As Janice May Udry once said, “A poem is nice.” Actually she said “A tree is nice,” which is actually a poem.  But the point is poems are nice.  So in honor of nice things and nice September afternoons, Bwog honors the 125th Birthday of William Carlos Williams.  Although the actual date of his birth, September 17th, has passed, the celebration continues.  All weekend long, aspiring poets, ancient troubadours and bibliophiles alike will convene just ten miles west of Hamilton Hall in Rutherford, NJ (Williams’ hometown), to sing praises of the man and his work.

Bwog offers some of its favorite Williams’ poems.  Feel free to share your own suggestions. 

Danse Russe

If I when my wife is sleeping

and the baby and Kathleen

are sleeping

and the sun is a flame-white disc

in silken mists

above shining trees,–

if I in my north room

dance naked, grotesquely

before my mirror

waving my shirt round my head

and singing softly to myself:

“I am lonely, lonely.

I was born to be lonely,

I am best so!”

If I admire my arms, my face,

my shoulders, flanks, buttocks

again the yellow drawn shades,–

Who shall say I am not

the happy genius of my household?



The Botticellian Trees

The alphabet of

the trees

is fading in the

song of the leaves

the crossing

bars of the thin

letters that spelled

winter

and the cold

have been illuminated

with

pointed green

by the rain and sun –-

The strict simple

principles of

straight branches

are being modified

by pinched-out

ifs of color, devout

conditions

the smiles of love–

. . . . . .

until the stript

sentences

move as a woman’s

limbs under cloth

and praise from secrecy

quick with desire

love’s ascendancy

in summer–

In summer the song

sings itself

above the muffled words–