Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/49

 So most of my life has been lived in hell — a hell -of repression lit by flashes of inspiration, when a poem such as this or that would appear

What would have happened in a world similarly lit by the imagination

Oh yes, you are a writter ! a phrase that has often damned me, to myself. I rejected it with heat but the stigma remained. Not a man, not an under- standing but a WRITER. I was unable to recognize. I do not forget with what heat too I condemned some poems of some contemporary praised because of their loveliness —

I find that I was somewhat mistaken — ungenerous

Life's processes are very simple. One or two moves are made and that is the end. The rest is repetitious.

The Improvisations — coming at a time when I was trying to remain firm at great cost — I had recourse to the expedient of letting life go completely in order to live in the world of my choice.

I let the imagination have its own way to see if it could save itself. Something very definite came of it. I found myself alleviated but