“unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning” — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matters like a ship. But poetry is the machine which drives it, pruned to a… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
There is no comment on pictures but pictures, on music but music, on poems but poetry. If you do, you do. If… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized . . . A poem is a complete little… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“Filth and vermin though they shock the over-nice are imperfections of the flesh closely related in the just imagination of the poet… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“I had sent [the magazine] a batch of poems which they turned down flat. I was furious. Floss [my wife] said, 'If… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
I think of the poetry of René Char and all he must have seen and suffered that has brought him to speak… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
I thought my friends were damn fools, because they didn't know any better way of conducting their lives. Still they conformed better… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact … the spontaneous conformation of language as… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form.… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
My first poem was a bolt from the blue … it broke a spell of disillusion and suicidal despondence. … it filled… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of angels. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Let the snake wait under his weed and the writing be of words, slow and quick, sharp to strike, quiet to wait,… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
It is difficult to get the news from poetry, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do… — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“The Hurricane The tree lay down on the garage roof and stretched, You have your heaven, it said, go to it.” — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
The poem is a capsule where we wrap up our punishable secrets. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“The pure products of America go crazy... ...[] No one to witness and adjust, no one to drive the car” — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning” — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
“You're a romanticist. What do you think a man is, a papaya? To digest your dinner? In pill form?” — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
Imagination though it cannot wipe out the sting of remorse can instruct the mind in its proper uses. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound. — William Carlos Williams Copy Share Image
