William Carlos Williams - snap shot imagery

I was talking about this dude I see on my way from work who lives on Maitland Road and how when I catch a glimpse of him I’m reminded of the style of some of William Carlos Williams snapshot poems where he captures in perfect word the circumstances and scenes of everyday life.  Possible content for a poem is all around us, and like a photographer, I’ve got to be alert to the perfect shot – the frozen image and the emotion.  But, unlike the photographer, I’ve only got words in which I can preserve and present the scene.  To me, this is the difficulty but also the beauty of poetry over other art forms.  The beauty is that each individual, without necessary study, without natural talent has the skill to try immediately to express their emotion through the written word.  Try that with music or oil painting or bronze sculpture!  This is not to say that our hero poets aren’t talented in a worthy art.  It is to say there can be a lot more bad poets out there than there might be bad sculptors.  We might not have to do classes to start, but we do have to study to get better.  I find William Carlos Williams a good poet to hold influence over me when I realise I’m not that spiritual sage, nor a prophet with gifted sight into the meaning of life, or a learned academic steeped in clever phrase, or a man well travelled among the whole of the world’s most interesting and quaint cultures.  Williams writes poetry at the edge of my imagination.  Being at the edge, I sometimes have to come back and read it, and read it – but I do understand, and I feel so clearly what he has observed through his eyes and in his emotion.  That’s how it is with one of Williams’ poems I’ve selected for this post, view of a lake.  I read this and I’m twelve or thirteen years old again, me and ‘chook’ Richards with our bikes abandoned, jumping off the side of the hospital bridge into high tide water with cars rattling over loose wooden planks.

 

view of a lake

(William Carlos Williams 1883 - 1963)

 

from a

highway below a face

of rock

 

too recently blasted

to be overgrown

with grass or fern:

 

Where a

waste of cinders

slopes down to

 

the railroad and

the lake

stand three children

 

beside the weed-grown

chassis

of a wrecked car

 

immobile in a line

facing the water

To the left a boy

 

in falling off

blue overalls

Next to him a girl

 

in a grimy frock

And another boy

They are intent

 

watching something

below ----?

A section sign:  50

 

on an iron post

planted

by a narrow concrete

 

service hut

(to which runs

a sheaf of wires)

 

in the universal

cinders beaten

into crossing paths

 

to form the front yard

of a frame house

at the right

 

that looks

to have been flayed

Opposite

 

remains a sycamore

in leaf

Intently fixed

 

the three

with straight backs

ignore

 

the stalled traffic

all eyes

toward the water

Following from my poem, On Maitland Road, I look for the dude who stands in the doorway of his rental, still on Maitland Road.  In a quick glimpse I try to sum up what I see, what I feel and what I think – then I develop it; yeah, that’s something like how I saw it …………

2012.  I take the same route home from work every day, for three years.  And there’s a ‘dude’ lives in a rental on Maitland Road.  I’ve told you about him before.  Thanks Dude.

 

still on Maitland Road

 

I turn right

into Maitland Road

and,

I’m looking for the Dude

sits in his doorway

that opens

straight on the traffic,

and, bang!

there he is,

and he’s working

on a sixteen, twenty inch

pedestal fan,

right there on the footpath,

business men

sucking in their lunch guts

trying to snig by,

not to get tangled up

in the grease

and

crap off the fan,

women detouring strollers

out on the street,

inquisitive toddlers

frozen

in mid lick

of their ice-creams,

eyes and mouths open

to a never before happening,

brains over-loaded

with explanation,

heads oscillating

on slow speed,

from the Dude

back to the mum,

and the Dude’s

got the fan bent over

in an under-arm hold

like you would put

on a Latin dance partner,

and you can see

by the way he’s working

the six inch shifter, and

the multi-grips,

that the Dude senses

a hot summer coming on.

                                    J. O. White

 

Observation of everyday life.

 

The American poet William Carlos Williams was one person who made a successful career out of writing poetry while at the same time practicing medicine as a local doctor (see, you can write and work!).  What I like about some of his poems is the observation of everyday circumstances and ordinary life that he captures with a minimum amount of words – brevity – less is best; write four words – delete three.  I believe it was poets like Williams and T.S. Eliot who introduced a style of free verse and imagery that was then picked up by others, giving us the modern forms we know today.  Williams’ influence on me is an awakening to ‘quick observation’ – observation of the simple unfolding of events around me in everyday life – like a snapshot, still-frame from a camera; bang, captured a scene, and this is what it says.  Williams’ The Sun Bathers is such a snapshot.  That poem was taken so long ago, but I can still see the image clearly in old black and white, clearer than if it had been captured in a photograph.

                                                         The Sun Bathers

(William Carlos Williams 1883 - 1963)

 

A tramp thawing out

on a doorstep

against an east wall

Nov, 1, 1933:

 

a young man begrimed

and in an old

army coat

wriggling and scratching

 

while a fat negress

in a yellow-house window

nearby

leans out and yawns

 

into the fine weather

In my poem, On Maitland Road, I’m aware of Williams’ quick observation (except I get to repeat this quick observation over many days).  The subject is everyday circumstance.  It is what I experience and I want to capture it like a still photograph.  I’ve still got things to learn about cropping and reducing the image.
 

2009.   I travel the same route home every day.  People crammed into the suburbs live pretty ordinary lives.

 

                                                   On Maitland Road

 

There’s a dude

lives on Maitland Road –

right on Maitland Road,

the front door of his rental

opens out

on pedestrians

pushing along the sidewalk,

that’s all there is,

a building front

and a door

with graffiti all over it,

he must hear their permanent pen markers

working on his door

middle of the night,

and drunks urinating

and whores getting screwed, and

dogs sniffing

and covering scent,

traffic up each other’s arse,

braking, engine revs,

tyre hum squealing in the wet,

I’ve seen the dude

I look for him every afternoon

soon as I turn right

into Maitland Road,

he’s there,

two door’s down,

sitting on a kitchen chair

propped up in his doorway,

the building façade

facing directly into the afternoon sun,

4pm daylight saving time,

you can feel the heat

coming off everything covered in concrete,

radiating out of dull coloured walls,

the dude sits like he’s posing

in the front row

of an academy graduation photo –

class of 84,

except he’s got a can of beer in his hand,

and his face is flushed,

that’s his thing,

sitting direct on the footpath

watching the fucking parade

pass by.

 

I don’t get to see

inside the rental,

I don’t think

anybody does,

it’s a black cavern,

right on Maitland Road.

                                                                                     J. O. White