Spring and All
Williams, W. C.15 USD
Date
2011
Category
Poetry
Description
Spring and All is a hybrid work consisting of alternating sections of prose and free verse. It might best be understood as a manifesto of the imagination. The prose passages are a dramatic, energetic and often cryptic series of statements about the ways in which language can be renewed in such a way that it does not describe the world but recreates it. These passages are interspersed with poems that demonstrate this recreation in both their form and content. The two most famous sections of Spring and All are poems I and XXII. The former, which opens "By the road to the contagious hospital", is commonly known by the title "Spring and All", and the latter is generally known as "The Red Wheelbarrow".
Excerpt
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens Thus, weary of life, in view of the great consummation which awaits us — tomorrow, we rush among our friends congratulating ourselves upon the joy soon to be. Thoughtless of evil we crush out the marrow of those about us with our heavy cars as we go happily from place to place. It seems that there is not time enough in which to speak the full of our exaltation. Only a day is left, one miserable day, before the world comes into its own. Let us hurry ! Why bother for this man or that ? In the offices of the great newspapers a mad joy reigns as they prepare the final extras. Rushing about, men bump each other into the whirring presses. How funny it seems. All thought of misery has left us. Why should we care ? Children laughingly fling themselves under the wheels of the street cars, airplanes crash gaily to the earth. Someone has written a poem.
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