Readings in Temporal Poetics: Four Poems by William Carlos Williams

Abstract

In spirit and tradition of Roman Jakobson's great poetic analyses, four analyses this essay are just presented as readings of individual poems, using another theoretical framework, one that I have been developing for last twenty years, part, response to Jakobson. In my temporal poetics, I derive a theory of poetic form, including linguistic, rhetorical, and symbolic form, from rhythm. My theory of rhythm is componential. Form is paradigmatic. qualities of four rhythmic components (meter, grouping, prolongation, and theme) are source of formal paradigms. qualities of four rhythmic components present a kind of developmental, and then constitutive, neo-Hegelian dialectic, based on rhythm. (1) Young At 10 a.m. young moves about negligee wooden walls of husband's house. I pass solitary my car. again she comes to curb to call fish-man, and stands shy, uncorseted, stray ends of hair, and I compare to a noiseless of my rush with a over leaves as I bow and pass smiling. --William Carlos Williams (57) (2) Narratively, The Young Housewife presents a familiar Williams' poetry. Riding to work alone his car, speaker catches a glimpse of some slice of everyday life, which then provides material for imaginative exploration and reflection (and poetic composition and expression). Like a camera, poems of this sort freeze and frame some bit of reality and make it into art. Because of this analogy to photography, I like to call these texts snapshot poems. In snapshot poems, linear and relative time dominate poetic texture. Compared to what we might expect, linear forms, emblematic of reality (the prosaic and mundane), are both formalized (i.e., made into symbols) and relativized (i.e., particularized, negated, loosened, fragmented, questioned, made simultaneous and/or multidimensional, etc.), lifted up into imagination. In this snapshot poem, a half-dressed, disheveled housewife, is seen, first, moving around and then, running out to curb to flag down neighborhood vendors (i.e., the ice-man, the fish-man). Passing his car, speaker notes various details of character (shy), appearance (in negligee, uncorseted), environment (at 10 a.m., behind wooden walls of husband's house, dried leaves), and actions (tucking stray ends of hair). Before rushing by, speaker bows, smiles, and compares to a fallen leaf. In its symbolic resonances, details of this scene give us mind and manner of poem's characters. speaker, as poet, uses poetic detail to express his inner life. he projects this inner life imaginatively onto woman, too, putting two same subject position (if not same bed!). On one hand, both speaker and woman are confined to reality and social convention. speaker is constrained by his work schedule and its duties, symbolized by (practical aspects of speaker's) passing car and crackling sound of its wheels over leaves, all emblems of linear time. woman is similarly confined to reality and social convention, symbolized by life as a housewife her husband's house, and action of tucking in disheveled hair. This social constraint is expressed by other linear forms text, too, for instance, narrative/ temporal structure of discourse as a whole (At 10 a.m., Then again) and text's dense consonance ([d]: behind-wooden-husband's-standsends-sound-dried; [s]: pass-noiseless-housewife-ice-man-pass; [z]: leaves-noiseless-wheels-ends-comes-walls-husband's-moves; [f]: leaf-housewife; [n]: behind-husband's-Then-again-ice-man -fish-man-stands-ends-fallen-sound; [s]: fish-man-rush). …