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

of new forms as additions to nature — Prose may follow to enlighten but poetry —
    Is what I have written prose? The only answer is that form in prose ends with the end of that which is being communicated — If the power to go on falters in the middle of a sentence — that is the end of the sentence — Or if a new phase enters at that point it is only stupidity to go on.
    There is no confusion — only difficulties.
    XXIII
    The veritable night
    of wires and stars
    the moon is in
    the oak tree’s crotch
    and sleepers in
    the windows cough
    athwart the round
    and pointed leaves
    and insects sting
    while on the grass
    the whitish moonlight
    tearfully
    assumes the attitudes
    of afternoon —
    But it is real
    where peaches hang
    recalling death’s
    long promised symphony
    whose tuneful wood
    and stringish undergrowth
    are ghosts existing
    without being
    save to come with juice
    and pulp to assuage
    the hungers which
    the night reveals
    so that now at last
    the truth’s aglow
    with devilish peace
    forestalling day
    which dawns tomorrow
    with dreadful reds
    the heart to predicate
    with mists that loved
    the ocean and the fields —
    Thus moonlight
    is the perfect
    human touch
    XXIV
    The leaves embrace
    in the trees
    it is a wordless
    world
    without personality
    I do not
    seek a path
    I am still with
    Gipsie lips pressed
    to my own —
    It is the kiss
    of leaves
    without being
    poison ivy
    or nettle, the kiss
    of oak leaves —
    He who has kissed
    a leaf
    need look no further —
    I ascend
    through
    a canopy of leaves
    and at the same time
    I descend
    for I do nothing
    unusual —
    I ride in my car
    I think about
    prehistoric caves
    in the Pyrenees —
    the cave of
    Les Trois Freres
    The nature of the difference between what is termed prose on the one hand and verse on the other is not to be discovered by a study of the metrical characteristics of the words as they occur in juxtaposition. It is ridiculous to say that verse grades off into prose as the rythm becomes less and less pronounced, in fact, that verse differs from prose in that the meter is more pronounced, that the movement ismore impassioned and that rhythmical prose, so called, occupies a middle place between prose and verse.
    It is true that verse is likely to be more strongly stressed than what is termed prose, but to say that this is in any way indicative of the difference in nature of the two is surely to make the mistake of arguing from the particular to the general, to the effect that since an object has a certain character that therefore the force which gave it form will always reveal itself in that character.
    Of course there is nothing to do but to differentiate prose from verse by the only effective means at hand, the external, surface appearance. But a counter proposal may be made, to wit: that verse is of such a nature that it may appear without metrical stress of any sort and that prose may be strongly stressed — in short that meter has nothing to do with the question whatever.
    Of course it may be said that if the difference is felt and is not discoverable to the eye and ear then what about it anyway? Or it may be argued, that since there is according to my proposal no discoverable difference between prose and verse that in all probability none exists and that both are phases of the same thing.
    Yet, quite plainly, there is a very marked difference between the two which may arise in the fact of a separate origin for each, each using similar modes for dis-similar purposes; verse falling most commonly into meter but not always, and prose going forward most often without meter but not always.
    This at least serves to explain some of the best work I see today and explains some of the most noteworthy failures which I discover. I search for
“
something” in the writing which moves me in a certain way — It offers a suggestion as to why some work of Whitman’s is bad poetry and some, in the same meter is prose.
    The practical point would be to