Music and Other Poems

Title, The desert music, and other poems. Author, William Carlos Williams. Publisher, Random House, Original from, the University of California. Digitized.
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He references several heroes and martyrs of significant movements such as the labor movement. He includes several events of personal significance including his Uncle Max coming over from Russia, William S. Burroughs living in Tangier, and how his mother, Naomi, would take him to Communist meetings when he was seven. I didn't trust free flight yet, so went back to fixed base to sustain the flow, 'America'. The image of Whitman is contrasted with mundane images of a supermarket, food often being used for sexual puns.

In relation to his experiments with "Howl", Ginsberg says this: Later I wondered if short quiet lyrical poems could be written using the long line. Not purposely, I simply followed my angel in the course of compositions". The theme of the poem is consistent with Ginsberg's revelation in his original vision of Blake: See also the line in "Footnote to Howl": The structure of this poem relates to "Howl" both in its use of the long line and its repetition of the "eyeball kick" paratactical juxtapositions at the end. Ginsberg says in relating his thought process after the experiments of "Howl," "What about a poem with rhythmic buildup power equal to Howl without use of repetitive base to sustain it?

The poem contains repeated images of opening or being open: The poem ends on a Whitman-esque note with a confession of his desire for people to "bow when they see" him and say he is "gifted with poetry" and has seen the creator.

Also of interest

This may be seen as arrogance, but Ginsberg's arrogant statements can often be read as tongue-in-cheek see for example "I am America" from "America" or the later poem "Ego Confessions". However, this could be another example of Ginsberg trying on the Walt Whitman persona Whitman who, for example, called himself a "kosmos" partly to show the interconnectedness of all beings which would become so integral to his image in later decades. Ginsberg says this of his mind frame when composing "Transcription of Organ Music", in reference to developing his style after his experiments with "Howl": Transcription of Organ Music sensual data , strange writing which passes from prose to poetry and back, like the mind".


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In American Scream , Jonah Raskin explores Ginsberg's "conspiratorial" themes in Howl , suggesting that Ginsberg, more than any other 20th-Century American poet, used literature to vent his criticism of the American government's treatment of the people and the diabolic actions of the CIA during the Cold War.

Having discussed the issue with Ginsberg himself, Raskin writes:. Who were the CIA-sponsored intellectuals?

Music, and other poems - Henry Van Dyke - Google Книги

I asked Ginsberg when we talked in Marin in In his eyes they contributed to the unhealthy climate of the Cold War as much as the cultural commissars behind the Iron Curtain did. David Bergman , in Camp Grounds describes Ginsberg as a poet who, while not addressing the need to support the homosexual community directly, used a "Comically carnivalesque" tone to paint a picture of the situation facing the homosexual in 20th-Century society.

Indeed, Williams's early poems look like "Descent", written in a style that is relatively straightforward. For many readers, it is not the form that distinguishes Williams's poetry but the content. The exception being Spring and All , a departure into prose poetry unlike anything else in the poet's body of work. The poems of The Desert Music , as demonstrated by "The Descent", adhere to "triadic stanza form" with a few minor exceptions.

The poet offers no explanation for his excursion into "triadic stanza form". The form is such a departure from the poet's early work, and so jarring compared to the poet's early work, that any reader familiar with Williams's body of work may be disappointed by the absence of an explanation. Spring and All may not have offered an explanation, but it acknowledged the departure from Williams's other work. The absence of which may strike the reader familiar with Williams's body of work as a shortcoming.

The necessity of the new form, "triadic stanza form", is called into question. Why should the poems be written in "triadic stanza form" and not the familiar form of Williams's early work? The new form calls attention to itself in the context of Williams's body of work ; it calls attention away from the poems themselves. For this reason, the form of the poems is more memorable than the content.

But what is the necessity of writing poetry in the first place? Williams addresses the question directly in the titular poem. So this is William Carlos Williams, the poet Floss and I had half consumed our quartered hearts of lettuce before we noticed the others hadn't touched theirs You seem quite normal. Can you tell me?

The Desert Music and Other Poems

Why does one want to write a poem? Because it's there to be written. A matter of inspiration then? But what sets it off?

Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems

I am that he whose brains are scattered aimlessly - The Desert Music My favourite passages Staying here in the country on an old farm we eat our breakfasts on a balcony under an elm. The shrubs below us are neglected. And there, penned in, or he would eat the garden, lives a pet goose who tilts his head sidewise and looks up at us, a very quiet fellow who writes no poems.


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Now that he can realize them, he must either change them or perish. Dec 25, Alejandro Teruel rated it did not like it Shelves: Very little depth to these poems. The reader who is interested in following William Carlos Williams evolution as a poet closely will no doubt need to look at this first volume exploring his triadic stanza form -for the rest of us I would recommend skipping it.

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