Poem -- William Carlos Williams

Guest poem sent in by Aseem Kaul
(Poem #659) Poem
 As the cat
 climbed over
 the top of

 the jamcloset
 first the right
 forefoot

 carefully
 then the hind
 stepped down

 into the pit of
 the empty
 flowerpot.
-- William Carlos Williams
It's so incredibly simple isn't it. There's a cat. It moves from point A to
point B. That's all. But Williams captures the instinctive soft-footedness of
that movement so well. The first time I read this poem, I BRISTLED with
excitement, literally. The words themselves so sleekly feline, and the last
paragraph leaping down on to the page so nimbly that just reading the words,
just hearing the sound of them, you can see the cat moving. One of my
favourite Williams.

Aseem

Links:

poem #83 for a biography of Williams and what is probably his best
known poem.

19 comments:

  1. Greetings. As a cat lover, I thank you.

    Would you like to know, how I first came upon your web site?
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    It never left my mind and I kept searching, until one day, surprise,
    surprise, there it was, on your web site.
    Thanks, your pages are GREAT! Keep up the good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Early in life I was taught that poetry is meant to be read aloud, even if
    one is alone when reading it. This poem, I think, is great evidence of the
    value of that teaching. The nature of its words, themselves, causes them to
    be read haltingly, consistent with the purposeful steps that all cat
    observers watch with great pleasure.

    JT

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,
    I agree with Aseem that this poem is so simple and captures the movement of
    the CAT. Yes, you feel the excitement in the action expressed in the words,
    but you are jetisoned into a void where the spigot is suddenly turned off.
    Your emotions drop, as if you experienced a letdown. The CAT moved but
    gained nothing, achieving nothing because the CAT landed in an empty
    flowerpot. Is that typical of a CAT's behavior, of the psychology of a CAT,
    of the raison d'etre of a CAT. As much as you flow with the music of the
    poem, its power lies in the fact that you, the reader, are jolted!!! That's
    not what a CAT's about. It is the unexpected that jolts the reader at the
    end.
    Thank you for bringing this poem to our attention.
    Yvette R. Sangiorgio

    ReplyDelete
  4. i too adore this poem - particularly for its wonderful use of metre &
    the way that just as the syllables start tumbling together at the end,
    the cat puts a foot into an empty flowerpot (and presumably topples over
    just after the poem ends. but debatable) - this is not my own insight,
    btw, but my partner's, who spent an entire essay eulogising this one
    poem.

    anyway - there is a canadian poet called f r scott who has written a
    cute response to this poem, in what i think is an homage rather than a
    parody. you be the judge.

    anouk
    ------------------
    CARLOS CAT
    (After a poem by William Carlos Williams)

    As the cat
    stepped into the
    flowerpot
    first the right forefoot
    then the hind
    the poem was
    over

    so CARLOS
    wrote it down and
    hearing the Brahms
    variations on a
    theme by Handel

    I suddenly saw the cat
    watching CARLOS
    writing the poem at a
    little desk so

    I had to write this
    poem about me
    watching the cat
    watching CARLOS and

    that is already a
    bigger poem and
    possibly nothing more
    should be written
    on this
    cat

    (p261 of *The Collected Poems of F R Scott*)

    ReplyDelete
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