sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
soph ([personal profile] sophia_sol) wrote 2011-06-19 08:04 pm (UTC)

I, um, actually have NO familiarity with Williams beyond "This is just to say" and "So much depends." I am a terrible person, extrapolating from only two of his poems. But they are his most famous, and I would assume they are iconic of his style. And -- well, I would say actually that I kind of like "This is just to say"; it's kind of endearing. But overall, the two poems seem to be trying to say something ~deep and meaningful~ and failing utterly, and really containing nothing more than a prosaic sketching-out of some ordinary scene. "So much depends" especially, since it actually begins with the line "So much depends", which SAYS OUTRIGHT that there is something important in that prosaic image, but doesn't do anything more with it.

IDK, maybe I need to read more of his poetry, so I can speak more knowledgeably about it. Because if "So much depends" is the only poem in which he really does that, then I could maybe even see how it's saying something interesting and important. But I get the (perhaps erroneous?) impression that that is just what he does in his poetry, which means that he just thinks that's a way of making stuff look ~meaningful~.

Oh dear, I just went and looked at Rainbarrows, and that looks like an impenetrable poem on an entirely different type of impenetrability than Williams! I think I'm happiest leaving Rainbarrows be....

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