Diana, Charles & the Queen Book

Let's get past "The Red Wheelbarrow" shall we? William Carlos Williams is a god among poets and artists alike. Having spent his nights with artists like Duchamp and Picabia and his weekends with Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore, it is no surprise. And yet it is rare to hear anyone singing the William Carlos Williams praises.

Art influenced Williams for lack of any other inspiration. I don't see in his work that he ever really separated art from the writing.

Reading his collection, which covers 1909 until 1939 - it is clear that Williams was in a growing phase. He was learning about himself as a writer and an artist. And of course, a physician.

I've never underestimated the influence that his technical training and work with children had on his work.He was playful but precise yet he knew how to be serious. He used words as words. They weren't to represent anything but what they were. They were concrete, palpable - not abstractions.

I read things in chunks - and it somehow made sense to do that. Considering that I am not the type of person who enjoys "collections," I was actually surprised at how much I drew from this book and relished in reading it. It never once felt like an overwhelming amount of one person's work.

What please me most was that Williams had shown me how to break my own rules. Reading his poems, I found myself writing on the pages of the book - circling words and making notes in the margins. I never do that! I keep my books pristine no matter the circumstance. But it felt right to make notes to myself so that coming back to the poems, I'd remember what I originally thought or the connections I had made.

As an aspiring writer and someone who dabbles in art, I see the nonexistent distinction between the two. It's all just blank canvases with different writing utensils. Few understand that.