62 quotes
Who isn’t frustrated and does not prove it by his actions — if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.
The Wedge (1944)
The pure products of America
go crazy —
Spring and All (1923)
Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
Not now. Love itself a flower
with roots in a parched ground.
Empty pockets make empty heads.
Cure it if you can but
do not believe that we can live
today in the country
for the country will bring us
no peace.
Collected Later Poems (1950)
My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled me with soul satisfying joy.
The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951)
These are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night
Complete Collected Poems (1938)
Well —
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the right or
the left way
and —
dreams are not a bad thing.
Al Que Quiere! (1917)
There is something
something urgent
I have to say to you
and you alone
but it must wait
while I drink in
the joy of your approach,
perhaps for the last time.
the set pieces
of your faces stir me —
leading citizens —
but not
in the same way.
Al Que Quiere! (1917)
One by one objects are defined —
It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of
entrance — Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.
Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.
The Wedge (1944)
Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower
Journey to Love (1955)
René Char
you are a poet who believes
in the power of beauty
to right all wrongs.
I believe it also.
With invention and courage
we shall surpass
the pitiful dumb beasts,
let all men believe it,
as you have taught me also
to believe it.
The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954)
The cries of a dying dog
are to be blotted out
as best I can.
René Char
you are a poet who believes
in the power of beauty
to right all wrongs.
I believe it also.
With invention and courage
we shall surpass
the pitiful dumb beasts,
let all men believe it,
as you have taught me also
to believe it.
The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954)
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.
Sour Grapes (1921)
Lift your flowers
on bitter stems
chickory!
Lift them up
out of the scorched ground!
Bear no foliage
but give yourself
wholly to that!
Strain under them
you bitter stems
that no beast eats —
and scorn greyness!
Al Que Quiere! (1917)
It was the love of love,
the love that swallows up all else … a love engendering
gentleness and goodness
that moved me
and that I saw in you.
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
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)
I thought my friends were damn fools, because they didn't know any better way of conducting their lives. Still they conformed better than I to a code. I wanted to conform but I couldn't so I wrote my poetry.
Annotations on John C. Thirlwell's copy of The Collected Earlier Poems (1958)