8:2 Spring-Summer 1954

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

View by Color-Photography on a Commercial Calendar

By the time William Carlos Williams published the following poem in the Spring-Summer 1954 issue of Chicago Review, he was receiving belated acclaim for the achievements of his forty-year career as a writer. Indeed, the 1950s saw a surge of interest in Williams as he released at least ten books during the decade. In “View by Color-Photography on a Commercial Calendar,” Williams employs the triadic, stepped line, which he developed during the early drafts of Paterson; this innovation was meant to create a cadence attuned to the rhythms of American life and speech. His presence in this volume, along with fellow-modernist Marianne Moore, helped Chicago Review establish its reputation as a national journal in the tradition of the modernist little magazine.

[DN, 1996]

Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. Copyright © 1996 by Paul H. Williams and the Estate of William C. Williams.

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