Happy birthday to William Carlos Williams, an American poet who not only advanced modernism and imagism through his work but also practiced medicine as a family doctor in New Jersey.
He served as a mentor to Allen Ginsburg, which may come as a surprise when thinking about his short, direct, clear as a bell poems such as "The Red Wheelbarrow," but begins to gel a bit more when considering Williams' experimental hybrid of prose and free verse in "Spring and All," which has been described as a manifesto of the imagination.
He served as a mentor to Allen Ginsburg, which may come as a surprise when thinking about his short, direct, clear as a bell poems such as "The Red Wheelbarrow," but begins to gel a bit more when considering Williams' experimental hybrid of prose and free verse in "Spring and All," which has been described as a manifesto of the imagination.
Dawn
Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings --
beating color up into it
at a far edge, --beating it, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor, --
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading change, --
bursting wildly against it as
dividing the horizon, a heavy sun
lifts himself -- is lifted --
bit by bit above the edge
of things, -- runs free at last
out into the open --! lumbering
glorified in full release upward --
songs cease.
-- William Carlos Williams
Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings --
beating color up into it
at a far edge, --beating it, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor, --
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading change, --
bursting wildly against it as
dividing the horizon, a heavy sun
lifts himself -- is lifted --
bit by bit above the edge
of things, -- runs free at last
out into the open --! lumbering
glorified in full release upward --
songs cease.
-- William Carlos Williams
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