Some Orchestrations of the American Idiom

Abstract

After reading To Greet Letter-Carrier and At Bar at Harvard in December 1951, William Carlos Williams commented, think comes out of is spoken on street.1 Note Williams said poetry comes out of is spoken on street, not Is spoken on street. The sounds of spoken words of man on street are poetry's origin, not its end or even its equivalent. They are ground, or raw materials, from which or which poet starts. Williams read To Greet Letter-Carrier first. bring good letter? One lots of in it. I make ofthat. boy! boy! (CP1 458) The authence burst into delighted laughter. Williams then commented, Well, if liked here's another, and recited At Bar. Hi, up dozen. tryin' do charge batteries? Make it two. Easy girl! You'll fuse if keep (CP1 457) This language is spoken on street, when fashioned into these poems, has surprisingly intricate sounds. Consider complexity of four utterances making up At Bar, all framed by word up. The percussive 'p' in line 1 (open up) is echoed in line 7 (keep> - . . . up), and nowhere else. There is also rhyme in poem, since line 2 (do) rhymes line 4 (two); vowel also appears in line 6 (You'll and fuse). The vowel in open (1 . 1) returns in blow (1. 6). And one closed vowel proliferates in a (1. 1), Wha'cha ta (1 . 2), ya (1 . 3), a (1 . 6) and ya (1 . 7). Also important is poem's attempt to catch variations of word formation. The word you first appears buried at end of Wha'cha, becomes more evident as ya, emerges fully formed in you'll and then subsides to its previous form, ya. The poem shifts to you'll (the more correct form) probably because idiom of speaker at moment requires euphony of long oo sound in both you'll and fuse. The next line has no comparable echoing oo, so speaker reverts to normative ya. Thus Williams demonstrates tendency of spoken to manipulate sound to create pleasing symmetries. Williams presents single voice in To Greet Letter-Carrier.2 The poem begins and ends elisions. Why don't is shrunken to Why'n't (two syllables become one) and That's the is shortened to Atta by removing initial th from both that and the. Alternatively, one say elision is simpler, expression is Thatta boy and it has lost only intial Th. (Incidentally, terminal that in line 4 makes all more striking its absence from what immediately follows: Atta.). But whichever case, it is still lopping off of what appear to be unnecessary sounds. We can see speaker's impatience produces an economy of expression in first line. Similarly, delight evident in last line also produces compression. In terms of sonic weaving, vernacular in this poem is not inferior to in At Bar. Short as this poem is, we discover internal rhyme (good in line 2; could in line 4), vowel echoes (you in line 1; use in line 2; plus vowel in me [1.1] recurring in money [1 . 3], assonance (the fricative with [1 . 2] and that [1.4]. Other instances of sounds linking lines are 'm' in me, money and make, plus ubiquitous 'f in letter, lots, that, and Atta. Once again, adaptation of speech heard on street exhibits fairly sophisticated sonic structure. As Williams presents it, street speech runs roughshod over niceties of formal speech. This is quite evident fifteen years earlier in Shoot It Jimmy (1923). Our orchestra is cat's nuts Banjo jazz nickelplated amplifier to soothe savage beast Get rhythm That sheet stuff 's lot of cheese. …