Reviews for Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1939-1962, Vol. 2

The average rating for Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1939-1962, Vol. 2 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-01-28 00:00:00 Bonnie Heller You really need to read the Collected to understand Williams. The various Selecteds out there really don't do this remarkable poet justice (though the review I read of Pinsky's new edited volume of Williams was positive--haven't checked that out yet). Williams was not just an Imagist poet, writing about how much depends on that red wheelbarrow, not just a free verse confessional poet of the late books, inspiration to Robert Lowell, the one who allowed him and Snodgrass and Plath and Sexton to "break through back into life." Williams was a radically experimental, avant-garde poet who explicitly modeled his poetic practice on modernist industrial design, on Duchamp's readymade esthetics, on Cubist simultaneity and fractured depth and ground, on Transcendentalist notions of "notching the present moment on your stick," to misquote Thoreau, of basically "being here now" in the moment of the reading experience, experiencing reading as an almost religious act. He gave his whole heart and mind and life to the craft and study and practice of poetry, and is not easily summed up. Get Vol. 1 as well!

Review # 2 was written on 2011-11-05 00:00:00 C David H Harris This book of poems had to grow on me. At first I wasn't touched by some of the early poems in the volume, but as I read further I came to love William Carlos Williams' use of imagery and language. Much of humanity and life are in these poems: average Americans including a few black people,scenes from other countries and eras, "translations" of some ancient Chinese poets. Also poems from Pictures from Brueghel are here for which he won a posthumous Nobel Prize. It took me a very long time to get into this book of poetry, but in the end reading this collection was worth it.