Spring and All by C. D. Wright, William Carlos Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

Gipsy
    smiled
    to see the blandness
    of the leaves —
    so many
    so lascivious
    and still
    XXII
    so much depends
    upon
    a red wheel
    barrow
    glazed with rain
    water
    beside the white
    chickens
    The fixed categories into which life is divided must always hold. These things are normal — essential to every activity. But they exist — but not as dead dissections.
    The curriculum of knowledge cannot but be divided into the sciences, the thousand and one groups of data, scientific, philosophic or whatnot — as many as there exist in Shakespeare — things that make him appear the university of all ages.
    But this is not the thing. In the galvanic category of — The same things exist, but in a different condition when energized by the imagination.
    The whole field of education is affected — There is no end of detail that is without significance.
    Education would begin by placing in the mind of the student the nature of knowledge — in the dead state and the nature of the force which may energize it.
    This would clarify his field at once — He would then see the use of data
    But at present knowledge is placed before a man as if it were a stair at the top of which a DEGREE is obtained which is superlative.
    nothing could be more ridiculous. To data there is no end. There is proficiency in dissection and a knowledge of parts but in the use of knowledge —
    It is the imagination that —
    That is: life is absolutely simple. In any civilized society everyone should know EVERYTHING there is to know about life at once and always. There should never be permitted, confusion —
    There are difficulties to life, under conditions there are impasses, life may prove impossible — But it must never be lost — as it is today —
    I remember so distinctly the young Pole in Leipzig going with hushed breath to hear Wundt lecture — In this mass of intricate philosophic data what one of the listeners was able to maintain himself for the winking of an eyelash. Not one. The inundation of the intelligence by masses of complicated fact is not knowledge. There is no end —
    And what is the fourth dimension? It is the endlessness of knowledge —
    It is the imagination on which reality rides — It is the imagination — It is a cleavage through everything by a force that does not exist in the mass andtherefore can never be discovered by its anatomitization.
    It is for this reason that I have always placed art first and esteemed it over science — in spite of everything.
    Art is the pure effect of the force upon which science depends for its reality — Poetry
    The effect of this realization upon life will be the emplacement of knowledge into a living current — which it has always sought —
    In other times — men counted it a tragedy to be dislocated from sense — Today boys are sent with dullest faith to technical schools of all sorts — broken, bruised
    few escape whole — slaughter. This is not civilization but stupidity — Before entering knowledge the integrity of the imagination —
    The effect will be to give importance to the subdivisions of experience — which today are absolutely lost — There exists simply nothing.
    Prose — When values are important, such — For example there is no use denying that prose and poetryare not by any means the same IN INTENTION. But then what is prose? There is no need for it to approach poetry except to be weakened.
    With decent knowledge to hand we can tell what things are for
    I except to see values blossom. I expect to see prose be prose. Prose, relieved of extraneous, unrelated values must return to its only purpose: to clarity to enlighten the understanding. There is no form to prose but that which depends on clarity. If prose is not acurately adjusted to the exposition of facts it does not exist — Its form is that alone. To penetrate everywhere with enlightenment —
    Poetry is something quite different. Poetry has to do with the crystalization of the imagination — the perfection