My response to Willam Carlos Willliams

Although I found "Spring And All" to be very mind boggling at parts, I felt as though it set a great foundation as a first read for this class. In conjunction to the class discussion and the introduction to the first set of binaries of "cooked" and "raw" poetry, "Spring And All" established a great model of how poetry can't really be classified into two distinct categories. Williams himself jumps all over the place going from very sensory picturesque, vivid details to short, choppy thought oriented phrases. Just on page 224 alone, he goes from the "red wheel barrow" almost back into a discussion on life, knowledge and deeper meaning. Williams really is all over the place.

The biggest thing I liked about Williams text was his constant focus on imagination. It seems so often that imagination is overlooked and people focus on what has been set up in black and white. They cannot look outside of the box no matter the area of subject matter. The imagination is such an expansive realm. It not only encompasses poetry and everything in relation to writing but also to the world itself. The world is made through the imagination. Through the language we speak and the actions we act out, we create this world in which we live every day.

I think that imagination is such a huge theme through out "Spring And All." Williams seems to be over the boxes society continually tries to force him into. Williams states that "The value of the imagination to the writer consists in its ability to make words. Its unique power is to give created forms reality, actual existence This separates Writing is not a searching about in the daily experience for apt similes and pretty thoughts and images. I have experienced that to my sorrow" (207.) He is tired of "writings" for writing sake. Meaning is lost, words are just thrown together without purpose.

In addition, I found his focus on language itself and it's purpose was very enlightening. It definitely resounds true but prior to reading how Williams put it I hadn't quite processed the depth to which words are important. Yes, obviously without them much could not be done, but aside from that words are more than just symbols and representations. They are meaning in and of themselves. They are the truth behind which imagination does withstand.