The Walt Whitman / William Carlos Williams Connection 

Camden's Walt Whitman was the progenitor of New Jersey's two other famous and ground breaking poets, William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg. The influence of Whitman is integral to both poets work, and the two respectfully acknowledged Whitmans patrimony. 

Williams, William Carlos (17 Sept. 1883-4 Mar. 1963), author and physician, was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, the son of William George Williams, a New York businessman of British extraction, and Raquel Hélène Hoheb, who was from Puerto Rico. William Carlos Williams spoke Spanish and French as well as English. From 1897 to 1899 he was schooled in Switzerland, with some time in Paris. In 1902 he graduated from high school in New York and was accepted into the dental school of the University of Pennsylvania, but soon transferred to the medical school.

Williams had a serious medical career. He studied advanced pediatrics in Germany after his internship, set up private practice in Rutherford, New Jersey (his native town), and eventually became head pediatrician of the General Hospital in the nearby city of Paterson. 

Williams has gradually emerged as one of the great forces in twentieth-century American verse. A strong appeal which lays in his desire to create a specifically American poetics based on the rhythms and colorations of American speech, thought, and experience.

Communion

by Eric Elliott, December, 1989

Perhaps the most basic and essential function of poetry is to evoke a particular response in the reader. The poet, desiring to convey on emotion or inspiration, uses the imagination to create a structure that will properly communicate his state of mind. In essence he is attempting to bring himself and the reader closer, to establish a relationship. William Carlos Williams contends that "art gives the feeling of completion by revealing the oneness of experience" (194) This argument relies on the precept that art is not nature or a reflection of nature but an original creation. And additionally, that art is holistic, where one can experience the whole of reality through a particular. A poet's task is to write poetry that the reader can identify with, something congruent with the thoughts of those he is writing for (or to). If this can be accomplished, a connection is established, and poetry can act as a catalyst to initiate the imagination. Walt Whitman established a connection by speaking directly to the reader, through an all-encompassing god-like persona. In "Song of Myself" Whitman reinvents himself as all of reality, and through the use of tone and imagery draws the reader into his world. 

Williams' poetry is an attempt to establish a communion, of sorts, with the reader, as well. His poetry is an exploration of momentary images, a jagged journey through personal perception, that the reader can relate to. Williams' diction and visual presentation of words resists the artificial; his poetry has a rhythm that is natural and American, a gregarious appeal to the common man. In "Spring and All' Williams creates a persona that is appealing, establishing a relationship and connecting with the reader. Both Whitman and Williams create a harmony between themselves and the reader that suggests the universality of experience. 

The creation of an acceptable persona is essential to Whitman's poetic program. In "Song of Myself" this is accomplished through a congenial style that consists of unbridled enthusiasm, a friendly voice; an image emerges of Whitman shouting at the
reader, saying 

"Look what I've discovered!": "Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,/
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun" (25). 

His poetry is often conversational, lacking a highly structured form. From the beginning of "Song of Myself" it is clear that the poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and reader. When Whitman writes "what I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you" (23), he implies a meeting of minds; not only is he going to address us but he is going to persuade us' because, he argues, we are all the same. He establishes a persona by not only speaking to us, but for us.

Whitman becomes one with his audience, the American people' by presenting himself as the "archetypal average American"
(xxvii). 

Spring and All is a map of Williams' imagination, a collection of poems cemented by "prose" explanation. He wants to leave no doubt about what he is expressing, presenting himself as his own critic. Like Whitman, the reader becomes part of Williams'
persona through an expression of the universality of thought, an "approximate co-extension with the universe." For Williams the reader would ideally enter the world of his poem so completely as to become lost, having no separate identity from that of the poet. 

In the imagination, we are henceforth (so long as you read) locked in a fraternal embrace, the classic caress of author and reader. We are one. Whenever I say "I" I mean also "you." (178) 

To accomplish this the poet must evoke in us the ability to identify with the external world, and consequently the world of his poem. 

Whitman's presentation of the external world is an effort to create images that are democratic in their nature, encompassing the whole through particulars. Williams writes, Whitman's proposals are of the same piece with the modern trend toward imaginative understanding of life. The largeness which he interprets as his identity with the least and the greatest about him, his "democracy" represents
the vigor of his imaginative life. (199)

In "Song of Myself" Whitman presents images of everyday life in America. Like Williams, he possesses an acute sense of the moment. Whitman perceives the external world and distinctly portrays it: "His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the
slouch of his hot away from his forehead,/The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of his polished and perfect limbs" (33). In this image Whitman conveys a common American, confident and determined, strong. The image is crisp
and distinct. It is not a metaphor, but an example. It is a particular image of America, representative of the whole. Through this image, and multiple other images -catalogues of distinctly American portrayals, appropriately diverse scenes of a democracy -

Whitman suggests that all people are involved in continually creating and sustaining America. The typical reader of "Song of Myself" sees himself in the poem. Whitman's choice of imagery suggests that it is in everyday life that democracy exists, that an attention to the moment of existence (any moment) reveals a universality. Finally, Whitman identifies himself with all he observes:

What is commonest, cheapest, nearest, easiest, is Me.
Me going in for my chances, spending for vast returns,
Adorning myself to bestow myself on the first that will take me.

"Song of Myself" is an appeal to the common man, to see himself in the poem, to see himself in all. 

In a 1962 interview with the Paris Review Williams remarks on the importance of rhythm in his poetry. His career was a search for an idiom that is a distinct reflection of the American pattern or style of speech. (159-185) His early poems, such as
those found in Spring and All, lack traditional metre, but still convey to the reader a sense of rhythm.  The rhythm of this is subtle and beautiful; it exists but is essentially invisible to the reader. In other words, the rhythm is not so pronounced as to imply artificial structure (as in iambic pentameter,for instance). This poem exhibits what Williams called the variable foot - its meter varies in order to be true to speech.

According to Williams, a poet must escape the "complicated ritualistic forms designed to separate the work from 'reality' - such as rhyme, meter as meter and not as the essential of the work, one of its words" (l89). Williams' meter suggests a clarity and preciseness of thought, an unencumbered directness. Often, the rhythm in Williams' poetry depends on its visual appearance. 

In "The Red Wheelbarrow," the eye perceives four small, distinct stanzas, with four words each. Each stanza has three words on the first line and one on the second; there is a minimalistic uniformity. There is no doubt that the form of this poem heightens the sense of its tone, but the actual effect defies definition. The subtlety of the visual and auditory rhythm in the poem parallels the subtlety of its imagery. If the image is directly conveyed from Williams' mind to reader's mind, then so is the rhythm. 

An exploration of Williams' use of rhythm naturally encourages a discussion of his use of prose. In Spring and All, he writes that "The nature of the difference between what is termed prose on the one hand and verse on the other is not to be discovered
by a study of the metrical characteristics of the words as they occur in juxtaposition" (229). In other words, meter is not the essential factor in distinguishing between verse and prose. Williams concludes that poetry and prose are aspects of the same art, and each becomes more distinct as the meter becomes more or less substantial. William uses prose as a practical mean of accomplishing what poetry can not in Spring and All. It is a way to clarify and convey information about an idea or emotion already expressed through poetry. 

There is no doubt that the rhythm of Whitman's verse is more pronounced than that of Williams. It suggests the more traditional, but it is clear that Whitman is willing to break with form when desired, slipping toward prose: "Houses and rooms are full of perfumes,/ the shelves are crowded with perfumes,/ I breath the fragrance myself and know it and like it,/ The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it" (24) On the subject of rhythm, Williams said that "Whitman was on the right track, but when he switched to the English intonation, and followed the English method of recording the feet, he didn't realize it was a different method, which was not satisfactory to an American" (Plimpton, 169). This distinction that Williams makes between his own poetry and Whitman's suggests that the search for a culture idiom is crucial to the development of a viable poetic persona.

Whitman is successful in his appeal to a common American audience primarily through his use of imagery, and the true value of Williams' poetry may be found in his extremely subtle, variable, and exquisite form. Both poets take a pragmatic approach to their vocation, using whatever they need to successfully commune with their audience. 

According to Williams, a poet must write about "things with which he is familiar, simple things - at the same time to detach them from ordinary experience to the imagination" 

( 197). This is the most obvious advice that a writer can offer: "Write what you know." And that is what Walt Whitman and William Carlos Williams do, as well as writing what their audience knows. In other words, both establish a relationship with their readers by appealing to a sense of the familiar and ordinary, "that life becomes
actual only when it is identified with ourselves". Whitman uses imagery that acts as examples of American culture, a framework in which Americans can identify. Williams uses simple images of simple things, and a natural rhythm that seem to directly reflect his own thought processes, that of a modern American. The techniques of both authors create a distinctive poetic persona. The result is a substantial relationship between author and reader suggesting and providing common experience.