William Carlos Williams

Since he believed that experience does not objectively exist until it is embodied in language, the nature of that language--its ability to convey actuality without distorting it through the crippling biases of "literary" means--is all-important (Unger 403).

Williams had several concerns that were constant: 1) he wanted to devise a poetic structure that would formalize experience without deforming it; 2) he wanted to let the beat of speech determine the measure; 3) he wanted to rinse the language of ornament and encrustation; and 4) he wanted to be selective but to allow for accident and impingement. An analysis of several of his poems will show how this was effected.

Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, and through his mother's family he had access to several different cultures--French, Spanish, and Jewish. Williams went to public schools in his home town, attended the Unitarian church, and went with his family to Europe for two years when he was 14 years old. He we

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um on the street a paper bag of them in her hand The poem clearly requires the title as if it were the first line, for the first stanza connects to the title, making the title the subject of the sentence. Williams reduces the ornamentation of language to the bare minimum and conveys his imagery in brief flashes of detail. The first line ends with a preposition, and the object of the preposition is found in the first half of the second line. This division does not follow any normal way of speaking, so in order to speak normally as Williams would have us do, it is necessary to read the poem as if it were one line rather than several lines divided. The essential image is set in this first stanza--the woman stands on the street corner eating a plum taken from a paper bag in her hand. The rest of the poem reflects on this image and delves into its meaning. The second stanza uses repetition to enhance meaning. It is not that the sentence "they taste good to her" is difficult to comprehend, but it is that the repetition emphasizes the sense of life involved in taste, in the act of tasting the plum, in the act of tasting this plum on this streetcorner at this moment: They taste good to her They taste good to her. They
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1442
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)