William Carlos Williams: home as America

A poem about forgotten backstreets by William Carlos Williams

Pastoral

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk back streets

admiring the houses

of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel-staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate,

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.

No one

will believe this

of vast import to the nation. (1)

The poem “Pastoral”, by the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), appears in his first collection, “Al Que Quiere!”, from 1917. Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, Williams had studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a postgraduate year in Germany studying pediatrics. He returned to his birthplace after that, where he worked as a doctor for the next forty years, until retires in 1951 (MC MICHAEL, 1974, p. 1357). Writing under the scope of Modernism, Williams “aimed at reproducing immediate experience and advocated a doctrine of ‘No ideas but in things’” (Ibid, p. 1357), creating poems that drew attention by “a banalidade dos seus assuntos preferidos, assim como com a total ausência de pompa da sua dicção” (PAES, 1987, p. 11). For him, there were no themes too banal to not become poetry. The common people, common places, the day-to-day life. “Anything is good material for poetry. Anything. I’ve said it time and time again”, he once said (TOMLINSON, 1985, p. xii). Williams, as others contemporary poets of his, like Ezra Pound and Wallace Stevens, were influenced by the Imagism, a movement and doctrine of a small group of British and American poets that, between 1912 and 1917, practiced directeness and concision and focused on poems with concrete language, direct treatment of things and themes, and avoidance of abstraction (HIRSCH, 2017, pp. 138-139).

“Pastoral” is a 22-line poem, divided in two irregular stanzas – one comprising the majority of the poem, the second one with only three verses – that shows how Williams, in the beginning of his career as a poet, worked with concepts like concision, directness and concrete words. Without metaphors or abstraction, he describes objectively – at least, at first glance – a scene from a small town, as the subject walks the streets of a poor neighbourhood. The poetic persona, in a confessional tone and in first person, which leads the reader to think that Williams himself is talking, reflects from past and present. In the present, the first three verses, he says “When I was younger”, establishing that time has passed and, in that time when “it was plain to me / I must make something of myself”, he made a decision, he came to a realization that he needed to change his life, or people expected that from him. As he writes “Older now / I walk back streets / admiring the houses / of the very poor”, we are transported to the present and, with the word “back”, we understand that the subject has returned to that place, a scene once familiar. With objective words, he describes, as a photograph, what he sees. The houses are from “the very poor”, with “roof out of line”, “yards cluttered with old chicken wire”, and “furniture gone wrong”. There are “fences” and “outhouses” not built with propper or expensive wood, but with “barrel-staves and parts of boxes”.

But such desolated scenery resonates with him, it isn’t distant and inoffensive. There is a emotional connection between subject and scene, and he reveals that such poverty doesn’t disgusts him, but brings him a sweet emotion, that all that, “if I am fortunate”, will have a “bluish green” smeared to them and that quality “pleases me best / of all colors”. With subjectivity, he shows us that he finds beauty and familiarity in such flawed scenery. Then, the poet concludes with a statement, a three-verses second stanza, that put new people in the once completely solitary moment, “no one”, and says that “No one / will believe this / of vast import to the nation”, declaring that little piece of reality, that poor houses lost in a nowhere neighbourhood, has great importance and can translate “nation”. But he is alone in that peculiar and romantic conclusion. In that brief journey, from youth and olden days to adulthood and present, the poet tells a short story of a return, a return from a son to his homeland. With pride and some melancholy, by sharing that description to others, he wants us to, also, see the beauty, relevance and wholeness of that little corner of the United States. As says José Paulo Paes, with that kind of poem Williams wanted to “refinar, clarificar, intensificar esse momento eterno, o único em que vivemos” (PAES, 1987, p. 19). In a brief and apparent banal moment, Williams tries to concentrate on something more universal, accentuating the importance of those people and their houses, the importance of their lives. Williams wrote:

Esse é o ofício do poeta. Não falar por vagas categorias, mas escrever de modo particular, tal como um médico trabalhando com um paciente, acerca da coisa à sua frente; descobrir o universal no particular. John Dewey havia dito (descobri-o por puro acaso) que “o local é o único universal sobre que a arte edifica”. (PAES, 1987, p. 15)

On concentration in the physical aspects of what he sees – the materiality of the fences and outhouses, the color of the the moss and humidity covering the old wood –, and on the physical presence of every object and detail (chicken wire, roof out of line, old furniture), he invites the reader to pay close attention in all those details, he stress the importance of each aspect of the scene. Each word counts and stands as a rough aspect of reality. There are no metaphors or literary flourishes. The objects are what they are. The poem is simple, direct and apparently formless (MC MICHAEL, 1974, p. 1357). To do that, “Williams minimiza os meios expressivos para maximizar os objetos assim expressos. O que inclui, naturalmente, o âmbito semântico” (DOLHNIKOFF, 2011). If the most important aspect of each word is their semantic aspect, so the reader must, as reading the poem, think carefully of each word, in the first glance very plain and clear. An outhouse is an outhouse, a chicken wire is a chicken wire. They are real and need to exist. Only later in the poem, with subjective confessions such as “if I am fortunate” (verse 15) and “pleases me best” (verse 18), becomes clear that the significance of each object and each word is rebuild to the point that the semantics reveals us more: the houses of the poor are more than that, the outhouses are more than that. This “more” is what Williams emphasizes in the end: all that is of “vast import to the nation”.

“Pastoral” is written in free verse, without any formal metric. But the poem rhythm is constructed clearly from the predominance of short verses, mostly from verses of 4, 5 and 6 syllables. There are six verses of 4 syllables (for example, “I walk back streets”), five verses of 5 syllables (for example, “When I was younger”), and six verses of 6 syllables (for example, “admiring the houses”).

The lack of a formal metric doesn’t mean that the poem has no rhythm; and Williams uses some strategies to create such and to connect it with the content. One of them is rhyming some verses, although without any regularity. The poem has a repetition of final sounds in “houses”, “sides”, “ashes”, “barrel-staves”, and also other “s” final sounds in “streets”, “colors”, “this”. All the plurals give us the sense of repetition and multiplication of the scene, creating a vast field of poor houses of desolated feeling: there are one house after another, there are numerous barrel-staved fences and outhouses. The vision of the subject is broad. Also, it is strong and rhythmical, since the plurals with the construction “-es” give a short extension to each word, prolonging them and marking them with a regular beat of final tonic sound.

Another strategy of the poem’s rhythm is dictated by the predominance of those short verses of 4, 5, and 6 syllables and, also, the predominance of short words and one-syllable words, creating velocity and rhythmical beats. In the first three verses, for instance: “When I was younger / it was plain to me / I must make something of myself”, there are eleven one-syllable words. In verses 4-7, the same thing happens: “Older now / I walk back streets / admiring the houses / of the very poor:”. Again, ten one-syllable words. The subsequential verses start to bring longer words, but there are still short words and even complete verses only with one-syllables, like “roof out of line with sides”.

That strategy creates a sense of walking, stept by step along the streets, as the subject of the poem walks. The short words mimic the path of the subject that reflects about what he is seeing and mimic his thoughts. The reader walks with him and thinks with him. There is a sense of movement and urgence. As well, the scene of “the houses of the very poor” and “the yards cluttered with old chicken wire” clearly have a strong impression on that man, who thinks with constrained thoughts, small words, and has some difficulty expressing himself more eloquently. The simplicity and roughness of the environment finds its correspondence in the simple and direct words. But, as the poem develops, we find, more frequently, longer words, especially in verses 12-19: fences, outhouses, barrel-staves, fortunate, properly, weathered. The subject has stopped walking, or he is walking slowly. He is paying more attention to the details: the scene has, now, a deeper grasp on him, and his thoughts are more attentive and reflexive.

Such connection between the rhythm of the words the subject chooses to describe his environment and the kind of reflection he is having finds a new interrelation with a third strategy to create the whole rhythm of the poem: the use of three longer verses, that stand out from the predominant short verses. The verses number 3 (eight syllables, “I must make something of myself”), number 12 (seven syllables, “the fences and outhouses”), and number 22 (eight syllables, “of vast import to the nation”) are almost in parallel positions. One in the very beginning, one almost in the middle, and one in the last position. They create in the poem three longer pauses, three slower moments, where the reader is invited to share more contemplative moments with the subject. Such pauses mark the reflective process of the subject, showing to the reader the stages of his thoughts and the development of how he is thinking.

The verse 3, the first longer one, marks the conclusion that puts past and present in connection: when he was young, the thought that made him act, that made him work for something, leaving a life of struggle, was “I must make something of myself”. An eloquent, complete phrase that defined his future. The second longer verse, “the fences and outhouses”, in the middle of the poem, introduces the moment where, with longer words, he starts to slow down and the scene has a deeper impact on him. Finally, the last longer verse, the last one of the poem, highlight the new conclusion the subject has reached, the new thought that, as “I must make something of myself” a long time before, will guide him in the present, and future: “the vast import to the nation” that that people, that houses and streets, can define America and explain it.

The versification, pauses and enjambements play another important role in the pace of the poem and in its rhythm, showing another modernistic aspect of Williams poetry. If “Pastoral” is a free verse poem, we understand that it has “organic rhythms, deliberate irregularity, improvisatory delight” and that it is “inspired by the cadance – the natural rhythm, the inner tune – of spoken language” (HIRSCH, 2017, p. 117). Without formal metric and regular rhymes from classic forms, “o corte é o coração da linguagem poética moderna” (DOLHNIKOFF, 2011). Writes Dolhnikoff (2011):

Williams é o mestre absoluto do corte moderno, o corte que não amputa, mas expõe. Seu corte, enquanto não fere a sintática, alimenta a poética, pois ao mesmo tempo determina o ritmo e gera as relações morfossemânticas. (...). Palavras comuns em frases diretas ganham ressonância e força morfossemântica ao se posicionarem mutuamente, e terem suas posições marcadas pelos cortes, como dobras que ao mesmo tempo expõem, aproximam e evidenciam elementos antes invisíveis do verso de uma superfície plana.

If the blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter, a five-beat, ten-syllable line) dominates the English poetry from the fourteen century to the twentieth century, suggesting that it is “the modal pattern in English, the one closest to natural speech” (HIRSCH, 2017, p. 31), we can reflect that the verses by Williams cut “in half” (as explained before, the poem has a predominance of verses of five and six syllables) have a purpose. As said before, the short words and the short verses suggest, at the beginning of the poem, a fast walking, but a struggling thinking and a careful but not quite comfortable attempt to describe the scene. If the ten-syllable would be the natural speech, then the five-syllable or six-syllable suggest difficulty in thinking and talking, a struggle to express emotions and feelings. An aspect that can be said of the poor people of that neighbourhood, uneducated and “low”, but also that can be said of the subject, who grasp to breath, walk and revisit his old hometown. And it is no coincidence that, again, the more complete thoughts of the subject, that function as strong and well-thought statements, are the long verses 3 and 22. Those verses are conclusions, almost epiphanic, almost written in paper given their importance and grandiosity. One in the youth, “I must make something of myself”, one later in life, “of vast important to the nation”. As says Tomlinson (1985, p. viii):

In the imaginative play of WIlliams’s poems, where the attention is frequently turned upon outward things, the sound structure of the poems which embody that attention is an expression of strains, breath pauses, bodily constrictions and releases.

But the cuts and the verses with enjambements also have a purpose by creating pauses and slowing the whole rhythm, in emphasizing the importance of each word, of each object described by Williams, showing that he is describing things carefully, therefore they are important. He cut after “younger” (verse 1), emphasizing “younger” and building suspense for “it was plain to me”. Another cut and, in suspension, we wait for the revelation: “I must make something of myself”. The same thing continues to happen, stressing each step: a slower and attentive movement in “walk back streets / admiring the houses / of the very poor”; or a detailed and focused description, step by step, in “the yards cluttered / with old chicken wire, ashes, / furniture gone wrong”. The longer and more important pause and cut happens when the first stanza ends and second stanza starts. Not only there is a big pause between stanzas, but there is a graphic pause, a long blank space until the first verse of that stanza begins: “No one”. A long time of thinking and silence, a long moment of contemplation and breathing until the subject reveals the statement that clarifies his point of view: ………. “No one / will believe this / of vast import to the nation”.

Furthermore, the title of the poem, “Pastoral”, reveals it’s content and gives an adjective for the journey the subject roams, from past to present, from his former life to the life he revisits now, walking “backstreets” filled with the houses of the “very poor”. The term “pastoral” can identify a landscape of land or farm, but also means a work of literature portraying an idealized version of country life. To William Carlos Williams, the life of the common people can be idealized and reflects a deeper meaning, a meaning of America as a whole. To write poetry, Williams shows that one hasn’t to be far from home and look away from the backyard. As writes José Paulo Paes:

Era, na teoria e na prática, o “princípio de ficar em casa” referido por Marianne Moore a propósito da poesia dele, Williams, que num dos seus livros de prosa declarou: “Há uma fonte, na América, para tudo quanto pensamos ou fazemos. [...] Por que me deveria mudar do lugar onde nasci?” (PAES, 1987, p. 9)

To Williams, also, who developed the sensibility of looking to the faces of the “nowhere man” from his work as a doctor, whose patients were especially rural workers, woolen worker from Passaic, and migrants in poorly conditions of living (PAES, 1987, p. 24), poetry could be also in the life of the common people, often ignored by an intelligentsia of refined taste. From landscapes to faces, nothing far from home when it comes to writing. As writes Charles Tomlinson (1985, p. xi):

Williams has confined himself in single strictness to the life before his eyes - the life of a physician in a small town twenty miles from New York. In so doing, his localism has become international and timeless.

NOTES

1. Poem by William Carlos Williams, from the book “Al Que Quiere!” (1917), as in: WILLIAMS, W. C. The Collected Earlier Poems. New York: A New Directions Book, 1951, p. 122.

REFERENCES

DOLHNIKOFF, L. “As Palavras e as Coisas de William Carlos Williams”. Sibila - Revista de Poesia e Crítica Literária, Ano 21, 2011. https://biturl.top/niAnQn - Access in 11/11/21.

HIRSCH, E. The Essential Poet’s Glossary. Boston/New York: Mariner Books, 2017.

MC MICHAEL, G. L. (ed.). Anthology of American Literature - II. Realism to the Present. New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1974.

PAES, J. P. “WCW: A Arte de Ficar em Casa”. In: WILLIAMS, W. C. Poemas. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1987, pp. 9-31.

TOMLINSON, C. “Introduction”. In: WILLIAMS, W. C. Selected Poems. New York: A New Directions Book, 1985, pp. vii-xvii.

WILLIAMS, W. C. The Collected Earlier Poems. New York: A New Directions Book, 1951.

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Citation: DEARO, Guilherme. "William Carlos Williams: home as America". São Paulo: FFLCH/USP, November 2021.