Including Williams’ Poetry Talked about by Eli Siegel, and William Carlos Williams Present and Talking: 1952
Edited by Martha Baird and Ellen Reiss
Commenting on the lecture Eli Siegel had just given on his work, William Carlos Williams said: “I can see your direction through it, and it’s very important….Certainly you’re a rare person. It’s just as important— it’s as if everything I’ve ever done has been for you. You come up with it, and so few people come up with anything. They praise the wrong things, for the wrong reasons very often…. When you say it, it’s plain. You make it plain. And it’s very forceful.”
“Eli Siegel is the critic who has shown why poetry is necessary. And the way he spoke in 1952 made Williams, troubled about the goodness of his work, feel surer that he had done something of permanent value.” —Ellen Reiss, in the Afterword
“The line is something Williams has always been interested in. It happens to be an organic thrust. It happens to be a combination of hardness and softness, swiftness and slowness, the visual and the musical, the spacious and the concentrated…. The distinction of Dr. Williams’ work is that his lines very often have the surprising and also right quality that energy shown in any field of matter whatsoever has. And when we see it attended by the emotions of a person, we get to something important.” —Eli Siegel, from his talk on Williams’ poetry, March 5, 1952