William Carlos Williams Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels.

  William Carlos Williams

  Eye, Angel, Blind

  33 Copy quote

• Compose. (No ideas
  but in things) Invent!
  Saxifrage is my flower that splits
  the rocks.

  William Carlos Williams

  Flower, Thoughtful, Thinking

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.455, New Directions Publishing

  21 Copy quote

• That which is possible is inevitable.

  William Carlos Williams

  Inevitable

  William Carlos Williams (1984). “The Doctor Stories”, p.88, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  William Carlos Williams

  Suicidal, Blue, Joy

  "The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams" by William Carlos Williams, W. W. Norton & Co., 1951.

  64 Copy quote

• The poem is a capsule where we wrap up our punishable secrets.

  William Carlos Williams

  Secret, Wraps

  William Carlos Williams, Macha Louis Rosenthal (1966). “The William Carlos Williams Reader”, p.21, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Somewhere the sense makes copper roses steel roses — The rose carried weight of love but love is at an end — of roses It is at the edge of the petal that love waits.

  William Carlos Williams

  Love, Romantic, Flower

  "The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams".

  55 Copy quote

• There is no comment on pictures but pictures, on music but music, on poems but poetry. If you do, you do. If you don't, you don't. And that's all there is to that.

  William Carlos Williams

  Comment, Ifs

  William Carlos Williams, Robert McAlmon (1967). “Contact”

  17 Copy quote

• The art of the poem nowadays is something unstable; but at least the construction of the poem should make sense; you should know where you stand. Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.

  William Carlos Williams

  Art, Past, Vision

  "The Paris Review : Writers at Work", 3rd series, Viking Penguin, (p. 29), April 1962.

  38 Copy quote

• Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images… It is not a conscious recording of the day’s experiences ‘freshly and with the appearance of reality’… The writer of imagination would find himself released from observing things for the purpose of writing them down later. He would be there to enjoy, to taste, to engage the free world, not a world which he carries like a bag of food, always fearful lest he drop something or someone get more than he.

  William Carlos Williams

  Writing, Reality, Imagination

  19 Copy quote

• Time is a storm in which we are all lost.

  William Carlos Williams

  Storm, Lost

  William Carlos Williams (1954). “Selected Essays”, New York, Random House

  14 Copy quote

• What "love" is I don't know if it's not the response of our deepest natures to one another.

  William Carlos Williams

  Love, Response, Knows

  William Carlos Williams, John C. Thirlwall (1957). “The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

  15 Copy quote

• A profusion of pink roses being ragged in the rain speaks to me of all gentleness and its enduring.

  William Carlos Williams

  Rain, Flower, Compassion

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.68, New Directions Publishing

  16 Copy quote

• If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.

  William Carlos Williams

  Pleasure, Ifs

  4 Copy quote

• But the sea which no one tends is also a garden

  William Carlos Williams

  Garden, Sea

  William Carlos Williams (1967). “Pictures from Brueghel, and Other Poems: Collected Poems, 1950-1962”, p.156, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Sure
  love is cruel
  and selfish
  and totally obtuse--
  at least, blinded by the light,
  young love is.

  William Carlos Williams

  Selfish, Love Is, Light

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.289, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• By listening to his language of his locality the poet begins to learn his craft. It is his function to lift, by use of imagination and the language he hears, the material conditions and appearances of his environment to the sphere of the intelligence where they will have new currency.

  William Carlos Williams

  Imagination, Listening, Use

  8 Copy quote

• so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.

  William Carlos Williams

  Rain, White, Water

  "The Red Wheelbarrow" l. 1 (1923)

  35 Copy quote

• No ideas but in things.

  William Carlos Williams

  Ideas, Crafts, No Idea

  Paterson bk. 1, sec. 1 (1946)

  20 Copy quote

• Old age is
  a flight of small
  cheeping birds
  skimming
  bare trees
  above a snow glaze.
  Gaining and failing
  they are buffeted
  by a dark wind -
  But what?
  On harsh weedstalks
  the flock has rested -
  the snow
  is covered
  with broken
  seed husks
  and the wind tempered
  with a shrill
  piping of plenty.

  William Carlos Williams

  Dark, Wind, Snow

  "To Awaken an Old Lady". The Dial, August 1920.

  5 Copy quote

• The descent beckons as the ascent beckoned

  William Carlos Williams

  Ascent, Descent

  William Carlos Williams, A. Walton Litz, Christopher MacGowan (1991). “The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: 1939-1962”, p.245, New Directions Publishing

  35 Copy quote

• [History is] a tyranny over the souls of the dead - and so the imagination of the living.

  William Carlos Williams

  History, Imagination, Soul

  William Carlos Williams (1978). “A Recognizable Image: William Carlos Williams on Art and Artists”, New Directions Publishing Corporation

  33 Copy quote

• I have never been one to write by rule, not even by my own rules.

  William Carlos Williams

  Writing, My Own

  1954 Letter to Richard Eberhart, 23 May.

  4 Copy quote

• All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.

  William Carlos Williams

  Heart, Helen, Knows

  William Carlos Williams (1994). “Asphodel, that Greeny Flower & Other Love Poems”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• A new music is a new mind.

  William Carlos Williams

  Mind, Music Is, New Music

  4 Copy quote

• Nothing whips my blood like verse.

  William Carlos Williams

  Blood, Whips, Verses

  Quoted in John Thirlwall (ed) The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957).

  5 Copy quote

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