Page:Spring and all - William Carlos Williams.djvu/49

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— 43 —


So most of my life has been lived in hell—a hell of repression lit by flashes of inspiration, when a poem such as this or that would appear

What would have happened in a world similarly lit by the imagination

Oh yes, you are a writter! a phrase that has often damned me, to myself. I rejected it with heat but the stigma remained. Not a man, not an understanding but a WRITER. I was unable to recognize. I do not forget with what heat too I condemned some poems of some contemporary praised because of their loveliness—

I find that I was somewhat mistaken—ungenerous

Life's processes are very simple. One or two moves are made and that is the end. The rest is repetitious.

The Improvisations—coming at a time when I was trying to remain firm at great cost—I had recourse to the expedient of letting life go completely in order to live in the world of my choice.

I let the imagination have its own way to see if it could save itself. Something very definite came of it. I found myself alleviated but