The Red Wheelbarrow and Other Poems by William Carlos Williams, Book 33 of 2022

I read this little book on the train traveling back and forth to Philadelphia.  A poem or two or three at time. My favorite poetic forms are the epic and the sonnet and these poems are in many other forms. I liked some more than others. I was glad to share the beauty and craft and creativity of this little volume of 36 poems.  

I bought the book at The Red Wheelbarrow bookstore in Paris, a lovely little store opposite Jardin Luxembourg.

Brevity defines both the volume and its contents.  The first poem:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which 
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

The last poem:

The Locust Tree in Flower

Among

of

green

stiff

old

bright

broken 

branch

come

white 

sweet

May

again

And my favorite:

The Term

A rumpled sheet 

of brown paper

about the length

and apparent bulk

of a man was

rolling with the

wind slowly over

and over in

The street as

a car drove down 

upon it and

crushed it to

the ground. Unlike

a man it rose

agin rolling

with the wind over

and over to be as

it was before. 

------

First 32 books of 2022:

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Cochrane by David Cordingly 

QED by Richard Feynman

Spirits in Bondage by C.S. Lewis

Reflections on the Psalms by  C.S. Lewis

The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler by David I. Kertzer

The Last Interview and Other Conversations by Hannah Arendt

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Echo of Greece by Edith Hamilton

If This Isn't Nice, What Is? by Kurt Vonnegut

The War That Made the Roman Empire: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium by Barry S. Strauss. 

Civil Rights Baby by Nita Wiggins

Lecture's on Kant's Political Philosophy by Hannah Arendt

Le grec ancien facile par Marie-Dominique Poree

The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen