Why read The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams?

Book cover of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: Volume 2, 1939-1962

Book description

So that readers could more fully understand the extent of Williams' radical simplicity, all of his published poetry, excluding Paterson, was reissued in two definite volumes, of which this is the first.

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Poetry

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Forrest Gander

Author

William Carlos Williams’ book The Desert Music was published first in 1954 and later collected in volume two of New Directions’ The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. It remains one of William Carlos Williams’ most tender, innovative, and emotionally exigent books.

The so-called desert music becomes, among other things, an enactment and valuing of the “inescapable and insistent” background soundscapes in our lives. Geographically, the poems of the title sequence are situated in the Chihuahua Desert, where Williams, after having suffered a stroke, travels between Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas.

From characteristically astute descriptions—for instance, of a…

From Forrest's list on books to take to the desert.