Product Description
Considered by many to be the most characteristically American of our twentieth-century poets, William Carlos Williams "wanted to write a poem / that you would understand / ,,,But you got to try hard—."So that readers could more fully understand the extent of Williams' radical simplicity, all of his published poetry, excluding Paterson, was reissued in two definite volumes, of which this is the first. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

All together-- the poems are even better
I'm not going to attempt to talk about WCW's poetry or I could be writing for hours... rather this review is about the volume of "collected" poems as a book to read. Yes it includes some dubious items and some debris we would expect from any serious and innovative writer... but there are mostly successes here and well worth reading. Especially informative is observing WCW's development as a writer and thinker and his daring as a poet and his striving for new ways to express the response of an artist to the swelling tide of modernity and cultural failures of the 20th century.

Intense Words and Feelings
How can one describe William Carlos Williams, a great brilliant writer. His words are so in depth and so meaning and can relate to any particular situation one might be in. His use of language is superior above others. Not until recently did I read something of his in a collection of poems that I had borrowed, and I saw one poem that stuck out to me. This poem is called Romance Moderne. This is a truly excellent poem and led me to be such a great admirer of William Carlos Williams. I've borrowed his collection of poems almost a thousand times from the library, and I still haven't finished reading all of his poems. It takes a necessary amount of time to soak in his words, and with such a great number of poems, I'd like to soak them all in, thus I will be buying the book for myself to have.

The foundation ofWCW'sart
Whew, check out that list. This is the foundation of Williams' art, for fans of his selected & Pictures from Brughel.

This is the development of Williams' daily art, fine poems punctuated by an occasional masterpiece or near-surrealistic gemstone. Someone once asked John Cage, "With your methods, couldn't anyone compose music?" Cage replied, "Yes, but they don't." Many of Williams' poems make that impression. Where I live, in New Jersey, Williams is so ingrained in the literary landscape that no poet is more imitated, even if the imitator is unaware of the influence.Williams was better at setting examples than at explaining methods. He learned & invented as he wrote, & I suspect his talk & his letters had a great deal more influence than his occasional stabs at poetics.

Williams stripped down American poesy & reconstructed it as a form of talk, which it had been all along beneath Whitman's yawping & Dickinson's obsessive editing & Frost hiking though New England snow five steps at a time.Like all great American originals, he didn't know he was supposed to be a somebody-else; maybe a Stephen Benet, a William Vaughn Moody, an Edwin Arlington Robinson, all big literary stars in their time but not now counted in the first ranks of our poets.

This is roughly the first half of The Doc's amazin' journey. You'll know if you need it. Any intelligent poet friend will love it as a gift.

Intense
The overall strength of Williams' work lies in his power to summon image from where there was previously nothing.

Forget about the conventional tactics of poetry (meter, rhyme, etc.).Williams effectively occupies theouter regions of the land which is not prose.His power always properlylay in the simple yet vivid images (visual, aural, tactile, etc.) behindthe words.

I've a grudging respect for the man as a poet.
I don't know what it is about WCW that just makes me want to puke. Perhaps it's his nice-guy, nice "poet" pretensions.I do see thesense in those aphorisms about which he was constantly pontificating: "No ideas but in things", "For there to be a new mind, theremust be a new line" (sic).I do see the technical innovations in suchpoems as "Iris" or "The Red Wheelbarrow", how theenjambment for which he's famous serves to direct the eye and the mind tothings which you would not have noticed had these prose poems beenunchopped:"So much depends

Upon

A red wheel

Barrow,

Glazed with rain

Water

Beside the white

Chickens."

Very nice.The vivid white of the chickens and theshining-glass image of the water that "glazes" (one of WCW'sfavorite words) the wheelbarrow is imbued with immediacy and novelty: fresh experiences with commonplace things.That's great.

However, Ihave trouble with his "variable foot".(Employed, for example,in a poem called, I believe, "Mr. T" though not of A-Team fame.) The whole point of meter is to emulate the measure-bars in music:aconstant beat to which the tune may be set.However, the triadic linesporting his variable feet, ostensibly to account for the "rapidity ofAmerican speech", just doesn't work.The only way for it to work isif you were reading Mr. T, or if the speaker gave infinitesimally shorterpauses between the triad-fragments so that the listener can detect thedifference between a line-break and a pause separating the feet.WCWfocused so much on the visual aspect of his poems that it makes you wonder,as a formalist friend of mine once put it, why he bothered to read hispoems at all:why didn't WCW just give slideshows? On top of that, WCW hadthe gall to assault formalist poetry:I quote to the best of myrecollection:"The sonnet is the form of the tyrant" and"You cannot write a sonnet without making gestures of loyalty to thecourt of Elizabeth I." In response to some of the garbage beingspouted by WCW, both on the page and otherwise, Dylan Thomas once referredto WCW as one of the modern poets who was responsible for the Death of theEar.And, hearing about all his arty posturings, I imagine how WCW wouldstand up to the likes of Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Robert Conquest,Elizabeth Jennings, and the other Movement poets, who would have lit intohim like Alex's droogs in Burgess' _A Clockwork Orange_. Too bad they nevermet. ... Read more

Product Description
In this biography by one of England's foremost writers on music, William Walton's personality emerges in all its complexity and self-contradiction. Michael Kennedy portrays a creative artist completely committed to his art yet plagued by misgiving and doubts, prey to insecurity and frustration, vulnerable to criticism, and jealous of the achievement of others. At the same time he was witty and generous, bore no grudges, and enjoyed the loyalty of a host of friends. Appointed his biographer by the composer himself, Kennedy has had access to correspondence with many of the friends and colleagues who were important in Walton's life, among them Siegfried Sassoon, Benjamin Britten, Malcolm Arnold, and Andre Previn. ... Read more

Product Description
Susana Walton tells the story of her 35 years of marriage with William Walton to the time of his death in Ischia, Bay of Naples. She includes anecdotes and reminiscences, many in Walton's own words and previously unpublished, of the composer's early life from his childhood in Oldham, Lancashire to his musical education at Oxford, his discovery by the Sitwells, his personal relationships and his sudden emergence in the 1920s as a leading musician of his generation. The book includes intimate glimpses of many celebrated friends such as Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Hans Werner Henze, Malcolm Sargent, W.H.Auden, Benjamin Britten and Yehudi Menuhin. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Helpless intellectually and frequently not on topic
There's WAY too much about Lady Walton and not enough about the man himself. The title should have been _The Waltons As Remembered by Lady Susan_. The book is fairly helpless: coherency is often lacking (many excursuses into the areas of no interest whatsoever and w/o observable relation to the declared topic); there are some proofreading errors (principle/principal sort of thing; one doesn't expect this sort of thing in a commercially published book); the author doesn't come across as very intellectual becaue of some annoying (and strong) opinions, and also because of apparently being overawed by the English aristocratic principle: every inconsequential JimBob is immediately footnoted as "fifth baronet of Oombagoombashire, first earl of" this and that, etc.... I don't even know (nor care to know) what that means! Fifth baronet where? In the line to the bathroom? Who cares what baronet who is. It didn't look to me that Sir William married his intellectual equal. Of course there's still a lot about Walton, so I'm not saying the book is useless: it is marginally curious, although your patience will be tried at times by all these lengthy deviations into the Gils family history no one cares about. Not enough about pre-marriage Walton (unsurprisingly). All very "proper". Some nice pictures though.

The bottomline: worth a quick read (it's easy to read, can be done in one sitting), but ultimately unsatisfying. An objective study by a musically and literarily competent (and unrelated to Walton) person would be better. Three stars. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of essays seeks to reflect the many aspects of the life and work of William Walton. The book covers the literary influences in his music, as well as his well-known compositions such as "Belshazzar's Feast", "Troilus and Cressida", and "Facade." ... Read more

Product Description
This volume prints both of Walton's orchestrations: his initial scoring (1929) and his reduced orchestrations of 1962. It also for the first time restores the solo part as edited by Frederick Riddle, an early soloist and champion of the work, who devised numerous idiomatic phrasings and bowings with the approval of the composer. The volume is completed by critical notes, facsimiles, and an introduction.
Full performing material for both orchestrations is available from the Hire Library. ... Read more

Product Description
A newly-edited, completely re-engraved and definitive text for one of the greatest British works of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Product Description
When in June 1923 a bewildered audience in London's Aeolian Hall heard Edith Sitwell declaim her Façade poems through a megaphone, the 21-year-old William Walton - conducting behind a painted backcloth - stood on the threshold of fame. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he was regarded as the white hope of British music, and a succession of works including the Viola Concerto, Belshazzar's Feast and the First Symphony more than fulfilled that early promise; he was also one of the first serious composers to be involved in films. Using first-hand accounts, this book explodes the myth of Façade's riotous reception, examines Walton's work in both films and radio and, through contemporary correspondence, articles and interviews - wherever possible in his own words - explores Walton's life and troubled times. It brings to the fore his complex personality - 'remote, removed, distant' in Laurence Olivier's words, in dynamic contrast with music of such vitality and drama. Composition for him was an arduous, often painful, process riddled with difficulties, uncertainties and self-doubts, and further complicated by several love affairs (one being with Italy) that inspired his finest works.STEPHEN LLOYD's previous books include a biography of H. Balfour Gardiner and a collection of Eric Fenby's writings on Delius, which he edited. In addition to record sleeve notes, programme notes, reviews and articles, he has contributed to the Percy Grainger Companion/I>, the Studies in Music Grainger Centennial Volume, An Elgar Companion, and volumes on Delius, Walton and Bliss. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first publication of the definitive score of Troilus and Cressida. Following its premiere in 1954, Walton made substantial cuts and a version reflecting this was prepared for performance by Opera North in 1995. It is published here with full critical commentary.
All material is available on hire. ... Read more

Product Description
Coinciding with the 2002 centenary celebrations of the great British composer, this volume tells the story of William Walton's life in the style of a film documentary. Nearly 500 illustrations and photographs are interspersed with narrative text, reminiscences, anecdotes, and liberal quotations from Walton's letters and interviews. ... Read more

Product Description
This bio-bibliography of one the most important contemporary British composers begins with a brief biographical sketch. Works and first performances are listed alphabetically by title, and each entry is followed by the relevant bibliographic citation numbers. The discography includes sound recordings in all formats. The major portion of the work, the bibliography, is divided into articles and reviews; books, theses, and dissertations; articles by Walton; and films. The archival section lists collections of Walton's music manuscripts, letters, and miscellanea. Two appendices contain a chronological listing of works and first performances, and a works lists arranged by classification. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume prints both of Walton's orchestrations: his initial scoring (1929) and his reduced orchestrations of 1962. It also for the first time restores the solo part as edited by Frederick Riddle, an early soloist and champion of the work, who devised numerous idiomatic phrasings and bowings with the approval of the composer. The volume is completed by critical notes, facsimiles, and an introduction.
Full performing material for both orchestrations is available from the Hire Library. ... Read more

Product Description
These performing materials incorporate all the research from the full score (Walton Edition vol. 7), and present new editions of Façade Entertainment, and Façade 2, and four hitherto unpublished numbers all in new, clear engraving.
A detailed preface in the full score explains the fascinating history of the work, with full textual notes and an appendix of the poems.
The set of parts comprises Flute and piccolo, Clarinet, Alto Saxophone in E flat, Trumpet in C, Percussion, Cello, and Cello A and B for Façade 1.
Score and parts are also available from the OUP Hire Library. ... Read more