{"id":443,"date":"2013-11-08T16:18:48","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T16:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/?p=443"},"modified":"2013-11-08T16:18:48","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T16:18:48","slug":"revealing-the-object","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/2013\/11\/08\/revealing-the-object\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealing the Object"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Margaret Pallis, for Prof. David Rosen’s course, “Modern Poetry”]<\/p>\n

\"contact<\/a>When I searched the Watkinson for an object related to William Carlos Williams\u2019 poetry, I found myself interested in a 1932 edition of Contact<\/i>, a literary journal first published in December of 1920; three more editions came out in 1921, and a fifth and final edition was published in 1923.\u00a0 In 1932, Williams, this time working with Nathaniel West, revived Contact<\/i>, renaming it Contact: an American Quarterly Review<\/i>.\u00a0 However, the revived journal only lasted for a total of three volumes\u2014all of which were published in 1932.\u00a0 The copy I examined at the Watkinson was the second volume of this journal.<\/p>\n

Part of what initially caught my attention was the quality of the paper.\u00a0 While it was old, certainly, I was more interested in the fact that the paper was not of good quality.\u00a0 The cover of the journal is unassuming, with no frills; however, the font is large and red, which commands attention.\u00a0 There were very few advertisements in the journal, and with a little investigating, I discovered (in correspondence between Williams and Ezra Pound) that Williams had no money with which to pay for submissions to the journal.\u00a0 It appears that neither the venture in the 1920s, nor this 1932 venture, was particularly successful financially.<\/p>\n

The volume I examined of Contact<\/i> includes two poems by Williams:\u00a0 \u201cThe Canada Lily\u201d (later renamed \u201cThe Red Lily\u201d) and \u201cThe Cod Head.\u201d\u00a0 I believe that this was a first publication for both of the poems.\u00a0 Certainly, Contact<\/i> served as an opportunity for Williams to showcase some of his own poetry.\u00a0 I also discovered, looking through this particular volume, that the journal also contained a continuation of a bibliography of \u201cLittle Magazines,\u201d compiled by David Moss. This appears to be one of the first times that such a bibliography was compiled.\u00a0 Each of the three 1932 volumes presented a section of the bibliography, as it was too long to include in one volume.<\/p>\n

\"Williams<\/a>The main reason I selected this particular journal was because of the editorial that Williams included.\u00a0 In the editorial, Williams suggests that the name of the journal encapsulates some of his ideas about poetry.\u00a0\u00a0 The idea of \u201ccontact\u201d for Williams seems to suggest that symbols are no longer relevant, and he invites readers of modern poetry to see the object, instead of what an object may or may not symbolize. \u00a0\u00a0In his commentary, Williams articulates his beliefs (about poetry and the role of poetry in our lives) when he suggests that we must come \u201ceye to eye with some of the figures of our country and epoch, truthfully.\u201d He suggests that, \u201cif we cannot find virtue in the object of our lives, then for us there is none anywhere.\u00a0 We won\u2019t solve or discover by using \u2018profound\u2019 (and borrowed) symbolism.\u201d\u00a0 The idea of contact seems to be a cutting away of everything unessential, which then creates a new surface which allows for immediate and unmediated contact. We must, says Williams in his commentary, \u201creveal the object.\u201d\u00a0 Williams argues that the poet must let go of clich\u00e9s and \u201cdead stylisms.\u201d\u00a0 He argues that writers must \u201clearn from the thing itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Williams<\/a>The commentary also gave me what I suppose I might call an insight in Williams as a person.\u00a0 Toward the end of that piece, he writes about Hart Crane\u2019s suicide.\u00a0 While I was initially struck by what felt like callousness, when Williams writes that \u201cno one expects now to go on living after death; blackguards have already traded too long on that to our confounding.\u00a0 Certainly Hart Crane bumped himself off with no thought of improving or marring his condition.\u201d I may have been startled by the \u201cbumped himself off\u201d when I would, perhaps, have anticipated some sympathy for a troubled man.\u00a0 Instead, I began to see Williams\u2019 point that perhaps Crane had \u201cdone about the best he could do and was satisfied to let it go at that.\u201d\u00a0 There is a practical quality to the statement that is, I suppose, satisfying.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Posted by Margaret Pallis, for Prof. David Rosen’s course, “Modern Poetry”] When I searched the Watkinson for an object related to William Carlos Williams\u2019 poetry, I found myself interested in a 1932 edition of Contact, a literary journal first published in December of 1920; three more editions came out in 1921, and a fifth and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":447,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions\/447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.trincoll.edu\/rring\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}