Friday, June 16, 2006

William Carlos Willaims

On a odd night off work this week Emily and I bumped into John on our hunt for ice cream. We ended up spending a significant amount of time (somewhere in the order of 2 hours) shooting the shit at International Coffee Traders. Fantastic rants and tyrates intermingled throughout our entire dialogue. Anyhow, the topic of William Carlos Williams came up, as it often does amound those discussing politicals and the failings of the health care system in Montana. John brought up the poem This Is Just to Say (For those less familiar with the works of W.C.W, its the one about the plums in the icebox.) This made me stop and read through the anthology of his works I own. I found the following poem, and just realling felt like posting it. As a sports writer and fan as well as a student of literature and history I found it facisinating.

At The Ball Game

The crowd at the ball game
is moved uniformly

by a spirit of uselessness
which delights them -

all the exciting detail
of the chase

and the escape, the error
the flash of genius -

all to no end save beauty
the eternal -

so in detail they, the crowd,
are beautiful

for this
to be warned against

saluted and defied -
It is alive, venomous

it smiles grimly
it words cut -

They flashy female with her
mother, gets it -

The Jew gets it straight - it
is deadly, terrifying -

It is the Inquisition, the
Revolution

It is beauty itself
that lives

day by day in them
idly -

This is
the power of their faces

It is summer, it is solstice
the crowd is

cheering, the crowd is laughing
in detail

permanently, seriously
without thought.

William Carlos Williams.

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