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  1. Home
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  3. William Carlos Williams and Alterity
  • Cited by 12
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
January 2012
Print publication year:
1994
Online ISBN:
9780511895340
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511895340
Series:
Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture (75)
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory
Information

Book description

Many critics have noticed the paradoxes and contradictions in the work of William Carlos Williams, but few have analysed them in detail. Professor Ahearn argues that Williams criticism has not gone far enough in recognizing the uses Williams saw for contradiction. He contends that Williams began to acquire his own voice as a poet when he recognized that he could be a vehicle for contending voices. His reading departs from previous examinations of the early poetry in the emphasis it places on the poems as expressions of Williams's personal struggles with himself, his parents, his domestic role and his social position. We find a Williams whose contribution to modernism came not through a radical break with tradition or a rejection of inherited poetic norms alone, but rather in a cultivation of tension, conflict, and a kind of poetic 'crisis' that could be held forth as the metier of the modernist writer. The reconciliation of things as old as civilization itself with the newest form of poetry, Ahearn argues is the principal theme of Williams early poetic practice.

Reviews

"Ahearn is very good at reading Williams's individual poems to demonstrate his thesis. He studies not only their imagery, but their syntax and prosody as well, and the results are both pleasurable and enlightening. Highly recommended." Choice

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