Poet William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams offers us what might be considered the essence of poetry, which is to reduce language to its simplest level in order to create complexity of meaning through clarity of image. Some people think of poetry as flowery language, but the purpose of poetry is to examine, present, recreate, and convey images and meaning in a compressed form, making each element more vital because it has been selected, polished, and set forth in a unified structure that creates an image, conveys meaning, and causes the reader to experience something by means of carefully shaped language.

Williams should always be read in light of his intention to say more by saying less, and thus when it seems that he is extending language rather than reducing it, as in "Paterson," it is important to examine why he has selected the approach and the language he has. What might seem to be a looser structure is not, for Williams selects each word with care in this long poem as he does in shorter works and shapes his imagery just as carefully and just as compactly. The read

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