Avoiding the urge to romanticize William Carlos Williams

On this date 124 years ago, writer William Carlos Williams was born. I'm fond of Williams for a few different reasons. His political and philosophical leanings are akin to my own. He managed to practice pediatric medicine and maintain a prolific career as a poet and essayist. And, most shallowly, I really like the alliterative quality of his name.

Williams embraced a theory of poetry that exalted the commonplace, gave voice to natural cadences and uneven meters, and rejected the flowery romanticism of the 19th Century upon whose heels he followed. He was part of the Imagist movement that included close friend Ezra Pound.

The background information in the Answers.com article on William Carlos Williams is quite interesting, and touches on an idea that's been rattling around in my head recently. The biographical article on Williams discusses the conflicting influences of Pound and Williams' mother. The former demanded a strict theoretical approach to his art, while the latter inspired more freedom and emotion.

We humans are nothing if not contradictory, and it's important to recognize and embrace that. To believe in one approach to art, politics or life to the exclusion of all others is naive, and the purity of our ideals can sometimes prove self-defeating. As one example, Williams is said to have rejected any comparisons to Walt Whitman who he viewed as overly sentimental, but the two had much in common in their love of the diversity of American experience.

Filled with a sense of playfulness and emotion, Williams' art often transcends his own theory, and that's a beautiful thing. Here is one of my favorite pieces by him:

Pastoral
by William Carlos Williams

THE little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.
But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.

Meanwhile,
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread
is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.

These things
astonish me beyond words.

Mother's Day: Boost peace not greeting card sales

On the advice of my brother-in-law Chris Jungheim, I looked up the origins of Mother's Day. Abolitionist, social activist and poet Julia Ward Howe was among the first in the United States to promote the creation of the holiday. Rather than using it as a time to sell flowers, candy, and greeting cards, she envisioned it as a day for mothers to stand up to war and violence, and instill the values of international unity and peace.

Ms. Howe, also well-known as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870 on the heels of the carnage of the American Civil War. The holiday didn't become recognized nationally until 1914, and even then it was used to celebrate individual motherhood rather than bring together mothers politically to work for common ideals.

Below is the full text of the Proclamation, which still has resonance today.

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
"Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Today in History: Coxey's Army, the first march on DC

There have been a few marches on DC over the years, but I saw on Answers.com that today is the anniversary of the "first significant popular protest march on Washington" (Wikipedia's words) -- a group of unemployed men led by Jacob Coxey back in 1894.

That website includes the following passage attributed to the Encyclopedia of American History:

During the depression following the panic of 1893, businessman and reformer Jacob Coxey of Massillon, Ohio, and his California associate Carl Browne designed a publicity march on Washington to support bills that would create new jobs. Coxey led a march of the unemployed, followed by reporters, from Ohio to the capitol, demanding large issues of legal-tender currency and money for roads and public improvements. Coxey left Massillon on Easter Sunday, 1894, with about five hundred men and arrived in Washington in time for a great demonstration on MAY DAY. His parade was cheered by an enormous crowd, but when he tried to speak from the Capitol steps he was arrested, fined, and sent to jail for carrying banners and walking on the grass on the Capitol grounds.

The Wikipedia article on the same subject includes a cultural tidbit that Frank Baum, author of the Wizard of Oz, witnessed the march, and there's some critical thought that the story is a Populist allegory.

To me, the interesting (and currently relevant) point of discussion is what makes for a successful protest march (or vote, or movement). It's easy to mobilize masses of people against a war or other negative situation. The more difficult political tactic is to organize people to achieve something new. People who are angry can be easily mislead, but people who are informed by a vision of something better are empowered to make real change.