sophia_sol | What, more recs, so soon?

I have a thing about William Carlos Williams. That is to say, I have an issue with him and his poems. So much so that I, um, have one of them memorized. In my defense it's really short and I didn't mean to? *headdesk*

So yeah.

"So much depends upon the red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens." Whatever, William Squared.

As a result I have been working on a collection of fannish poetry that has been written as a pastiche of or reaction to him, usually of the one about the plums. They are AWESOME. And here they are, as recs. If you know of any others, PLEASE do share! They make me strangely joyful, despite my antipathy towards William Carlos Williams himself.

This Is Just To Say, by

toft. A Mythbusters version!
(ETA: And in the comments of the LJ version of Toft's, as a sort of sequel, a Mythbusters version of the wheelbarrow poem too, by

shimere277!)

FORGIVE ME, WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS, by

asimaiyat. A series of White Collar versions, that together form a fic!

An experiment in translation, by

skalja. A lolcat translation!

With All Apologies To William Carlos Williams, by

lannamichaels. A fandom version! Of both the plum poem and the wheelbarrow poem!

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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....

I had never really thought that This Is Just To Say was annoying, but it really kind of is. And I had pretty much dismissed the other one out of hand as incomprehensible. But like you, I have no idea whether that is what he DOES. You must investigate further! But yes, it is very modern in the sense that you can always just *pretend* it's all very meaningful, and no one will ever know any different :oP

That Bletsoe poem is one I keep around, because I feel it is a personal affront that she wrote something SO ACADEMIC AND SUBJECTIVE and made it so impossible to understand. So I keep coming back to it, and I will actually say that the more I learn and read, the more sense it makes. Which is still largely No Sense At All interspersed with Tiny Moments of Potential Sense-Making, but still. For some reason it just got under my skin.

So according to Wikipedia, "This is just to say" and "So much depends" are both poems in the Imagist style/movement. And I have gone and looked up some of his other poems, and read them, and they do not all do that thing. Some of them are actually decent! Nothing I'd specifically choose to seek out, but not bad either. So apparently the thing I dislike is Imagism, not William Carlos Williams. Good to know!

(also, it is hilarious to read the wikipedia article on This Is Just To Say, especially the interpretation section. I think people are trying way too hard to extract meaning and symbolism out of it.)

Look at you, being all investigative!

Haha, I like your division: some of them are imagist, some of them are decent XD But I'm sure Williams would be glad you do not dislike his work as a whole :o)

(Hee, poetry interpretation can be sort of... strange.)

I'm still not inclined to do Williams any favours, mind. After all, he did LIKE imagism. :P

(this is why I do not do poetry interpretation! I just read poetry and admire it or not. Although from what I hear, TS Eliot for example is a dude who wrote poetry that improves upon studying it, because then your attention is drawn to the very deliberate allusions he was making that I don't catch on to. And TS Eliot is a poet I'd like to be able to better appreciate. I quite like his poem about the magi.)

Yes, that is my understanding of Eliot as well. He was very much grounded in a Classical education, and I believe that influenced him a great deal. It's pretty common for Roman literature to require lots of background knowledge as well, so I suppose I'm more forgiving of the trend.

I didn't know that poem (well, I hardly know any Eliot). It was very stunning!

Yeah, some of my friends studied Eliot in high school English, so I heard a bit about him from them, but I never did myself so I didn't get the chance to really dig into his poems.

His Magi poem is really the only one of his that I'm very familiar with, but I love it! It's on my list of poems-to-memorize-at-some-point. I'm glad I could introduce you to it.

What, more recs, so soon?

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