I think the conditions of music are objects for the action of the writer’s imagination just as a table or —
According to my present theme the writer of imagination would attain closest to the conditions of music not when his words are disassociated from natural objects and specified meanings but when they are liberated from the usual quality of that meaning by transposition into another medium, the imagination.
Sometimes I speak of imagination as a force, an electricity or a medium, a place. It is immaterial which: for whether it is the condition of a place or a dynamization its effect is the same: to free the world of fact from the impositions of “art” (see Hartley’s last chapter) and to liberate the man to act in whatever direction his disposition leads.
The word is not liberated, therefore able to communicate release from the fixities which destroy it until it is accurately tuned to the fact which giving it reality, by its own reality establishes its own freedom from the necessity of a word, thus freeing it and dynamizing it at the same time.
XXVII
Black eyed susan
rich orange
round the purple core
the white daisy
is not
enough
Crowds are white
as farmers
who live poorly
But you
are rich
in savagery —
Arab
Indian
dark woman
ERRATA
page 1: for repellant read repellent
2: rythm rhythm
apostrophy apostrophe
8: unlayed unlaid
9: preceeded preceded
10: appearence appearance
11: frizze frieze
occured occurred
grate great
14: sinewey sinewy
20: existance existence
21: occured occurred
yed yet
annonymously anonymously
opposite opposite.
23: lilys lilies
azalia azalea
25: dipthong diphthong
auxilliary auxiliary
26: in vacuuo in vacuo
29: Shakespeares Shakespeare’s
33: anemonies anemones
39: appendecitis appendicitis
40: white, blue, white, blue,
42: make makes
43: writter writer
44: playes plays
Cezanne Cézanne
expressionits expressionists
page 48: for writting read writting
preceeds preceeds
49: mystecisism mystecisism
similies similies
50: independant independant
independant independant
existance existance
57: agregate agregate
60: seism
61: excrementa is excrementa is
63: rythm rythm
67: dynamisation dynamisation
intellectua intellectua
matter-how matter-how
70: unmagnatized unmagnatized
deliniation deliniation
cresence cresence
72: mens’ mens’
77: anatomitization anatomitization
acurately acurately
crystalization crystalization
81: Gipsie Gipsie
82: Freres Freres
82: rythm rythm
84: diagramatically diagramatically
85: Mariane Mariane
88: Dont’t Dont’t
89: venemous venemous
90: objects. objects.
91: independantly independantly
“It is ever more apparent that Williams was this century’s major American poet.”
—Chicago Tribune
“If there is a single book that strikes me as representing the apotheosis of modernist writing, it is Spring and All.”
—Ron Silliman
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS (1883—1963) was the author of Paterson and In the American Grain. Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection Pictures from Brueghel and was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.
C. D. WRIGHT received the 2009 Griffin Poetry Prize for her collection Rising, Falling, Hovering. Her most recent work, One With Others, won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the Israel Kapstein Professor of English at Brown University.
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
from New Directions
Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems
The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
The Build-Up
The Collected Poems, Volume I
The Collected Poems, Volume II
The Collected Stories
The Doctor Stories
The Embodiment of Knowledge
Imaginations
In the American Grain
In the Money
I Wanted to Write a Poem
Many Loves and Other Plays
Paterson
Pictures from Brueghel
Selected Letters
Selected Poems
Something to Say: WCWon Younger Poets
Spring and All
A Voyage to Pagany
White Mule
The William Carlos Williams Reader
Yes, Mrs. Williams
Copyright © 1970 by Florence Williams
Copyright © 1923, 1931, 1938, 1951, 1957 by William Carlos Williams
Introduction © 2011 C.D. Wright
Copyright © 2011 by New Directions Publishing Corporation
All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.
New Directions would like to thank the New York Public Library for their assistance in the production of this book.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Canada, Ltd.
First published as a New Directions Paperbook Original {NDP1208) in 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963.
Spring and all / William Carlos Williams.
p. cm.
“A New Directions Pearl.”
ISBN 978-0-8112-2321-8 (e-book)
1. Title.
PS3545.1544S7 2010
811.52—dC22
2010021394
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation,
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011