William Carlos Williams

 

 

Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur

 

Brief an Harriet Monroe

[Auszug]

 

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.

Carr, Helen: Poetry: A Magazine of Verse (1912-36), 'Biggest of Little Magazines'. In: The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines. Hrsg. von Peter Brooker u.a. Bd. 2: North America 1894-1960. Oxford 2012, S. 40-60.

Doyle, Charles (Hrsg.): William Carlos Williams. The Critical Heritage. London u.a. 1997.

Ernst, Jutta: Amerikanische Modernismen. Schreibweisen, Konzepte und zeitgenössische Periodika als Vermittlungsinstanzen. Würzburg 2018.

MacGowan, Christopher (Hrsg.): The Cambridge Companion to William Carlos Williams. New York 2016.

Matthews-Schlinzig, Marie I. u.a. (Hrsg.): Handbuch Brief. Von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. 2 Bde. Berlin u. Boston 2020.

Montgomery, Will: Short Form American Poetry. The Modernist Tradition. Edinburgh 2020.

Müller, Wolfgang G.: Art. Brief. In: Handbuch der literarischen Gattungen. Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping. Stuttgart 2009, S. 75-83.

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: Caliban [Online], 35 | 2014, Online since 13 December 2013.
URL: http://journals.openedition.org/caliban/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 William'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