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The Wedge
The Wedge is a 1944 book of poems by American modernist writer and poet William Carlos Williams. He assembled this collection in response to requests from American servicemen during World War II for a pocket-sized collection of his work to take into deployment with them. Despite the poet's inquiries and the nature of the requests that prompted him to approach them, several publishers rejected The Wedge. Their grounds for doing so were a perceived lack of literary quality and wartime shortages. The book was eventually handset printed by Henry Duncan and Wightman Williams at Cummington Press and bound surreptitiously on the premises and at the expense of one of the publishers who had previously rejected it. The book is dedicated to poet Louis Zukofsky, who helped Williams revise and rearrange the poems for publication.
Williams placed into The Wedge many of the poems, written since the late 1930s, intended initially for his book-length poem Paterson. (According to editor Christopher MacGowan, the poem "Paterson: the Falls" in The Wedge lays out both the later poem's theme and its eventual format.) He wrote to poet and publisher James Laughlin in 1943, "Paterson is coming along—this book is a personal finger-practicing to assist me in that: but that isn't all it is." Williams' original concept for The Wedge was for it to contain several forms of writing. These would include improvisational works he wrote in the 1920s, prose and selections from his play Many Loves. Eventually, with Zukofsky's assistance, Williams narrowed the book's focus. He reduced the book's material, eliminated the prose selections but added an introduction based on an address he gave at the New York Public Library in October 1943. In the opening poems, Williams states what would become the working strategy for his long poem Paterson, which he began not long afterwards.
:::
Introduction
William Carlos Williams grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, where he later worked as a physician for more than forty years, while publishing prolifically. At the University of Pennsylvania he met fellow student Ezra Pound, and they became central members of the burgeoning Imagist movement in poetry. Williams applied Pound’s directive to “make it new” to his own commitment to finding material in the daily and the local, and to using plain speech in his work. In his autobiographical story “A Visit,” poet James Laughlin notes of Williams’ balance between physician and poet, “In fact, the busy mixture of two full careers had been the taut spring that kept the mechanism turning.”
In his Introduction to The Wedge (1944), Williams grounds his poetics in opposition to a view held by critics at the time that poetry would likely become unnecessary once socialism has taken root. Williams sees this view as an extension of the notion that “arts are a resort from frustration.”
Williams asserts, “a poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.” Emphasizing a poem’s composition and movement rather than its content, he states, “There is no poetry of distinction without formal invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve their exact meaning, in which they most resemble the machine, to give language its highest dignity, its illumination in the environment to which it is native.”
Two years after the publication of this essay, Williams published the first volume of his his five-volume epic, Paterson, which illustrates the growing structural attention that drove much of Williams’ later work. He would also later develop his signature formal innovation, the variable foot.
Working drafts of The Wedge are housed in the Special Collections of the State University of New York at Buffalo’s library.
The War is the first and only thing in the world today.
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field.
Critics of rather better than average standing have said in recent years that after socialism has been achieved it’s likely there will be no further use for poetry, that it will disappear. This comes from nothing else than a faulty definition of poetry—and the arts generally. I don’t hear anyone say that mathematics is likely to be outmoded, to disappear shortly. Then why poetry?
It is an error attributable to the Freudian concept of the thing, that the arts are a resort from frustration, a misconception still entertained in many minds.
They speak as though action itself in all its phases were not compatible with frustration. All action the same. But Richard Coeur de Lion wrote at least one of the finest lyrics of his day. Take Don Juan for instance. Who isn’t frustrated and does not prove it by his actions—if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.
The making of poetry is no more an evidence of frustrat...
Williams placed into The Wedge many of the poems, written since the late 1930s, intended initially for his book-length poem Paterson. (According to editor Christopher MacGowan, the poem "Paterson: the Falls" in The Wedge lays out both the later poem's theme and its eventual format.) He wrote to poet and publisher James Laughlin in 1943, "Paterson is coming along—this book is a personal finger-practicing to assist me in that: but that isn't all it is." Williams' original concept for The Wedge was for it to contain several forms of writing. These would include improvisational works he wrote in the 1920s, prose and selections from his play Many Loves. Eventually, with Zukofsky's assistance, Williams narrowed the book's focus. He reduced the book's material, eliminated the prose selections but added an introduction based on an address he gave at the New York Public Library in October 1943. In the opening poems, Williams states what would become the working strategy for his long poem Paterson, which he began not long afterwards.
:::
Introduction
William Carlos Williams grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, where he later worked as a physician for more than forty years, while publishing prolifically. At the University of Pennsylvania he met fellow student Ezra Pound, and they became central members of the burgeoning Imagist movement in poetry. Williams applied Pound’s directive to “make it new” to his own commitment to finding material in the daily and the local, and to using plain speech in his work. In his autobiographical story “A Visit,” poet James Laughlin notes of Williams’ balance between physician and poet, “In fact, the busy mixture of two full careers had been the taut spring that kept the mechanism turning.”
In his Introduction to The Wedge (1944), Williams grounds his poetics in opposition to a view held by critics at the time that poetry would likely become unnecessary once socialism has taken root. Williams sees this view as an extension of the notion that “arts are a resort from frustration.”
Williams asserts, “a poem is a small (or large) machine made of words.” Emphasizing a poem’s composition and movement rather than its content, he states, “There is no poetry of distinction without formal invention, for it is in the intimate form that works of art achieve their exact meaning, in which they most resemble the machine, to give language its highest dignity, its illumination in the environment to which it is native.”
Two years after the publication of this essay, Williams published the first volume of his his five-volume epic, Paterson, which illustrates the growing structural attention that drove much of Williams’ later work. He would also later develop his signature formal innovation, the variable foot.
Working drafts of The Wedge are housed in the Special Collections of the State University of New York at Buffalo’s library.
The War is the first and only thing in the world today.
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that for relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field.
Critics of rather better than average standing have said in recent years that after socialism has been achieved it’s likely there will be no further use for poetry, that it will disappear. This comes from nothing else than a faulty definition of poetry—and the arts generally. I don’t hear anyone say that mathematics is likely to be outmoded, to disappear shortly. Then why poetry?
It is an error attributable to the Freudian concept of the thing, that the arts are a resort from frustration, a misconception still entertained in many minds.
They speak as though action itself in all its phases were not compatible with frustration. All action the same. But Richard Coeur de Lion wrote at least one of the finest lyrics of his day. Take Don Juan for instance. Who isn’t frustrated and does not prove it by his actions—if you want to say so? But through art the psychologically maimed may become the most distinguished man of his age. Take Freud for instance.
The making of poetry is no more an evidence of frustrat...
- GenresPoetry
109 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1944
1 person is currently reading
14 people want to read
About the author
William Carlos Williams
417 books827 followersWilliam Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.
Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.
In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.
Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.
Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.
In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.
Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 16, 2022
Williams reacts to WW2 with poems on pervasive destruction (Perfection, Bare Tree) & fragile love (In Chains, To All Gentleness, Prelude to Winter).
May 26, 2022
Magnífico. Salpicado por todas partes de preciosas perlas.
January 18, 2022
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "The war is the first and only thing in the world today.
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field."
Indeed, the poems in this collection were written and published during WW2. Evidence of the war, Williams's reaction or contribution to the war effort, is present throughout...
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "It is an error attributable to the Freudian concept of the thing, that the arts are a resort from frustration, a misconception still entertained in many minds."
This sentiment is echoed in a poem written by Williams in 1948...
Indeed, Williams addresses the poet, the act of writing poetry, and the function of poetry, its importance, in society or during wartime...
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "Let the metaphysical take care of itself, the arts have nothing to do with it. They will concern themselves with it if they please, among other things. To make two bald statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem I mean that there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant."
Indeed, there is a precision in Williams's writing, there is a frankness unencumbered by repetition or sentimentality. That's not to say there's anything wrong with repetition or sentimentality, only that Williams has identified the excesses that other poets have succumbed to, and that he avoids these excesses where their symptoms are most evident...
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "It isn't what he says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity. Your attention is called now and then to some beautiful line or sonnet-sequence because of what is said there. So be it. To me all sonnets say the same thing of no importance. What does it matter what the line 'says'?"
Despite his indictment of the sonnet, Williams includes three of his own...
Included in this collection are poems from Williams's long poem, Paterson, perhaps earlier drafts of the poems that would eventual become a part of the poet's magnum opus...
I'm irked by Williams's use of racial epithets. Williams may belong to an older generation, but nothing excuses attitudes betrayed by his use of racial epithets. Moreover, there's no justification for them - in the poet or in the poems themselves. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the poems are marred by this, dated by this...
The arts generally are not, nor is this writing a diversion from that relief, a turning away. It is the war or part of it, merely a different sector of the field."
Indeed, the poems in this collection were written and published during WW2. Evidence of the war, Williams's reaction or contribution to the war effort, is present throughout...
The bare cherry tree
higher than the roof
last year produced
abundant fruit. But how
speak of fruit confronted
by that skeleton?
Though live it may be
there is no fruit on it.
Therefore chop it down
and use the wood
against the biting cold.
- The Bare Tree
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "It is an error attributable to the Freudian concept of the thing, that the arts are a resort from frustration, a misconception still entertained in many minds."
This sentiment is echoed in a poem written by Williams in 1948...
Would there be no sculpture, no painting, no Pinturicchio, no
Botticelli - or frescos on the jungle temples of Burma (that the jungles
have reclaimed) or Picasso at Cannes but for war?
- The Birth of Venus (The Collected Poems of WCW, pg. 113)
Indeed, Williams addresses the poet, the act of writing poetry, and the function of poetry, its importance, in society or during wartime...
Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
- A Sort of a Song
We are not here, you understand,
but in the mind, that circumstance
of which the speech is poetry.
- Writer's Prologue to a Play in Verse
Sometimes I envy others, fear them
a little too, if they write well.
For when I cannot write I'm a sick man
and want to die. The cause is plain.
- The Cure
It's all in
the sound. A song.
Seldom a song. It should
be a song - made of
particulars, wasps,
a gentian - something
immediate, open
scissors, a lady's
eyes - waking
centrifugal, centripetal
- The Poem
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "Let the metaphysical take care of itself, the arts have nothing to do with it. They will concern themselves with it if they please, among other things. To make two bald statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem I mean that there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant."
Indeed, there is a precision in Williams's writing, there is a frankness unencumbered by repetition or sentimentality. That's not to say there's anything wrong with repetition or sentimentality, only that Williams has identified the excesses that other poets have succumbed to, and that he avoids these excesses where their symptoms are most evident...
When blackguards and murderers
under cover of their offices
accuse the world of those villainies
which they themselves invent to
torture us - we have no choice
but to bend to their designs,
buck them or be trampled while
our thoughts gnaw, snap and bite
within us helplessly - unless
we learn from that to avoid
being as they are, how love
will rise out of its ashes if
we water it, tie up the slender
stem and keep the image of its
lively flower chiseled upon our minds
- In Chains
In the author's introduction, Williams states... "It isn't what he says that counts as a work of art, it's what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity. Your attention is called now and then to some beautiful line or sonnet-sequence because of what is said there. So be it. To me all sonnets say the same thing of no importance. What does it matter what the line 'says'?"
Despite his indictment of the sonnet, Williams includes three of his own...
As the eye lifts, the field
is moving - the river,
slowly between the stones
steadily under the bare
branches, heavy slabs close
packed with jagged rime-cupped
edges, seaward...
- Three Sonnets, 1
The silent and snowy mountains
do not change their
poise - the broken line,
the mass whose darkness
meets the rising sun, waken
uncompromised above the gull
upon the ice-strewn
river....
- Three Sonnets, 2
My adored wife, this - in spite
of Dr. Kennedy's remark
that the story of the repeated
injury would sound bad in a divorce
court - the bastard...
- Three Sonnets, 3
Included in this collection are poems from Williams's long poem, Paterson, perhaps earlier drafts of the poems that would eventual become a part of the poet's magnum opus...
An eternity of bird and bush,
resolved. An unraveling:
the confused streams aligned, side
by side, speaking!...
- Patterson: The Falls
The sentence undulates
raising no song -
It is too old, the
words of it are falling
apart. Only percussion
strokes continue
with weakening
emphasis what was once
cadence melody
full of sweet breath.
- The End of the Parade
I'm irked by Williams's use of racial epithets. Williams may belong to an older generation, but nothing excuses attitudes betrayed by his use of racial epithets. Moreover, there's no justification for them - in the poet or in the poems themselves. Perhaps I'm missing something, but the poems are marred by this, dated by this...
Shut up! laughs the big she-Wop.
Wait till you have six like a me.
Every year one. Come on! Push! Sure,
you said it! Maybe I have one next year.
Sweating like a volcano. It cleans you up,
makes you feel good inside. Come on! Push!
- Catastrophic Birth
February 25, 2025
Rating may seem harsh, especially given that the book contains many marvelous poems, and Williams continued to innovate the line even before he came up with the variable foot/three-line "stepped" stanza just after the second world war, but to be frank many of the poems also suffer from a distinct feeling of aboutlessness & the book as a whole lacks the conceptual grounding all his masterworks have which makes them such sort of "dear companions," to wax Creeleyan. The whole thing can be found in both the more widely available The Collected Poems: Volume II, 1939-1962 or the older (but very handsomely designed) The Collected Later Poems, so you're bound to read it at some point in your Williams journey, but I think there's a reason why it had never occurred to me until recently to read it as a book unto itself, because it's really just a collection of poems the way some albums feel like collections of songs.
I guess I'm writing this for prospective readers like me who might go into this thinking that Williams rode a perpetual crest from Spring & All through to The Desert Music and beyond, and it simply mistakes the matter. I think Williams let his American lyrics take a backseat in the '30s and '40s (to short story writing, largely) and could only find his way back in once he committed to the Paterson project. Some prototypes for that work appear here, and they're not without his reliable outsider wisdom and syntactical verve (the best poems resemble Zukofsky in their line breaks, which makes sense as Zuk helped edit the book), but despite the moment-by-moment pleasures the poems suffer from the structural deficiency of the entire collection. It just feels unfocused, and I wouldn't get my hopes up for this being some sort of lost classic; instead, it's merely a good book of poems.
I guess I'm writing this for prospective readers like me who might go into this thinking that Williams rode a perpetual crest from Spring & All through to The Desert Music and beyond, and it simply mistakes the matter. I think Williams let his American lyrics take a backseat in the '30s and '40s (to short story writing, largely) and could only find his way back in once he committed to the Paterson project. Some prototypes for that work appear here, and they're not without his reliable outsider wisdom and syntactical verve (the best poems resemble Zukofsky in their line breaks, which makes sense as Zuk helped edit the book), but despite the moment-by-moment pleasures the poems suffer from the structural deficiency of the entire collection. It just feels unfocused, and I wouldn't get my hopes up for this being some sort of lost classic; instead, it's merely a good book of poems.
July 19, 2016
3.5
BookTube-A-Thon 2016
BookTube-A-Thon 2016
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews