William Carlos Williams and Alterity
The Early Poetry

Professor Ahearn argues that Williams criticism has not gone far enough in recognizing the uses Williams saw for contradiction.

Barry Ahearn (Author)

9780521062107, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 May 2008

200 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.2 cm, 0.31 kg

"Ahearn is very good at reading Williams's individual poems to demonstrate his thesis. He studies not only their imagery, but their syntax and prosody as well, and the results are both pleasurable and enlightening. Highly recommended." Choice

Many critics have noticed the paradoxes and contradictions in the work of William Carlos Williams, but few have analysed them in detail. Professor Ahearn argues that Williams criticism has not gone far enough in recognizing the uses Williams saw for contradiction. He contends that Williams began to acquire his own voice as a poet when he recognized that he could be a vehicle for contending voices. His reading departs from previous examinations of the early poetry in the emphasis it places on the poems as expressions of Williams's personal struggles with himself, his parents, his domestic role and his social position. We find a Williams whose contribution to modernism came not through a radical break with tradition or a rejection of inherited poetic norms alone, but rather in a cultivation of tension, conflict, and a kind of poetic 'crisis' that could be held forth as the metier of the modernist writer. The reconciliation of things as old as civilization itself with the newest form of poetry, Ahearn argues is the principal theme of Williams early poetic practice.

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Dr Williams and Mr Hyde
2. Love and marriage
3. Social diffraction
4. Formal alterations
5. Metaphor, metamorphosis
6. Fragments shored
Afterword: 1923–1963
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC]