William Williams
William Williams
deep odor passing rank
With what deep thirstwe quicken our desiresto that rank odor of a passing springtime!
race
We are a half-mad race, and what we say is not to be trusted.
facts human intense value vision
The only human value of anything, writing included, is intense vision of the facts.
completed imagination life valuable
Life is valuable -- when completed by the imagination. And then only.
assertion broken environment failing lifting means poem social thus total toward
The poem, to me (until I go broke) is an attempt, an experiment, a failing experiment, toward assertion with broken means but an assertion, always, of a new and total culture, the lifting of an environment to expression. Thus it is social, the poem is a social instrument.