Poet, Reader & Imagination

There is a bond between the poet and reader expressed by William Carlos Williams:

I wanted to write a poem

that you would understand.

For what good is it to me

if you can't understand it?

   But you got to try hard --

from "January Morning" (XV)

 

There is also the power of imagination: 

"The flower dies down

and rots away

But there is a hole

in the bottom of the bag.

It is the imagination

which cannot be fathomed.

It is through this hole

we escape"

from Paterson, Book Five 

Paterson by William Carlos Williams. New Directions, 1995 (1992)

Selected Poems by William Carlos Williams. New Directions, 1985 (1949)

Winter

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

—“Blizzard,” by William Carlos Williams, who died on this day in 1963


I have not given up on Spring but thought this poem on this date is still appropriate. The sun and Spring will be here soon!


The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939. New Directions. 1991.