Richie's Picks: A RIVER OF WORDS: THE STORY OF WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS by
Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet, Eerdmans Books for Young Readers,
July 2008, 32p. ISBN: 978-0-8028-5302-8
Dawn
Ecstatic bird songs pound
the hollow vastness of the sky
with metallic clinkings--
beating color up into it
at a far edge,--beating, beating it
with rising, triumphant ardor,--
stirring it into warmth,
quickening in it a spreading change,--
bursting wildly against it as
dividing the horizon, a heavy sun
lifts himself--is lifted--
bit by bit above the edge
of things,--runs free at last
out into the open--lumbering
glorified in full release upward--
songs cease
--a William Carlos Williams poem I found online this morning as the dawn
broke
William Carlos Williams is one of those dead American poets about whom I
have always had vague-yet-positive sentiments. I believe that some short-time
high school girlfriend admired him a lot. I think that I've also seen him
listed as an influence on the back of some musician's record sleeve, or perhaps
he is mentioned in a young adult novel. And I am confident that I have
briefly encountered his work both in a class (undoubtedly, amidst some anthology
of poems) and amongst the reading comprehension questions on some
long-forgotten standardized test.
And so, as the result of some influence or other stored in the recesses of
my brain, I react positively to the name William Carlos Williams and was thus
pleased to discover last night that the UPS guy had delivered a copy of A
RIVER OF WORDS, a picturebook biography of the poet.
I was even more pleased by the true story I found within the book.
"But when the other boys went inside,
Willie stayed outside..."
William Carlos Williams was not one to text message, play video games, or
hang out in the mall. (Not that those diversions existed during his lifetime,
but you know what I mean.) Instead, he was one of those kids who wandered in
the woods, using his senses to absorb details of the world, and then pouring
out his visions into poems.
Of course, writing poetry is oftentimes just slightly more lucrative than is
writing Richie's Picks, so Williams's mom persuaded him to become a family
doctor. And the wonderful thing is that he became friends with some brilliant
and artsy students at the university, which helped him to not lose sight of
his first love -- poetry -- when he grew up and subsequently went around
doctoring:
"On his prescription pads, he scribbled a few lines
whenever and wherever he could.
In those precious times,
the rhythm of the river he had rested beside
as a child seemed to guide him. Like the water
that sometimes ran slow, smooth, and steady,
and other times came rushing in a hurried flood,
Willie's lines flowed across the page."
I love how the book's illustrations are filled with words, as if Willie
could see lines of poetry splashing in the river or scrolling down the side of a
patient's house. Written in verse, the text throughout is brief in word
count yet full of the essence of the poet's life. A two-page timeline follows
the story, while bits and pieces of his poems decorate the endpages
In the same way that I was influenced as a child by THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF
THOMAS JEFFERSON -- the book that taught me how one can seem to always be doing
ten different things at the same time -- A RIVER OF WORDS will be an
empowering revelation to creative young adolescents who are beginning to toy with
ideas of what they might do in their lives when they grow up.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks _http://richiespicks.com_ (http://richiespicks.com/)
Moderator, _http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/)
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
_http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks_ (http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks)
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