3.6.19 William Carlos Williams’ Japanese connection

Introduction

The poet, Dr. William Carlos Williams was born September 17, 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey ("LitKicks"). Williams’ poetry is characterized by a highly focused, economical use of language, and with concern primarily for the physical, concrete world. Though his poems are by no means devoid of symbolic and metaphorical meaning, his symbols and metaphors tend to operate through the concrete, not instead of, or in spite of it. His poems "make sense" literally: they are strongly tied to the sensory level of experience. In this respect he was influenced by Ezra Pound, and at least indirectly through Pound, by the poetry of Japan.

The Imagists

Williams was initially trained as a medical doctor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he met Ezra Pound, who encouraged his work in poetry (Koss iii). Williams produced his first book of poetry, Poems, in 1909 ("LitKicks"). This date corresponds with the beginnings of the imagist movement in poetry. The imagists were a group of American and British poets prominent as a group between about 1909 and 1918 ("Imagists"). Among the better-known imagists, according to M. H. Abrams’ A Glossary of Literary Terms, were its initial "leader" Ezra Pound, Amy Lowell, D. H. Lawrence and William Carlos Williams (qtd. in "Imagism").

The imagists were concerned with concrete imagery—especially visual imagery. In her Tendencies in Modern American Poetry, Amy Lowell sets forth a kind of manifesto for the imagists, among the tenets of which are: "to employ the exact word, not the nearly-exact," "to present an image. […] [P]oetry should render particulars exactly and not deal in vague generalities," and that "concentration is of the very essence of poetry" (qtd. in "Imagism (defined)").

All these tenets can be seen clearly in an excerpt from Lowell’s short poem, "Lilacs": "Lilacs, / False blue, / White, / Purple, / Color of lilac, / Your great puffs of flowers / Are everywhere in this my New England" (Jerome 26). Here there is concentration, specificity, and a concern with the thing in itself so strict that even the color of the lilacs is described in terms of itself—"[c]olor of lilac[.]" Another well-known example of concentration and concreteness is Williams’ tiny poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow": "so much depends / upon // a red wheel / barrow // glazed with rain / water // beside the white / chickens" ("Red"). Here the speaker does not intrude at all into the poem, nor even make any commentary about the subject, except for the single, enigmatic commentary in the first two lines.

Haiku

The imagists, most notably Ezra Pound, were interested in the poetry of Japan—especially in the now-well-known miniature form of haiku—and for good reason. Since at least the time of Basho in the seventeenth century, Japan cultivated a form of poetry unmatched in its concision and near-total adherence to the here and now, physical world (Higginson 115-116). The style of haiku was influenced strongly by the Zen Buddhist philosophy of Japan which admitted no reality save that which physically exists in the present, and advises the adherent to appreciate that reality even in its impermanence.

In William J. Higginson’s translation of this haiku by Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902), we see all of these elements: "summer river… / there’s a bridge, but the horse / goes through water" (Higginson 24). Here the poem is limited to a few carefully chosen words. It consists of nothing but imagery. There are no overt hints at symbolism or metaphor, no personification. There is only the horse and the cool river on a hot summer day, the bridge, and the horse’s action.

The Shiki poem also illustrates the strong tendency in haiku to make use of imagery involving nature and the changing of the seasons. Images of plants or animals are present in a large majority of classical Japanese haiku. In his historic Introduction to Haiku (written in 1958) Harold G. Henderson writes, "[…] in nearly all haiku, there is some word or expression that indicates the time of year, and so forms a background for the picture that they are trying to bring up in the reader’s mind" (5). The Shiki poem is unusual only in that reference to the seasons is not often made directly as here, but indirectly, by choosing subjects that are associated with a given season, like cherry blossoms (sakura no hana) in spring, or icicles (tsurara) for winter (Higginson 270, 282).

Imagist Haiku

By the nineteen-teens, influenced by early translations from the Japanese, imagists were experimenting with haiku-like poems (Higginson 49). Attributed as the first was Ezra Pound’s over-quoted two-line poem, "In a Station of the Metro," here in its original version, from Poetry, April, 1913:

The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough. (qtd. in Higginson 135)

Though unmistakably western in its metaphor (the colon indicating that the petals are a metaphor for the faces), the concision and imagery is certainly similar to the Japanese style.

There were more attempts at such ultra-short works by other imagists, among which was Amy Lowell’s extremely haiku-like 1919 "Autumn Haze": "Is it a dragonfly or a maple leaf / That settles softly down upon the water?" (Higginson 52) Here Lowell is closer to the Japanese style, with pure nature imagery, and no philosophical commentary.

The Japanese Connection in Williams’ Shorter Works

In his introductory note to "Early Poems," by William Carlos Williams, Richard Koss writes, "Williams’s insistence on working in the idiom of modern American speech […] veered sharply from the classical allusions and Far Eastern experimentations of Pound and his imagist set" (Koss iii). Yet in the same year as Lowell’s "Autumn Haze", Williams wrote an unmistakably haiku-esque poem with the characteristically terse title: "Lines." "Leaves are grey-green, / The glass broken bright green" (Higginson 52). In fact, whether intentionally or not, by writing in a manner more true to "normal" popular speech of his country—just as Japanese haiku are written in the common manner of speech of Japan—Williams’ poem would succeed as haiku, in at least that one respect, where Pound’s "metro poem" would not.

Not all of Williams’ poems are so short, and Williams was not an avowed orientalist and was not, apparently, interested in imitation of Japanese, or any other style merely for its own sake. But there are unmistakable similarities between his work and that of the Japanese haiku poets. An example is Williams’ poem titled "Poem," written in 1934 (see Meyer or many other sources).

Interestingly, the superficial form of the poem resembles that of a short Japanese renga, which is a form of "linked poem" in which each stanza employs the short-long-short structure of haiku (Higginson 293). It is also interesting that, as with so much haiku, the poem is a picture of an animal. But more significant is the concreteness of style. The speaker does not show up in the poem except once, indirectly, when he describes the cat’s movement as performed "carefully." It could be argued that the use of this word implies an evaluation on the part of the speaker. But other than that one word, the poem is totally impersonal, focused entirely outward, toward the physical world. We are simply told that there is a cat, who is doing a particular thing at a particular place. There is no description of explicitly visual sense (no colors mentioned) but the reader’s tendency is to read visually, seeing concrete images of what is described. There is no use of metaphor or simile or any figurative language at all. Again apart from the word "carefully" there are no abstract terms. And apart from a few conjunctions and particles, every word is either a noun, a verb directly applying to a noun, or an adjective directly applying to a noun—with the one exception, that is, again, of the adverb, "carefully." Being the only word on a line by itself, that line being the first line of a stanza, being the only abstraction, the only adverb, and being the only slight intrusion of the speaker’s humanity into the poem, Williams seems here to strongly focus our attention on the word and on its meaning. Whatever you may think of the cat, it is definitely being careful. In any case, Williams is able to give all the detail needed to see the image clearly. We know who is acting (the cat), where the cat is, and what the cat is doing, and how. He achieves an enormous degree of clarity and precision of image in this poem of just twenty-seven words.

Another fascinating example of a haiku-like work by Williams is his four-line work, "Marriage".

Here, as in Pound’s "metro poem" we are given a pair of apparently unrelated images, each totally concrete, but joined with a colon, implying a metaphorical relationship. There is no editorializing, and Williams does not explore the metaphor or its meaning. He simply presents it to us as an object of contemplation, for its own sake. Though they are known for avoiding metaphor entirely, haiku poets often use similar techniques of juxtaposition, as in Kobayashi Issa’s "A butterfly / flutters past—my body feels / the dust of ages" (Issa 112). Here the first image is a metaphor not for the second image, but for its opposite.

The Japanese Connection in Williams’ Longer Works

Williams was by no means a miniaturist. He often wrote short poems, though rarely did he write works shorter than the 1934 "Poem." But many of the same techniques involving focus on concrete imagery and avoidance of vagueness can be seen in his longer works. An example is his 1923 poem, "By the Road to the Contagious Hospital" (alternately titled, "Spring and All").

An informal numerical analysis here is revealing. This 142-word poem is comprised of approximately 34 adjectives, 10 verbs and 59 nouns or pronouns; most of the remaining words are conjunctions and other particles. Of the adjectives, only "contagious," "lifeless," "dazed," "uncertain" and "profound" could even be called remotely abstract. Furthermore, the poem, like most of the best haiku, contains no adverbs whatsoever. As counterexamples chosen more-or-less at random, Herman Melville’s 111-word "The Maldive Shark" contains three adverbs, and John Keats’ 285-word "La Belle Dame sans Merci" has five (Meyer 834-835, 1170).

This longer Williams poem, a picture of the onset of spring, also continues the tendency to employ nature images seen in the other poems examined, and in Japanese poetry. A glance through an edition of Williams’ early poetry shows that while nature imagery is not ubiquitous, as in classical haiku, of some fifty-five pages, only two appear to be devoid of some nature image. Cats, and branches of trees seem to be among the popular subjects ("Early Poems").

And in many of Williams’ poems, like classical haiku, references to the seasons abound. "By the Road to the Contagious Hospital," deals with the theme of death and renewal symbolized by the changing of the seasons. It is significant that the first three stanzas of the poem are dominated by images relating to death and aging: the "contagious" hospital, the dead, brown leaves, the cold wind. Only from this context can the quickening of spring emerge, giving life. One might be reminded of a similarity to the much shorter haiku by Issa: "At the very edge / of the contaminated well / a plum tree blossoms" (104). The phrase "plum tree blossoms" (ume no hana) is a kigo, or season word, representing springtime (Higginson 270). Thus here both the symbolic theme of spring renewal and the concrete means (the setting in a place of contamination or contagion) are strikingly similar.

Conclusion

Williams’ imagistic poems share much with the work of the classical haiku poets of Japan. Perhaps above all is the similar aversion to emotionalistic sentiment. Williams wrote:

There’s nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. When I say there’s nothing sentimental about a poem I mean that there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant. (qtd. in Higginson 120)

This perhaps explains the gravitation of the haiku poets and of Williams, though in differing degrees, to extremes of concision and verbal efficiency. Both regarded a poem as first and foremost a means of conveying a concrete image, a simple, clear picture of reality. For them, subjective, sentimental wallowing is not so much distasteful as it is merely beside the point, a loose screw in a poem’s machinery. And Williams did not like loose screws. His poems hold together like precision instruments, nothing superfluous and nothing out of place.

Williams influenced the whole of 20th century English-language poetry in many ways, among which was in blazing a trail with his haiku-like poems which would be followed a generation later by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and the Beat poets (Higginson 58). His dedication to the concrete, eschewing strained metaphor and empty abstraction, is best summed up with his own oft-quoted line from the his epic poem Patterson, that there be "no ideas but in things" (Koss iii). No Zen master could have said it better.

Works Cited

[The full text of several poems has been removed from this public
version for copyright reasons.]

Henderson, Harold G. An Introduction to Haiku: An Anthology of Poems
and Poets From Basho to Shiki. Garden City, New York: Doubleday,
1958.

Higginson, William J., and Penny Harter. The Haiku Handbook: How to
Write, Share, and Teach Haiku. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985.

Imagism. 8 June,
2002. <http://www.unc.edu/courses/eng81br1/IMAGISM.html>.

Imagism (defined). 8 June,
2002. <http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/imagism-def.html>.

"Imagists." A Handbook to Literature. 5th ed. C. Hugh Holman and
William Harmon, eds. New York: Macmillan, 1986.

Issa, Kobayashi. The Spring of My Life and Selected Haiku. Trans Sam
Hamill. Boston: Shambhala, 1997.

Jerome, Judson. The Poet's Handbook. Cincinatti, Ohio: Writer's Digest
Books, 1980.

Koss, Richard. Note. Early Poems. By William Carlos
Williams. Ed. Richard Koss. Mineola, New York: Dover, 1997.

LitKicks: William Carlos Williams. 8 June,
2002. <http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/People/WilliamCarlosWilliams.html>.

Meyer, Michael. Thinking and Writing About Literature: A Text and
Anthology. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001.

Williams, William Carlos. "By the Road to the Contagious Hospital."
The Mentor Book of Major American Poets. Oscar Williams, Edwin Honig,
eds. New York City: Mentor, 1962. 325-326.

[---] "Marriage." Early Poems. Ed. Richard Koss. Mineola, New York:
Dover, 1997. 38.

[---] "Poem." Thinking and Writing About Literature: A Text and
Anthology. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2001. 235.

[---] "Red Wheelbarrow, The." The Japanese Haiku: Its Essential Nature,
History, and Possibilities in English, With Selected Examples. Kenneth
Yasuda. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle Company, 1957. 5.

For English Literature class 2002.06.10