ISBN: 0486826929 9780486826929

Category: Poetry / American / General

Page count: 112

Heavily influenced by T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," the poems of <i>Spring and All </i>express the author's beliefs about the role and form of art in a modern context. William Carlos Williams offers an intensely stylized set of exercises in reduction that capture, in his words, "the immediacy of experiences." Sections of vivid, sensuous prose — described by the poet as "a mixture of philosophy and nonsense"—alternate with straightforward free verse that explores the creative uses of imagination and the power of language.<br> "Spring and All," the title work of this 1923 collection, represents Williams's first major achievement as a poet, and was praised by <i>The New York Times</i> as one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century. This groundbreaking compilation also features some of the poet's best-known verse, including the modernist masterpieces: "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "To Elsie."