Walking beside the tree-peonies,
I saw a beetle
Whose wings were of black lacquer spotted with milk.
I would have caught it,
But it ran from me swiftly
And hid under the stone lotus
Which supports the Statue of Buddha.
A Dome Of Many Colored Glass by Amy Lowell
Cold, wet leaves
Floating on moss-coloured water
And the croaking of frogs --
Cracked bell-notes in the twilight.
Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems by William Carlos Williams
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This 1921 poetry collection is Williams’ fourth, coming out early in his career — shortly before his most well-known poem (“The Red Wheelbarrow” (1923)) and long before his most acclaimed collections — Paterson [National Book Award in 1949] and Pictures from Brueghel (1962) [Pulitzer, 1963.] Williams was a full-time physician, and in this part of his career composing poems would have been a secondary pursuit. The 50-some poems of the collection are mostly free-verse imagist poems. The experimental and improvisational nature of the included poems has been both criticized and lauded.
As I mentioned, imagism is the primary approach in this collection, focusing on vivid descriptiveness — particularly in the visual sense. The subject matter is largely natural, but it does include a not inconsequential venture into human activity. A recurring theme in the collection is seasonality. [While these poems aren’t haiku, haiku readers will recognize the importance of seasons in that form.] That’s not the only connection to the Japanese style. Much of William’s work features economy, a fundamental trait in haiku. Few of these poems have the verbal terseness of haiku (i.e. that few words) but they share that form’s austerity of meaning (i.e. sticking to description and not getting involved in analysis or judgement.)
I enjoyed this collection. It might not be William’s most polished work, but that doesn’t necessarily make it undeserving of reflection.
Death the Barber by William Carlos Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a collection of 39 poems by the twentieth century poet William Carlos Williams. It’s a thin volume, and is part of Penguin’s Modern Classics — a series of short works (small short story collections, novellas, and poetry collections; all less than 100 pages) that feature writers from the past century or so. Like many, my experience with Williams didn’t extend much beyond his red wheelbarrow (not included herein) and so it was nice to get a taste of a broader range of his poems.
The poetry is free verse with experimental feel. The gathered poems are as short as a few lines and as long as two-ish pages, but most fall in the one to one-and-a-half page range. Williams was an imagist, and these poems reflect that focus on creating vivid imagery while using economy of words. While imagery is given priority, Williams doesn’t completely ignore sound, using alliteration and repetition to create interesting aural effects here and there. Nature is a common theme, but not an exclusive one in these works.
Among the more noteworthy poems are the titular poem (“Death the Barber”), “Dedication for a Plot of Ground” [an elegy to his grandmother, Emily Dickinson Wellcome (not the poet sharing the same first two names),] “Young Sycamore,” “Death,” “The Botticellian Trees,” and “The Bitter World of Spring.”
I enjoyed this little collection and that it wasn’t just greatest hits — which in Williams’ case would revolve around his famous “Red Wheelbarrow.”
Tiger Riding for Beginners 