Thoughts on William Carlos Williams

Before I read Williams' "The Work of Gertrude Stein," I felt totally lost, confused, perplexed, frustrated, and alienated as I read Stein's text. I wish I had read Williams first. Then, perhaps, I would have had a better understanding of what I was reading; not only what, but why I was reading it, and why it was important for me to experience Stein's craft. Even though I still do not understand the meaning of what Stein was trying to say, I feel like I can at least appreciate the beauty of the words strug together on the page, like pearls strung together to make a beautiful necklace. Each word Stein uses causes the brain to engage in a different way than it had before in just reading that one simple word, and by allowing my ear to hear the words, and not just my eyes to see them, I felt like I was experiencing Stein in the way in which she may have intended for her readers.

As far as the individual poetry of Williams, I found myself connecting to it and to the images he painted with his words, becuase, not only did the words and phrases make sense to me syntactically, the poems themselves spoke to me. I especially loved "The Red Wheelbarrow," perhaps because daily I remove horse manure from my own barn with a red wheelbarrow. The simplicity of his images, the sparseness of his words, and the exactness of his discriptions make him, to me, a truly gifted poet.