[reading copy: facsimile available at http://english.utah.edu/eclipse]
ORGANIC PROSODY IN THE POETRY OF WILLIAM CARLOS
WILLIAMS
“To invent, then, a prosody of our own has been our first
objective in our approach toward reality in our place and day.”
—William Carlos Williams
by Robert Grenier
Senior Honors Thesis
Harvard College 1965
Reading Copy Only: facsimile available at http://english.utah.edu/eclipse
2
INTRODUCTION
Critical reception of the poetry of William Carlos Williams, in recent years, has grown increasingly
favorable, one may even say enthusiastic. Once characterized by his friend and mentor Ezra Pound as “the
most bloody inarticulate animal that ever gargled”1—Dr. Williams had even before his death, in 1963,
begun to come into the widespread critical assessment which today places his poetry on a par with that of
Pound and T.S. Eliot. Williams’ “free verse” is no longer disregarded in the English Departments of
American academies, no longer quizzically tolerated nor genteelly despised, no longer really felt to be
particularly experimental. On the contrary, as the work of an important, established poet, Dr. Williams’
verse is presented to college freshmen today as one of the elemental cornerstones of Twentieth Century
English poetry.
Yet of all the distinguished teachers, critics, and poets recently shown interest in Williams,
none—at least in print—has got to the root of his importance as a poet; none has offered a cogent, technical
explanation of Williams’ prosody, his metrical technique. Contenting themselves, in general, with repeated
expressions of praise for the undeniable fineness of WCW’s2 personality—his openness, honesty, kindness,
his American exuberance, immediately recognizable—critics have so far neglected the means by which that
fineness of character is brought across that the reader of the usual discussion of Williams’ poetry is often led
to question whether the work of a poet (rather t