Wendell Berry on William Carlos Williams

Wendell Berrry's The Poetry of William Carlos Williams of Rutherford (Counterpoint Press, Berkeley, 2011) is both Berry's homage to WCW and a discussion of poetry using Williams' work as the place of reference. This is an honest, serious, and articulate discussion of the work and meaning of one of the three or four major American poets of the last century.

Here is a quotation from Wendell Berry's book:

Without such rootedness in locality, considerately adapted to local conditions, we get what we now have got: a country half destroyed, toxic, eroded, and in every way abused; a deluded people tricked out in gauds without traditions of any kind to give them character; a politics of expediency dictated by the wealthy; a disintegrating economy founded upon fantasy, fraud, and ecological ruin. Williams saw all of this, grieved over it, and accused rightly... (p. 176)