Selected Poems

by William Carlos Williams

edited by Charles Tomlinson

(New York: New Directions Book, 1985)

Trade Paperback, 302 Pages, Poetry Anthology

ISBN: 9780811209588, US$11.95

ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

From the Cover: With the 1985 publication of Charles Tomlinson’s edition of Williams’ Selected Poems, New Directions introduced a gathering larger and more comprehensive than the original 1963 edition. Opening with Professor Tomlinson’s superbly clear and helpful introduction, this selection reflects the most up-to-date Williams scholarship. In addition to including many more poems, Tomlinson has organized the whole in chronological order. “It isn’t what he [the poet] says that counts as a work of art,” Williams maintained, “it’s what he makes, with such intensity of purpose that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.”

My Review: From the first time that I read William Carlos Williams’ poem “This Is Just to Say” in high school, I fell in love with the man’s poetry; it is so simple, and yet so beautifully complex that I marvel at what he has created. We read Williams’ poems as part of my Modern American Literature class, and let me tell you, after having to read the poetry of T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams is a breath of fresh air.

Williams’ poetry is a celebration of life and a new kind of pastoral sensibility that Eliot seems to condemn. Whereas Eliot proclaims in “The Four Quartets” that Christ is the only center that anyone needs, that to seek for it anywhere else would be the height of folly, Williams proclaims that a rural awareness, an awareness that encompasses the facts of modern life (i.e. the facelessness of urban living, industrialization, the dehumanization of both man and the workforce, etc.) but also that realizes that life does not have to be about the urban rat race; that there is more to life than what Wall Street, Madison Avenue, and the Government tell you there is. That one can find pleasure in eating a plum, in being alone, or in being the proverbial Saxifrage in the modern world.

But, what I love best about the poetry of William Carlos Williams is the sheer fun and joy that come across in his words. This is a man who, in the midst of the Great Depression, World War I and the increasing “branding” of the American Way of Life, was able to find joy in the little things, in the mundane and everyday, in the miraculous; and what’s more, is he did not need to resort to Eliot’s form of haute poésie and strict attention to form and meter and whatnot. William Carlos Williams is poetry at its most fun, and I highly recommend it; it is truly a ray of sunshine on an otherwise drab day.