William Carlos Williams
To make two bold statements: There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small (or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship. But poetry is a
machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy. As in all machines, its
movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical more than a literary character.
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