What do you get when you blend the brilliance of a conservative poet with the gritty realism of medieval art? You get 'Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems' by William Carlos Williams. Published posthumously in 1962, this collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1963 and is a staunch reminder of how art should speak to us—unfiltered, and unapologetic. William Carlos Williams was a physician and a poet, a combination that suggests not only diverse expertise but a keen awareness of human conditions. A self-proclaimed modernist, Williams took a clean, observational style to great lengths, echoing the work of Pieter Brueghel the Elder whose paintings depicted life with startling authenticity and raw human experience.
This collection includes 40 poems, the crown jewel being the titular 'Pictures from Brueghel.' Williams draws inspiration from Brueghel's paintings that are vivid tableaus of peasantry and rural life. Think about it, in the art world of flamboyance and supposed sophistication, here's a man returning to the basics. Similarly, Williams brings us back to the reality of the lived experience, away from the ivory towers of academia.
So how does Williams manage to rattle the liberal cages with his conservative approach? By focusing on the core essence of humanity—something worldly, something unrefined. In 'The Dance,' Williams pays homage to Brueghel's 'The Wedding Dance,' a painting which, quite poetically, shows a Flemish peasant dance. Let’s be real; liberals often dissociate from plough-worn images, seeking solace in pretentious abstractions, while Williams makes us face it head-on. The poem barks at us with vigorous enthusiasm, “kicking and rolling about the Fair grounds.” People in the painting are filled with life. Williams captures this vibrant momentum in his own art—there's no masking it with layers of nonsense.
'Pictures from Brueghel' does more than pull from paintings; it dives into unique perspectives. Take 'The State' as an example. Talking about Mina Loy, a freakin’ semi-forgotten yet significant figure in modernist circles. She speaks about a society where one revolves around manipulations, calculative moves, and delusions of grandeur. Williams views the struggle of maintaining authenticity in society. It screams meritocracy, but quietly reflects the mind of an artist who pulled himself up by his bootstraps.
Williams' 'Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,' a long poem tucked away in this collection, shows what a poem can be. It's not just structured rhyme or flimsy attempts at sounding woke. It's about real emotions wrapped in a metaphor—a dying man’s confession and reconciliation with his long-suffering wife. Though 'no honey for tea' sounds whimsical, it shatters the sugar-coated lies, offering sharp reality bites instead. Marital strife is universal, almost too mundane for spicy clickbait, yet remains profoundly unromantic at its core.
This collection was penned at a time when America was on a cusp. The '60s soon became a decade of radical transformations, yet Williams focused on the pristine enjoyment of capturing undistorted being. No wonder 'Pictures from Brueghel' hits so hard even today. It stands against a world that often promotes disguised truths backed by supposed newfound morals. It makes you chew on complexities but without unnecessary garnish.
And there's the beauty. Some dismissive voices say Williams merely culled inspiration from Brueghel and enlarged his aesthetic. Oh, please. He channels energies from the Dutch master’s work knowingly and effectively, deconstructing their raw-existence portrayal into verse. It’s not derivative but complementary. Thus, Williams’ poetry echoes a conservative hard-lining approach to art and to life—not crumbling under societal pressures. His self-described plodding pursuit dismisses all interpretations of easy, flashy, and superficial. These poems push back against the liberal’s love for everything grandiose and buzzword-bloated.
When we look at Williams' body of work, wrapped in his medical background and arching poetic philosophy, we witness a sort of blueprint for hard realism, poetry rooted in the immediate world. The discipline of a doctor channeling into the precision of a poet. Both take life seriously—not frantically chasing liberal whimsy but grounding creativity in what actually exists.
Williams' 'Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems' is not mere indulgent art basking in its own significance. It serves as both a commitment to authenticity and a call for society to appreciate life's unadulterated complexity and simplicity. It's a whirlwind tour through history, captured moments of life serving us doses of unvarnished truth, urging the reader to look away from the loud chaos of radical claims and appreciate what is truly important. Art and poetry, stripped of pretension and brimming with life.