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I am going to show the implications of Williams maxim by demonstrating the effects it has on his poetry, and most notably himself. First of all I would like to divert our attention to duality as a major theme, and affecting factor of such a maxim. For my introductory explanation I would like to consider the criticism of J. Hillis Miller. In his famous essay on William Carlos Williams in Poets of Reality (1966), J. Hillis Miller contends that the world of Williams is beyond dualism.
According to Millers pre-deconstructive argument, "A primordial union of subject and object is the basic presupposition" of Williams poetry (" Introduction " 6). Citing Williams dictum, "No ideas but in things, " and such poems as "The Red Wheelbarrow, " Miller claims that contrast to the duality inherent in the idealism of the classical, romantic, or symbolist traditions, wherein the objects of the world signify transcendent "supernatural realities " the objects of Williams poetry signify themselves and nothing more, existing "within a shallow space, like that created on the canvases of the American abstract expressionists" (" Introduction " 3), exposing the poem not as a representation of an object, but as an object in itself. Miller finds in Williams verse "no symbolism, no depth, no reference to a world beyond the world, no pattern of imagery, no dialectical structure, no interaction of subject and object just description" (" Introduction " 5). For Miller, this triumph over duality represents nothing less than "a revolution in human sensibility" and an "abandonment" of the ego: "There is no description of private inner experience. There is also no description of objects that are external to the poets mind. Nothing is external to his mind.
His mind overlaps with things; things overlap with his mind" (Poets 288 & " Introduction " 7). Accordingly, Miller echoes Williams claim that a good poet "doesnt select his material. What is there to select? It is. (Poets 306) Clearly Williams was no symbolist; his poetry does consistently foreground the surface value of things.
And critics of Williams poetry owe a good deal to Millers essay, which, among other things, considerably solidified Williams position in the canon of twentieth-century American literature. As Paul Mariani notes, "However we view his approach and strategy, J. Hillis Millers is one of the most important and seminal encounters in the sixty-year history of Williams criticism. Miller can be argued with and perhaps substantially qualified; he cannot be dismissed" (Poet & Critics 198). Yet how can even the poet who asserts his identity with his material avoid selecting it?
Is not the poet much more than meets the page? And if material is selected, consciously or unconsciously, can it truly be "just description, " signifying only itself, free of associative values and psychological content for either poet or reader? Of course not. Something in Millers approach cries out to be "substantially qualified. " Millers complete denial of the psychological terrain of Williams poetry leads him to mistake Williams identification with things for non-differentiation. Relying far too heavily on Williams prose criticism at the expense of his poetry, Miller confuses Williams goals with his achievements.
This makes a world of difference, for as a psychoanalytic interpretation of his poetry suggests, Williams consistently identifies with the world around him because he longs to exist in a state of non-differentiation with it. The difference is that between Freud's primary and secondary narcissism's, between the infants primordial failure to differentiate between itself and the universe and its later, even adult, attempt to recapture this primordial state by mis recognising itself in its objects, paradoxically repeating the very process by which it formed its own separate ego. This and Williams avoidance of overt symbolism suggest that his penchant for resolving dualism's is in fact but the flip side of a preoccupation with dualism itself, the logical hallmark of the narcissistic Lacanian Imaginary. Furthermore, as Lacan would suggest, language and the recognition of sexual difference, among other things, forever separate Williams from his promised land; he may struggle against duality and even assert his triumph over it, but he cannot transcend it. Yet it is precisely this tension between his desire and his inability to satisfy it which fuels the fires of his creativity. Perhaps this can best be seen by analysing the image of "woman" in Portrait of a Lady (1920, 1934), and most notably in The Lonely Street (1921).
Again I would like to emphasise the fact that I feel in order to explain the implications of the aforementioned maxim, it would be necessary to examine Williams fascination with duality which after all is an integral part and resulting factor of the explanation of the maxim, no ideas but in things. In "The Lonely Street, Williams betrays a obsession with dualism in his erotically charged, almost leering, portrait of schoolgirls innocently clad "In white from head to foot, " who "walk the streets" with "black... stockings" and suggestive "sidelong, idle look[s]. " As Audrey T. Rodgers has demonstrated, this seemingly oxymoronic image of the virgin / whore is central to Williams poetry metaphor for art, America, love, and what Williams termed the "feminine principle" or life force symbolizing not the distinction between good and evil, but rather the union of identity between the mythical figures of Kore and Demeter, between daughter and mother, between birth and death, between the pure and the defiled, between innocence and experience, between the world of the imagination and the world of the senses. Women in Williams poetry encompass the realisation of the proposed maxim and similarly effect some sort of duality. The insidious gender stereotypes invoked by the virgin / whore might trouble us, but Williams project seems, at least in part, to be to demolish precisely these stereotypes.
Yet while the attempt to establish a unity out of such apparent duality is valiant Williams even identifies himself with the figure of Kore, the daughter who through defilement and descent into Hell is resurrected as her own mother, Demeterit is a monism of desire, not of conviction or fact. The "loneliness" projected onto the street and young girls, belongs to the unseen observer thinly veiled, if at all veiled, Williams. Hence, there can be no "abandonment of ego, ."..
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