Her body is not so white as
anemony petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
the field by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blemish. Each part
is a blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being
stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.
—William Carlos Williams
Okay, so I typed this once and the formatting was all screwy, but in the retyping of the poem I’ve been drawn to the rhyme and rhythm in each line. As a poet who is currently revising a manuscript, and writing new poems to be added to said manuscript, I think I’ve stumbled upon someone I could study more closely as I strategically work on my lines, their rhyme and meter. I’ve always loved William Carlos Williams, but I’ve never studied him on my own terms, with my own agenda.
Also, I am teaching introduction to literature next semester (*happy dance*), so I’ve been browsing some of my favorite anthologies. These typically tend to be the ones from classes I took, classes that really taught me a lot. I ran across this poem in Twentieth Century American Poets by Dana Gioia. I had placed an orange sticky note on the page where this poem was and highlighted the title, so obviously something in this poem struck a chord in me.
I think what I love about it is how provocative it is without being so blatant or in-your-face. And it’s not that I mind something that’s in-my-face, but there’s something beautiful about what is implied in this poem, about what is understated. “Each part/is a blossom under his touch/to which the fibres of her being/stem one by one, each to its end,/until the whole field is a/white desire…”. Mm-hmmm.
*p.s. click the title to access the poem and audio of Williams reading the poem, courtesy of the Poetry Foundation’s website.
-S
