Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur
131 W. Passaic Ave., Rutherford, N. J.
March 5, 1913
I mean that perhaps it is a law that between the producer and the exposer of verse there must inevitably exist a contest. The poet comes forward assailing the trite and the established, while the editor is to shear off all roughness and extravagance. It startled me when I realized that this is perhaps inevitable.
Now, that was not my view of the function of Poetry at all. My option was dependent on this: most current verse is dead from the point of view of art (I enclose some doggerel showing one of the reasons why). Now life is above all things else at any moment [24] subversive of live as it was the moment before – always new, irregular. Verse to be alive must have infused into it something of the same order, some tincture of disestablishment, something in the nature of an impalpable revolution, an ethereal reversal, let me say. I am speaking of modern verse.
Poetry I saw accepting verse of this kind: that is, verse with perhaps nothing else in it but life – this alone regardless of possible imperfections, for no new thing comes through perfect. In the same way the Impressionists had to be accepted for the sake of art's very life – in spite of bad drawing.
Druckvorlage
The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams.
Edited with an introduction by John C. Thirlwall.
New York: McDowell, Obolensky 1957, S. 23-25.
Unser Auszug: S. 23-24.
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
Literatur
Aji, Hélène: Pound and Williams: The Letters as Modernist Manifesto.
In: Modernism Revisited: Transgressing Boundaries and Strategies of Renewal in American Poetry.
Hrsg. von Viorica Patea u.a.
Amsterdam u.a. 2007 (= DQR. Studies in Literature, 40), S. 53-72.
Brandmeyer, Rudolf: Poetiken der Lyrik: Von der Normpoetik zur Autorenpoetik.
In: Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte.
Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping.
2. Aufl. Stuttgart 2016, S. 2-15.
Chinitz, David E. / McDonald, Gail (Hrsg.): A Companion to Modernist Poetry.
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Schreibweisen, Konzepte und zeitgenössische Periodika als Vermittlungsinstanzen.
Würzburg 2018.
Käck, Elin: 'Flying Is Writing and Lindbergh's Flight a Poem'.
William Carlos Williams's Theorising Poetry and Science
through Marianne Moore and Gertrude Stein.
In: European Journal of English Studies 22.3 (2018), S. 287-301.
Matthews-Schlinzig, Marie I. u.a. (Hrsg.):
Handbuch Brief. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart.
2 Bde. Berlin u. Boston 2020.
Newcomb, John T.: How Did Poetry Survive?
The Making of Modern American Verse.
Urbana, Ill. u.a. 2012.
Oudart, Clément: Introduction.
Tailor-Made Traditions?
"Pound - H.D. - Williams" and a Century's Worth of US Experimental Verse.
In: Anglophonia Caliban/Sigma. French Journal of English Studies
35 (2014), S. 5-21.
URL: file:///C:/Users/WIN11/Downloads/acs-218.pdf
URL: https://journals.openedition.org/acs/218
Parisi, Joseph / Young, Stephen (Hrsg.): Dear Editor.
A History of Poetry in Letters.
The First Fifty Years, 1912-1962.
New York 2002.
Welsch, J. T.: The Formalistic Grounds of William Carlos Williams's Critique of Imagism.
In: Imagism: Essays on Its Initiation, Impact and Influence.
Hrsg. von John Gery u.a.
New Orleans, La. 2013, S. 123-131.
Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer