William Carlos Williams The Wedge

This essay for first year writing students shows how a simple man made huge waves in the world of the arts with his beliefs of poetry. This simple man was William Carlos Williams. He was born in America as a Puerto Rican-American who then with hard work and determination became a well-practiced doctor. He however is better known for his works of poetry that challenged the traditional way of writing poetry. In Williams’s book of poetry, The Wedge, is prefaced by an introduction that introduces his readers to his controversial ideas concerning poetry and what it should represent in today’s modern times. He wants his readers to break free from the conventional views of poetry and see poetry as what. His writing is trying to persuade the readers …show more content…
The poetry that Williams is trying to break away from contests of very redundant and useless wording. He compares poetry to a machine in that like a machine a poem cannot have no part that is redundant. With this view Williams claims that the context of a poem does not matter; it is the form and structure of a poem that matters. Much like the machine simile it matters not one part of the machine does so much as the overall function of how those parts work together to make the machine work. The same idea applies to Williams views of poetry. It matters not what a single line of the poem is saying, but how each of the lines work together in order to make a good poem. Williams also argues that because so many poets put so much emphasis on the message of the poem the poem itself becomes confusing and the message is lost. Being from the middle working class Williams is a perfect spokesperson for the general population. He represents the general population who may not be as sophisticated and well learned as the upper class who both used to both read and write poetry exclusively. He even states that poetry is nothing more than a past time for him because he still has to work for a living. Williams entire purpose for writing The Wedge is to show people that poetry is meant to be used and enjoyed by everyone, not just those who have never seen a day of work in their life. Williams idea of poetry is that anyone can both write and enjoy it and that when they do they focus more on how a poem is laid out rather than what the poem is trying to