly intrusive advice for an occasion my teenage immortality refused to accept except on the then still-limited basis of philosophical correctness. Somehow I knew this poem was as much for me as anybody--although its meaning had to be stowed away so I could savor the force of its language and the originality of its voice. Until I joined those townspeople and threw dirt on the graves of friends buried in the cemetery where I hope to be laid to rest and whose protocols follow Williams, that poem was simply the marker of an awakening that changed my whole life. Now that mountains are once again mountains, it is a letter of advice.
After "Tract," I give you America's National Haiku, "The Red Wheelbarrow." Sit softly at attention and repeat these lines:
TRACT
I will teach you my townspeople
how to perform a funeral--
for you have it over a troop
of artists--
unless one should scour the world--
you have the ground sense necessary.
See! the hearse leads.
I begin with a design for a hearse.
For Christ's sake not black--
nor white either--and not polished!
Let it be weathered--like a farm wagon--
with gilt wheels (this could be
applied fresh at small expense)
or no wheels at all:
a rough dray to drag over the ground.
Knock the glass out!
My God--glass, my townspeople!
For what purpose? Is it for the dead
to look out or for us to see
how well he is housed or to see
the flowers or the lack of them--
or what?
To keep the rain and snow from him?
He will have a heavier rain soon:
pebbles and dirt and what not.
Let there be no glass--
and no upholstery, phew!
and no little brass rollers
and small easy wheels on the bottom--
my townspeople what are you thinking of?
A rough plain hearse then
with gilt wheels and no top at all.
On this the coffin lies
by its own weight.
No wreaths please--
especially no hot house flowers.
Some common memento is better,
something he prized and is known by:
his old clothes--a few books perhaps--
God knows what! You realize
how we are about these things
my townspeople--
something will be found--anything
even flowers if he had come to that.
So much for the hearse.
For heaven's sake though see to the driver!
Take off the silk hat! In fact
that's no place at all for him--
up there unceremoniously
dragging our friend out to his own dignity!
Bring him down--bring him down!
Low and inconspicuous! I'd not have him ride
on the wagon at all--damn him--
the undertaker's understrapper!
Let him hold the reins
and walk at the side
and inconspicuously too!
Then briefly as to yourselves:
Walk behind--as they do in France,
seventh class, or if you ride
Hell take curtains! Go with some show
of inconvenience; sit openly--
to the weather as to grief.
Or do you think you can shut grief in?
What--from us? We who have perhaps
nothing to lose? Share with us
share with us--it will be money
in your pockets.
Go now
I think you are ready.
THE RED WHEELBARROW
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
--William Carlos Williams
posted by David Federman @ 11:42 AM
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