I Miss the Days of a Life Still Permanent

     It has always been interesting to me that God choose to write out His law to us. It is worth thinking about the title of Jesus as the Word that became flesh. God formed this world using His voice and the world exists in and through the Word, Jesus Christ. These facts assign power and importance to words, written or spoken, and as beings created in the image of God our words share in this significance. This is also ample proof, at least to me, that in order to understand a written work you must understand the writer and part of understanding the writer comes from their work. In 1951 William Carlos Williams was forced to retire from medicine after 40 years of service due to his first seizure. He was dedicated to his profession and it inspired many of the subjects in his poems. To lose this and then loose the use of his dominant, writing hand not even a year later, I can't imagine the pain and confusion and loss he felt; especially in light of his heart attack in 1948 and the death of his mother in 1949. Dr. Richard Carter says that "for the last 11 years of his life, Williams was forced to write and use his electric typewriter with only his non-dominant left hand." [1, pg 1516] (As a side note I strongly encourage you to read the article in full, it is beyond interesting.) It is a testament to the man's will that he managed to produce an impressive number of works in the years following these debilitating strokes, most notably the poem "The Descent" which I have provided in a picture below due to the unique form which Williams used.

    "No defeat is made up entirely of defeat-- since//the world it opens is always a place// formerly// unsuspected." (ln 14-17). It takes a strong will to see the positive in defeat and while these lines give the appearance of hope the last lines of the poem counteract it: "what we have lost in the anticipation--// a decent follows,// endless and indestructible    ." (ln 41-43). The disjointed lines which seem to wander away, fragmented and seemingly concentric develop the feeling of an emotional descent. But given Williams' recent paralysis and inability to function physically as well as he used to I believe this descent is more physical. This is further reinforced by the way the lines are laid out on the page. The body of both the writer and the poem are broken, fragmented, and dissimilar to their earlier counterparts. The Williams before this poem was one who could read and write and practice medicine with ease, the poems before "The Descent" appeared normally on the page; aligning with the left margin and flowing forward. None of Williams' earlier poems given in this anthology have lines that start in the middle of the page or long spaces between a word and it's period. The rambling feel of the words within the poem along with the retreat into memory and thought display the lost and searching feelings displayed in the poem. It is almost like a stream of consciousness journey as a man tries to rationalize what his purpose in life will be after an important moment in his life. There is no going back but there is no clear way to move forwards.

(Title from this song.)