William Carlos Williams QUOTES

101 " The imagination, intoxicated by prohibitions, rises to drunken heights to destroy the world. Let it rage, let it kill. "

― William Carlos Williams

102 " the faucet of
June that rings
the triangle of the air "

― William Carlos Williams

103 " Yet there is
no return: rolling up out of chaos,
a nine months’ wonder, the city
the man, an identity—it can’t be
otherwise—an
interpenetration, both ways. Rolling
up! Obverse, reverse;
the drunk the sober; the illustrious
the gross; one. In ignorance
a certain knowledge and knowledge,
undispersed, its own undoing. "

― William Carlos Williams , Paterson

104 " ARRIVAL And yet one arrives somehow, finds himself loosening the hooks of her dress in a strange bedroom— feels the autumn dropping its silk and linen leaves about her ankles. The tawdry veined body emerges twisted upon itself like a winter wind...! "

― William Carlos Williams , Sour Grapes

105 " Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold. "

― William Carlos Williams

106 "
At our age the imagination

                 across the sorry facts

                                  lifts us

to make roses

             stand before thorns.

                              Sure

love is cruel

                  and selfish

                                  and totally obtuse—

at least, blinded by the light,

                 young love is.

                                      But we are older,

I to love

               and you to be loved,
                           we have,

no matter how,

                        by our wills survived
                                          to keep
the jeweled prize
                always
                              at our finger tips.
We will it so
                   and so it is
                                      past all accident.

from “Journey to Love
"

― William Carlos Williams , Selected Poems

107 " The rock has split, the egg has hatched, the prismatically plumed bird of life has escaped from its cage. It spreads its wings and is perched now on the peak of the huge African mountain Kilimanjaro.
Strange recompense, in the depths of our despair at the unfathomable mist into which all mankind is plunging, a curious force awakens. It is Hope long asleep, aroused once more. Wilson has taken an army of advisers and sailed for England. The ship has sunk. But the men are all good swimmers. They take the women on their shoulders and buoyed on by the inspiration of the moment they churn the free seas with their sinewy arms, like Ulysses, landing all along the European seaboard.
Yes, hope has awakened once more in men's hearts. It is NEW! Let us go forward!
The imagination, freed from the handcuffs of "Art", takes the lead! Her Feet are bare and not too delicate. In fact those who come behind her have much to think of. Hm. Let it pass. "

― William Carlos Williams , Imaginations

108 " I asked him, What do you do?

He smiled patiently, The typical American question.
In Europe they would ask, What are you doing? Or,
What are you doing now?

What do I do? I listen, to the water falling. (No
sound of it here but with the wind!) This is my entire
occupation. "

― William Carlos Williams , Paterson

109 " Love without shadows stirs now beginning to waken as night advances. The descent made up of despairs and without accomplishment realizes a new awakening : which is a reversal of despair. For what we cannot accomplish, what is denied to love, what we have lost in the anticipation— a descent follows, endless and indestructible . Listen! — the pouring water! The dogs and trees conspire to invent a world—gone! "

― William Carlos Williams , Paterson

110 " Hell, New Jersey, it said on the letter. Delivered without comment. So be it! Run from it, if you will. So be it. (Winds that enshroud us in their folds—or no wind). So be it. Pull at the doors, of a hot afternoon, doors that the wind holds, wrenches from our arms—and hands. So be it. The Library is sanctuary to our fears. So be it. So be it.—the wind that has tripped us, pressed upon us, prurient or upon the prurience of our fears—laughter fading. So be it. "

― William Carlos Williams , Paterson

111 " Mother, who was known among her intimates as a medium, suddenly said to my father, looking right and left at Ed and me, “So these are the boys. How they have grown. Come here, my dears,” she said to us, reaching out her hands, “and let me see you!” This to her own children whom she had been caring for all day. Pop, who was accustomed to such occasions, told us gently, bewildered as we must have been, to do as we were bid—to go to Mother, which we did, one on either side. She put her hands on each of our heads and patted us with smiles of approval and loving affection. “How well they look. I am so happy.” At this Pop said to her, to his own wife, “Who is this we have the pleasure of talking to?” “Don’t you know me?” Mother answered. “Why I’m Lou Paine. "

― William Carlos Williams , The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams

112 " The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned "

― William Carlos Williams

113 " It was too strong in the air.
I had no rest against that
springtime!
The pounding of the hoofs on the
raw sods
stayed with me half through the night.
I awoke smiling but tired. "

― William Carlos Williams

114 " Pop told me many times after that that he had sent a wire forthwith to Jesse Paine, an old friend and neighbor of ours from Passaic Avenue, then residing in Los Angeles, asking what, if anything, had happened to Lou, his wife. Two weeks later he received a letter saying that Jesse was sorry not to have been able to answer the telegram sooner, the reason being that Lou had been ill; in fact at the time the telegram had arrived, she was in the hospital where, that day, she had been given up for dead, following a serious abdominal operation "

― William Carlos Williams , The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams

115 " Dear Mama: The reason I didn’t write last Sunday was because I was out of town. My friend Pound invited me to spend Saturday and Sunday with him … His parents are very nice people and have always been exceptionally kind to me. Mrs. Pound had prepared a fine meal … After supper Pound and I went to his room where we had a long talk on subjects that I love yet have not time to study and which he is making a life work of. That is literature, and the drama and the classics, also a little philosophy. He, Pound, is a fine fellow; he is the essence of optimism and has a cast-iron faith that is something to admire. If he ever does get blue nobody knows it, so he is just the man for me. But not one person in a thousand likes him, and a great many people detest him and why? Because he is so darned full of conceits and affectation. He is really a brilliant talker and thinker but delights in making himself just exactly what he is not: a laughing boor. His friends must be all patience in order to find him out and even then you must not let him know it, for he will immediately put on some artificial mood and be really unbearable. It is too bad, for he loves to be liked, yet there is some quality in him which makes him too proud to try to please people. I am sure his only fault is an exaggeration of a trait that in itself is good and in every way admirable. He is afraid of being taken in if he trusts his really tender heart to mercies of a cruel crowd and so keeps it hidden and trusts no one. "

― William Carlos Williams

116 " And a church spire sketched on the sky,
of sheet metal and open beams, to resemble
a church spire "

― William Carlos Williams , The Collected Poems, Vol. 1: 1909-1939

117 " Black wind, I have poured my heart out
to you until I am sick of it-

Now I run my hand over you feeling
the play of your body - the quiver
of it's strength- "

― William Carlos Williams , Spring and All

118 " Filth and vermin though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet to excessive cleanliness. "

― William Carlos Williams

119 " If anything of the moment results — so much the better. And so much the more likely will it be that no one will want to see it. "

― William Carlos Williams , Spring and All

120 " Fools have big wombs. "

― William Carlos Williams

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