Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/28

 speaks of so completely in his « Adventures » : it is the common tiling which is annonymously about us.

Composition is in no essential an escape from life. In fact if it is so it is negligeable to the point of insignificance. Whatever « life » the artist may be forced to lead has no relation to the vitality of his compositions. Such names as Homer, the blind ; Scheherazade, who lived under threat — Their compositions have as their excellence an identity with life since they are as actual, as sappy as the leaf of the tree which never moves from one spot.

What I put down of value will have this value : an escape from crude symbolism, the annihilation of strained associations, complicated ritualistic forms designed to separate the work from « reality » — such as rhyme, meter as meter and not as the essential of the work, one of its words.

But this smacks too much of the nature of — This is all negative and appears to be boastful. It is not intended to be so. Rather the opposite. The work will be in the realm of the imagination as plain as the sky is to a fisherman — A very clouded sentence. The word must be put down for itself, not as a symbol of nature but a part, cognisant of the whole — aware — civilized.