angle, slope, line, plane geo: mathematics and poetics of william carlos williams

8/7/2019 Angle, Slope, Line, Plane Geo: Mathematics and Poetics of William Carlos Williams

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"To Elsie"


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Angle, Slope, Line, Plane:

Geometryand the Poemby William Carlos Williams

Pitzer College

Marching and Chowder

March 6, 2009


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The Red Wheelbarrow

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Williams-WC/01_Columbia-Univ_01-09-42/Williams-WC_01_The-Red-

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It is said that I exaggerate the importance of new forms. But new forms

(new association of the elemental particles) open the way to new feelings.(William Carlos Williams)

Latino Poetry Studies

Paterson I-VI

Essays Manuscripts

Spanish translations

William Carlos Williams and the Latins:

The Heat of Latina/o Poetics

The Province of the Poem Conference

William Paterson University

New Jersey

Poetry Manuscripts

The Desert Music

Mexican Vernacular

Affect

From the Passaic to the Ro Bravo,


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LATINA/O POETRY

Critical Studies in Ethnic Identity

Marzan, Julio, The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos

Williams (UT Press, 1994)

Snchez-Gonzlez, Lisa, Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the

Puerto Rican Diaspora, (UC Press, 2001)

Soto-Crespo, Ramn, The Cultural Anomaly of Puerto Rico (U MinnPress, 2009)


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LATINA/O POETRY

Bioliterary Sources Williams, William Carlos, Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of

My Mother(ND, 1959)

Sherman, Paul, The Music of Survival: The Biography of a Poem(U.Illinois, 1968)

Mariani, Paul, William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked,(Mcgraw Hill, 1981 & Norton, 1991)

Driscoll, Kerry, William Carlos Williams and the Maternal Muse (AnnArbor, 1987)

Vsquez, E. The Shape and Range of Latina/o Poetry: Lorna DeeCervantes and William Carlos Williams (UCR dissertation, 2004)


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LATINA/O POETRY

Shifts in the Field Ethnic to American Studies and/or transnational: from geneologicalstudies and methodologies to the reconceptualization of the archiveand recovery of historical development.

Projects in recovery of texts and figures and in the articulation of

transnationalism, gender studies, feminism, material culture

Examples: hemispheric modernist studies, Transatlanticframeworks, Latina/o popular culture, performance, media, andjournalism.

Formal innovations: vernacular, postcolonial, variable foothttp://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Williams-WC/Williams-WC_Interviews-with-Walter-Sutton_Oct-Nov-1960.mp3


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Math and PoetryThe Clouds (1948)

Aigeltinger

Aigeltinger

illuminating, for nearly half a century I

could never beat you at your specialty

Nothing has ever beaten a mathematician

The cloudless sky takes the sun in its periphery

and slides its disc across the blue.

They say Im not profound

But where is profundity, Aigeltinger

mathematical genius,

dragged drunk from some cheap bar to serve

their petty purposes?

Aigeltinger, you were profound

Final Proof That Maths and Poetry Have a Special Relationship The Guardian, 2/4/09

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2009/feb/04/maths-poetry-pi-fibonacci

http://poetry.about.com/b/2009/03/02/math-and-poetry-form-and-formula.htm


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Juan Gris The Rose (1914)THE ROSE

The rose is obsoletebut each petal ends inan edge, the double facetcementing the groovedcolumns of air--The edgecuts without cuttingmeets--nothing--renewsitself in metal or porcelain--

whither? It ends--

But if it endsthe start is begunso that to engage rosesbecomes a geometry--

Sharper, neater, more cutting

figured in majolica--the broken plateglazed with a rose

Somewhere the scenemakes copper rosessteel roses--

The rose carried weight of lovebut love is at an end--of roses

It is at the edge of thepetal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeatlaboredness--fragileplucked, moist, half-raised

cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal'sedge and the

From the petal's edge a line startsthat being of steelinfinitely fine, infinitelyrigid penetratesthe Milky Waywithout contact--liftingfrom it--neither hangingnor pushingThe fragility of the flowerunbruised

penetrates space[1923]

Juan Gris (1914)


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Paterson V, Book I (1958)

In old age

the mind

casts off

rebelliouslyan eagle

from its crag

--the angle of a forehead

or far less

makes him remember when he thought

he had forgot (205)


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a ersonRigor of beauty is the quest. But how will you find beauty when

it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Williams-

WC/03_Library-of-Congress-NBC_10-18-47/Williams-WC_05_Paterson-I-i_Library-of-Congress_10-18-47.mp3

Book I (1946)

Book II (1948) Book III (1949)

Book IV (1951)

Book V (1958) Book VI (1961) incomplete


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Paterson I, Book I

--Say it, no ideas but in things

nothing but the blank faces of the houses

and cylindrical trees

bent, forked by preconception and accident

split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained

secret into the body of the light! (6-7)


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Paterson

beauty is a defiance of authority

Dance motif: dance of the dying Native American, dance of

Williams in his early poem, Danse Russe. Dance as moraldefiance and courage against genocide of Native Americans and

Jewish prisoners cast against

I am Lonely/ Lonely. I am best so: 100 Years of Solitude, Williams

as Lonely, Happy Genius American Literature Association, Boston,

2009.


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Manuscripts:Talks, Essays, Letters

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Williams-WC/Williams-WC_Symposium- Paper_UBuffalo_12-07-51.mp3


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Manuscripts: Talks, Essays, Letters

Letter William Carlos Williams to John C. Thirwall, 11/30/54

Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts


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Latin American and Spanish Poets

Federico Garca Lorcas El Cante JondoThe American Poetry Collection at the Lockwood Library, UB


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Lack of integration with our British past gives us anopportunity, facing Spanish literature, to make newappraisals.

(Autobiography, 349)

A Deep Cello Note: William Carlos Williams and the Borderland Rhythms ofTheDesert MusicALA 2008

border, Southwestern literature in Williams and Cather, immigration, Transatlanticdiasporas

Lorcas Cante Jondo described by Ralph Angel as exemplum of Jewish, Islamic, and

Spanish linguistic and cultural expression. The deep cello note refers to Williamssown symbolic connection to fascist suppression of Spanish artists, Garca Lorca andPablo Casals.


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Talk in Puerto Rico (1956)


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Latin American and Spanish PoetsTribute to Neruda Poet Sea Collector of Shells

1960

Now that I am all but blind,

however it came about,

though I can see as well

as anyonethe imagination

has turned inward as happened

to my mother when she

became old: dreams took the

place of sight. Her native

tongue was Spanish which,of course, she

never forgot. It was the

language also of Neruda the

Chilean poetwho collected

Seashells on his

Native beaches, until he

Had by reputation, the second

Largest collection in the

world. Be patient with

him, darling mother, the

changeless beauty of

seashells, like the

sea itself, gavehis lines the variable pitch

which modern verse requires.

(CP II, 357-358)


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Poetry Manuscripts:

Two Pendants: For the Ears (1949)

The American Poetry Archives at Lockwood Library, UB


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Poetry Manuscripts




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Poetry Manuscripts




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Poetry Manuscripts




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Poetry Manuscripts




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Poetry Manuscripts




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The Desert Music (1954)

Bibliography of the Long Poem

Kun, Josh, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (UC Press, 2005)

Lowney, John, Reading the Borders ofThe Desert Music, William Carlos Williams Review, Volume 24 2, 2, 24,2004, Middletown, Pa.

Lugo, Alejandro, Fragmented Lives, Assembled Parts

Finkelstein, Norman, The Crisis ofLanguage and Identity in William Carlos Williamss The Desert Music

Marzn, Julio, The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams

Sheldon, Glenn, South of Ourselves: Mexico in the Poems of Williams, Kerouac, Corso, Ginsberg, Levertow, andHayden

Sherman, Paul, Biography of a Poem

Svonkin, Craig, From Robert Lowell to Frank Bidart: Becoming the Other; Suiciding the White Male Self

Vasquez, E. Dissertation chapter on The Desert Music

Vasquez, E. The Restorative Williams: Doctoring and Documenting the U.S./Mexico Border William CarlosWilliams Review, Winter 2009


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The Desert Music (1954)


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Mexican and Borderlands

Vernacular

. the place deserted all but

for a few Indians squatted in the

booths, unnoticing (dont you think it)

as thought they slept there .

Why dont these Indians get over this nauseating

prattle about their souls and their loves and singus something else for a change?

(276, 280)


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La pistola y el corazon

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/us/20070701_CORRIDOS_FEATURE/index.html http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdv8RZDus8I http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV2FEu81_7I&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku4oBBXiqoA&feature=related (in composing. I make the words which are little parts of the soul inside. I try to write the lyric. I do it in music and make it into a song. Thats how I make songs. The songs are like our children that when

you are creando those, they are yours until they leave you and go out into the world. Cuco Sanchez) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNcUe24K7r0

pedro infante cucurucucu lyric by tomas Mendez http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gQ31m4Yt0s La Llorona by Chavela Vargas http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq3dJgUyM_c&feature=related La Llorona by Lila Downs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS_BpR4KZfM Lila downs. This song composed by a Tomas Mendez and enters the vernacular canon. Paloma NEgra http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMxw7eakA2Y&feature=related EL FEo by Demetrio Lopez Sung Lila Downs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pT4Q5piexc&feature=related la bruja public domain http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qnZ2ji6REU&feature=PlayList&p=28C077BC98EAE651&playnext=1&index=6

1 Alicia Villarealyou think that a woman should submit to a man. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XaWhejcnyc&feature=PlayList&p=DA2F7AD12B8F32F9&playnext=1&index=3

5 Followed by Paquita la del barrio http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD3mr2d-khg Cielito Lindo Pavarotti

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