The William Carlos Williams that motivated a young Robert Creeley was The Wedge of 1944. For Ron Silliman and — he suspects — others among those who "became known as Language Poet[s]" — the key Williams was to be found in Spring & All (1923). They found it in the 1970 Frontier Press edition.
Silliman believes that one of the important distinctions between the Language Poets and earlier avant-garde generations was their "different reading" of Williams — their Spring & All-centered reading of him.
The Williams who torques sentences
The William Carlos Williams that motivated a young Robert Creeley was The Wedge of 1944. For Ron Silliman and — he suspects — others among those who "became known as Language Poet[s]" — the key Williams was to be found in Spring & All (1923). They found it in the 1970 Frontier Press edition.
Silliman believes that one of the important distinctions between the Language Poets and earlier avant-garde generations was their "different reading" of Williams — their Spring & All-centered reading of him.