William Carlos Williams Quotes

The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.

It is in tune with the tempo of life — scattered yet welded into the whole, — broken, yet woven together.

Your thighs are apple trees. Your knees are the southern breeze.

My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling.

It is difficult to get the news from poems

As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.

Dissonance / (if you are interested) / leads to discovery.

All women are not Helen, I know that, but have Helen in their hearts.

One thing I am convinced more and more is true and that is this: the only way to be truly happy is to make others happy. When you realize that and take advantage of the fact, everything is made perfect.

I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.

There is no poetry of distinction without formal invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve their exact meaning, in which they most resemble the machine, to give language its highest dignity, its illumination in the environment to which it is native. Such war, as the arts live and breathe by, is continuous. It may be that my interests as expressed here are pre-art. If so I look for a development along these lines and will be satisfied with nothing else.

In summer, the song sings itself.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

Why do I write today? The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentities stirs me to it: colored women day workers— old and experienced— returning home at dusk, in cast off clothing faces like old Florentine oak.