''Journey to Love'' was a 1955
Random House
Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...
book by the American
modernist
Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...
poet/writer
William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...
. He dedicated it to his wife. All of the poems are in triadic stanza form, sometimes "with a short fourth line to fill out the measure."
''Journey to Love'' is now collected, along with ''
Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
''Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems'' is a 1962 book of poems by the American modernist poet/writer William Carlos Williams. It was Williams's final book, for which he posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1963. Two previously-pu ...
'' (1962) and ''
The Desert Music and Other Poems
''The Desert Music and Other Poems'' was a 1954 Random House book collecting 1949-54 poems by the American modernist poet/writer William Carlos Williams. It is now collected, along with ''Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems'' (1962) and ''Jou ...
'' (1954), in the New Directions paperback ''Pictures from Brueghel and other poems by William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems 1950-1962''.
Table of contents
* "A Negro Woman"
* "The Ivy Crown"
* "View by Color Photography on a Commercial Calendar"
* "The Sparrow"
* "The King!"
* "The Lady Speaks"
* "Tribute to the Painters"
* "To a Man Dying on His Feet"
* "Come on!"
* "The Pink Locust"
* "Classic Picture"
* "Address"
* "The Drunk and the Sailor"
* "A Smiling Dane"
* "Shadows"
* "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
"Asphodel, That Greeny Flower"
The crowning poem of the collection is "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," about which entire books have been written. By far the longest piece in the volume at thirty pages, this four-part pastoral love poem was originally envisioned as the fifth book of ''Paterson''. He began writing it in 1952 in the midst of health problems—physical (a heart attack and multiple strokes that left him, among other things, with periods of near-blindness and partially paralyzed, able to type only with one hand) and mental (depression). Facing death, he confessed old adulteries to his wife. In this context, he wrote "one of the most beautiful affirmations of the power of love in—and against—the nuclear age, and one of the few memorable love poems in English written not for a mistress but for a wife."
[Fisher-Wirth, Ann. "Williams's 'Asphodel, That Greeny Flower'" in ''Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century''. New York: Routledge, 2001.] He reviews their life together and states that her forgiveness of him has revived him.
Although hardly the most profound thing in the poem, one section is much quoted:
::::It is difficult
to get the news from poems
::yet men die miserably every day
::::for lack
of what is found there.
A different excerpt from "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" was used in the fifth and final movement of
The Desert Music
''The Desert Music'' is a work of music for voices and orchestra composed by the minimalist composer Steve Reich. It is based on texts by William Carlos Williams and takes its title from the poetry anthology ''The Desert Music and Other Poems''. ...
, a composition for chorus and orchestra or voices and ensemble by
Minimalist
In visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Don ...
composer
Steve Reich
Stephen Michael Reich ( ; born October 3, 1936) is an American composer known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, a ...
in 1984.
References
External links
Ann Fisher-Wirth, "Williams's 'Asphodel, That Greeny Flower'"
{{William Carlos Williams
1955 poetry books
American poetry collections
Poetry by William Carlos Williams
Random House books