'Write Poems Because You Love Language'

 

“When you begin to write poems because you love language, because you love poetry. Something happens that makes you write poems. And the writing of poems is incredibly pleasurable and addictive.” – C. K. Williams

A native of New Jersey, Williams came comparatively late to the writing of poetry, though he was encouraged by his father from an early age to read poems and learn them by heart. It was in penning a love poem at the age of 19 that Williams discovered a sense of vocation and from that moment on "knew that that was what I was going to do.”

His poetic style involved long flexible lines and                      

while he wrote on many topics, children, marriage and the ties of family were often his significant themes.   Among his many awards were the National Book Award for The Singing and a Pulitzer Prize for Repair.   For Saturday’s Poem, here is Williams’, 

 

                         The Singing  

I was walking home down a hill near our house  

 on a balmy afternoon

under the blossoms

Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here  

 every spring

with their burgeoning forth

 

When a young man

 turned in from a corner singing  

no it was more of a cadenced shouting

Most of which I couldn't catch

I thought because  

 the young man was

black speaking black

 

t didn't matter I could tell he was making his  

 song up which pleased me

he was nice-looking

Husky dressed in some style of big pants obviously  

 full of himself

hence his lyrical flowing over

 

We went along in the same direction then he noticed

 me there almost

beside him and "Big"

He shouted-sang "Big" and I thought how droll  

 to have my height

incorporated in his song

 

So I smiled but the face of the young man showed nothing  

 he looked

in fact pointedly away

And his song changed "I'm not a nice person" 

 he chanted "I'm not,

I'm not a nice person"

 

No menace was meant I gathered no particular threat 

 but he did want

to be certain I knew

That if my smile implied I conceived of anything like concord

between us I should forget it

 

That's all nothing else happened his song became  

 indecipherable to me

again he arrived

Where he was going a house where a girl in braids  

 waited for him on

the porch that was all

 

No one saw no one heard all the unasked and  

 unanswered questions

were left where they were

It occurred to me

 to sing back "I'm not a nice  

person either" but I

couldn't come up with a tune

 

Besides I wouldn't have meant it nor he have believed  

 it both of us

knew just where we were

In the duet we composed the equation we made  

 the conventions to

which we were condemned

 

Sometimes it feels even when no one is there that  

 someone something

is watching and listening

Someone to rectify redo remake this time again though  

 no one saw nor

heard no one was there

 

 

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