Someone tell us why he uses we, the pronoun we.
Who's he referring to as we?
Max, who's he referring to?
Himself and his nose.
Is he talking to his nose?
He's talking - yes,
he's talking to his nose about the two of them. They're related.
He's talking to his nose. It's kind like an ode to his nose.
Yeah.
Molly, can you characterize this nose?
Is it just any old nose?
No. It's a very strong-willed nose,
it's a very curious nose.
Well, it's a strong ridged nose;
it's a physical description.
And William Carlos Williams had a nice schnozzola,
kind of. You know.
Yeah.
A distinct nose, so it's partly a kind of self mock.
But you were going to say strong-willed, which is not wrong.
Go with that a little more, please.
Yeah it seems to be seeking out pleasure and seeking out discoveries.
Do people - human beings,
homo sapiens, lead with their noses? Sometimes, I suppose.
Sometimes.
But typically what kind of person doesn't lead with his or her nose?
How would you characterize, Anna, the character,
quality or personality of a person that does not lead with her or his nose?
Well, a nose, to me, seems like it's looking for anything, you know?
The nose is looking things that are nice and things that are not so nice.
I don't know about nice. What animals lead with their noses?
Dogs.
Dogs are famously nose-led. And what do they look for that kind of makes
us civilized people a little annoyed or disgusted?
Disgusting, smelly things.
Usually low to the ground too, right?
Yep.
Although, if you will - I don't want to get too - this a family program here.
But I'm the right height for big dogs.
They go right at a certain part of your body.
It's just, you know,
not a good thing.
I've already given too much information. But I think that's
relevant to what Williams is saying.
The term that Ginsberg will later use is,
operating in the Whitman-Ginsberg-Williams or Whitman-Williams tradition, is frank.
Williams is being frank.
And frank about what, would you say, Emily,
in the most general way?
Frank about?
His sort of hunger,
a kind of, like, sensory hedonism.
His hunger. His sensory hedonism,
his willingness to go low.
What does he like?
What are some of the things that he likes that are particularly described,
Amaris, in this poem?
Well, here he particularly
has his nose in the flowers - the souring flowers of the bedraggled poplars.
The souring flowers. So again, this - you
want - this is not the rose of the traditional love poem;
you know, the beauty rose.
And Williams is - in another poem,
he talks about how the rose is obsolete and in the next chapter,
Chapter 2 of the course,
we're going to be talking about imagism,
which is an attempt to clear away traditional,
dead metaphors of love and life.
And the rose is out.
The rose is out.
Instead of the rose we have a souring flower.
Why souring?
I was thinking because the nose could have various connotations.
People have their noses up in the air if they're high class,
noses in the dirt if they're low class.
Is he saying he's low class?
Or noses in the flowers.
Is he saying of himself that he identifies with low class?
I wouldn't say quite identify,
but he is appreciating enough to include it in his poem.
He's getting down on the wet,
pulpy, early springtime ground.
And since Dave Poplar is here,
why don't we ask about the bedraggled poplars.
Are you bedraggled today?
Sometimes. I'd call, but I'm okay. I'd seize more on wet earth than anything else.
Right, just wet earth.
Yeah, it could be a lot of things. But he chose to use wet earth and it seems...
Now we're going to cheat a little bit, Dave.
You know a little bit about William Carlos Williams and he has a real fascination
for the stuff he finds in the early spring. Why early spring?
Why does William Carlos Williams always - always,
from his poem "Spring and All" - his book-like poem "Spring and All"
beyond - why does he love early spring as opposed to the late-flowering spring?
I think it's a period of newness,
of generation and also, the typical mating season.
Mating. Newness. Birth. Right? Earliness. A new world naked is a phrase that he uses.
He is obsessed with newness.
And so getting your nose in it.
Okay. So that there's more going on than just putting your nose in the pulp.
What else? Max, let's be really frank.
He's looking for a mate himself.
He's kind of horny.
Yeah. Well, that's the frankness, I guess.
But the frankness is somewhat compromised by
his either rhetorical or unironic questioning about addressing his own nose.
"Can you not be decent?" This is hilarious.
He's saying to his nose, stop leading me,
as if the mind and the nose are separated.
Well, I suppose we've all been there and I don't want to exact
any confessions from any of you, not even you,
Max; but the fact is that
the nose does - we are led by the nose sometimes, let's admit it.
So he's being very frank.
But what is this rhetorical device,
"Can you not be decent?"
Stop it, nose. Stop it. Stop it.
"Can you not reserve your ardors for something less unlovely?"
What do you make of that strategy?
Why doesn't he just say,
I'm feeling, like, led by my nose today and I affirm it?
Well, he's trying to maintain some sort of
propriety and he's scolding his nose for leading him,
even though he kind of likes it, too.
Ally, what do you think of this?
If he were a character in a novel,
you would put down the book and say oh,
that Williams, he's - what?
Build a character study for us of the speaker. What's he like?
Well, I don't know.
He's very playful, in that it kind of seems like he's treating his nose as
some type of kind of misbehaving dog that - yet he loves the misbehavior.
What do you think of - not to put too strong a point on it - guys like this?
That is to say "What girl will care for us,
do you think, if we continue in these ways?"
Is it true that girls will not care for him?
You don't have to answer that question,
but speak generally about the character of this guy.
What kind of persona is being built forth?
Kind of a bit of a player, I would.
Bill Williams, a player.
This is absolutely - okay.
What - "Must you taste everything?
Must you know everything?
Must you have a part in everything?
Let's bring the Whitmanian back into it now, okay?
What is Whitmanian about that?
I think it's so Whitmanian because it's everything back to "Song of Myself."
"Song of Myself" is really about everything.
And it tries to encompass everything and run it up,
you know? It's a paradox, it's a city, it's a country.
It's indiscriminate. Whitman wants to include everything in the poem.
The low, the middle,
the high, everything. Right?
So this is almost a little bit of - I mean,
I think because he's talking about his nose,
it's a little bit of a critique, I guess,
because of the tone, you know?
"Must you taste everything?
Must you know everything?" But at the same time...
Well, it's either a...
He does taste everything.
It's either a non-ironic critique - no,
no you shouldn't do this - or it's one of those tongue-in-cheek,
ironic critiques - don't do this, but do it.
"Must you taste everything?"
Of course, the answer is yes.
"Must you know everything?"
Yes. The answer is yes.
Right? "Must you have a part in everything?"
Walt was obsessively experiential, right?
Caressing us as readers, guiding us,
putting his arm around our waist and guiding us across the terrain,
assuming what we assume.
So "Must you have a part in everything?"
Can someone maybe translate that?
Ally, just translate that into plain English.
"Must you have a part in everything?" What does part mean?
A place, a kind of claim to.
Good, good. Dave, what does part mean there?
I think just generally,
the nose analogies are good relating to this because...
Nose analogy?
Well, yeah. Because he's...
Tells us more about the analogy.
Because you can't tell your nose to smell certain things.
You can't really have self-control over what you...
So when you say an analogy,
you mean the displacement of the self. It's a metonymy.
The self - the generalized soul,
or self, or brain,
gets blamed on a part.
Yeah, that's a synecdoche, actually.
Oh, well, we'll get that right.
But is that what you mean by analogy?
In a sense, but I also think that he's trying to say that he is less
responsible for the urges that he's referring to.
Is the nose the part of the body that is typically identified with urges?
Not in my opinion.
In this poem I think he's referring to - he's using a nose to refer to something else.
Emily?
Well, what struck me about a nose is much like,
unlike other sort of organs of perception,
it is naturally indiscriminate.
You can't choose to not smell something the way you can
choose to not see something or not touch something.
And what would Emily say about can you choose
not to think about something? Ah, that's the trouble.
Well, yeah.
We know that more or less,
as soon as you tell someone not to think about something, they will think about it.
They will think about that,
but smell doesn't quite work that way.
Smell is really in touch with the world. Yeah?
Yeah.
So getting back to the player.
Yeah. So there's a rhetoric of players;
heterosexual, male, aggressive,
players of which you're accusing Williams of being one and I think that's probably right.
And he would probably admit it too - and did,
by the end of his life to his wonderful and maybe long-suffering wife,
Flossie - Florence.
Finally admitted it to her in a poem called "Asphodel,
That Greeny Flower," admitted all of his indiscretions.
But here, this is early and he's not quite admitting it,
but - so what do players - in the rhetoric of players,
what do they say is leading them? Not the nose.
No, not the nose.
That other thing, the P-word.
The little head.
The little head. Thank you Molly. So, this poem is that frank.
Right?
It's about the poet.
The poet with his aesthetic sense of the importance of the pulpy,
wet earth of birth and generation and life.
Not the ugly life,
the ugly birth, not the beautiful flower.
Associating that with being led by,
what we used to say maybe in the early 20th Century,
one's gonads - one's sexual urges.
And Williams is all about sexual urges as Whitman is.
But there's a difference between Whiman and Williams here.
Can we see it in the poem? Anybody?
Well, I mean, this is ironic. It's kind of...
This is ironic - beautiful. Whitman is not going to be ironic about his indiscriminate.
Williams is a little abashed.
When we get to Danse Russe,
we're going to see him being a little bit abashed about his situation.
So he's Whitmanian stuck in a house in the suburbs,
in a sense, which is a tough place to be.
But is there another sign, Ally,
that we're talking about his heterosexual desire?
Which also could be something that puts people off.
Well, explicitly, "What girl will care for us..."
"What girl will care for us..." Whitman is less discriminate than that,
is one way to put it, but more positively,
he's open to all experience.
And Williams' flaw, I think - eventually one would see - certainly Ginsberg
would see that - is the focus on a certain kind of object of desire.
Yeah. So one more thing about this poem; it's 14 lines.
I would have to say the irony of it.
Well, say why.
What what does 14 lines mean to you?
Fourteen lines means to me, it points, sort of, towards a sonnet.
Why do you say points "sort of" towards a sonnet, 14 lines?
Because a sonnet traditionally has 14 lines, but also follows a specific type of meter.
Does this follow a specific type of meter?
It does not.
It has a meter, but typically,
when you get a sonnet, you look at lines that are roughly the same length. These are not.
Iambic pentameter.
And that - or
really traditionally iambic pentameter and that are rhymed in a certain way.
Do we see any rhymes here?
There's some, but you have to work very, very hard.
Some - hollowed and nose; or hollowed and boney nose sort of. Not really.
So not really. So 14 lines,
either you're an over-reader and you see
any poem with 14 lines and you say it's a sonnet,
or with someone as self-conscious and metapoetic as Williams,
you know you've got to account for the 14 lines.
So how are you going to do that? Anna, you started us.
I think he's making a gesture towards the sonnet and sort of implicating it a little bit,
but the fact that he has 14 lines but then doesn't follow any of
the traditional schemes means that he's kind of messing with the form a little bit.
Williams is on record - maybe not as early as 1917,
but soon after that,
on record hating sonnets. Hates, hates sonnets.
He hates what sonnets represent in the literary tradition.
He wants to make it new.
So when he's using sonnet, judging from that,
which we know we're not submitting quite as evidence here,
you would say it's got to be a take down of the sonnet.
It's got to be. But do we have any evidence?
What are sonnets usually about?
I mean, it's a reverse sonnet because sonnets would usually be oh,
girl who I want to impress,
but I can't because of my nose.
And here saying oh,
nose, you know, so...
So love and desire are
typical topics for traditional sonnets
and this is turning that around and making it much too frank.
It's using low material in what is potentially a high form.
Yeah. Max, a final thought on this,
on "Smell." Just a final thought.
Also with all the images of souring and festering and this sort of
subversion of the idea of spring that we might find in a sonnet or in
a love poem, I think, goes with what Ally was saying.
Terrific. It's a great introduction to Williams and also to
the way that the Whitmanian ethos follows into the early 20th Century.
Al FilreisKelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House
