70. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939
Pound done, I'll put in Williams.
I want to do Spring and All for historical reasons, but some of my favorite poems are elsewhere. And that elsewhere is sometimes not really a book, but the odds & ends he pulled together for the various collecteds over the years. Hence my giving up and taking the collected. (It's less than half though!)
A few years ago, I did read all of volume I of the new final definitive collected, straight through cover-to-cover, and it was really a joyful experience. I remember feeling that at a certain point he just nailed it, and while the work varied from slight to major statement, there was a sureness about everything he did. It's curious, it seems he never really understood what he was doing, thoughtful and observant though he was. (Pound seems always to know exactly what he's doing down to the phoneme.)
There are things I love in the later work, but it's always this first half of Williams that comes back to me.
Pat
|