Spring and All Read online

  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

  22: negligeable negligible

  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

  78: except except

  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 Essays

  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