i have this book called The Anthology of American Literature Volume II: Realism to the Present.
i'm not a big reader, but i do like to read occasionally, especially if its synchronistic or sporadic. i enjoy it better that way. recently i opened it up and found these poems. i kinda like them
Pastoral
when i was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel-staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if i am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best
of all colors,
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.
(1917 William Carlos Williams)
The Plain Sense of Things
After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.
It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has becom a minor house.
no turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.
Yet the absense of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, experssing silence
Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge.
Required, as a necessity requires. (1952, 1954) Wallace Stevens
i'm not a big reader, but i do like to read occasionally, especially if its synchronistic or sporadic. i enjoy it better that way. recently i opened it up and found these poems. i kinda like them
Pastoral
when i was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel-staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if i am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best
of all colors,
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.
(1917 William Carlos Williams)
The Plain Sense of Things
After the leaves have fallen, we return
To a plain sense of things. It is as if
We had come to an end of the imagination,
Inanimate in an inert savoir.
It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has becom a minor house.
no turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.
The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies.
Yet the absense of the imagination had
Itself to be imagined. The great pond,
The plain sense of it, without reflections, leaves,
Mud, water like dirty glass, experssing silence
Of a sort, silence of a rat come out to see,
The great pond and its waste of the lilies, all this
Had to be imagined as an inevitable knowledge.
Required, as a necessity requires. (1952, 1954) Wallace Stevens
