I have been reading Williams since I was in high school when his selected poems was one of the texts in a creative writing class I had received a scholarship to attend. He has been one of the recurring poetic presences in my literary life. Over the last week I have read from start to finish his last book of poetry, for which he won posthumously the Pulitzer Prize, Pictures from Brueghel and other Poems. I have read the Brueghel series multiple times over the years, teaching several of them, like the Fall of Icarus, in my classes. Additionally I have read most of the others in the book, opening it casually over the years, or have read them in anthologies of his work, or modernist anthologies. But I don’t think I have ever sat down and read the volume cover to cover, even if I have had this copy for at least 40 years. I really enjoyed reading the longer poems: The Desert Music, and Asphodel, That Greeny Flower again. Williams unique, rhythm and voice— what he called the variable foot— are a delight of the American idiom. I felt as if I could hear his calm voice speaking in the room. I think I will go back and read his complete works again, taking advantage of the chronological order of those works, as well as being grouped together with the poems originally published in volumes of poetry. (A side note: in grad school at Bread Loaf I took a class on the Modern long poem with Walt Litz, the editor of the first volume of the Collected Works).
(April 10, 2025)
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