Paterson (poem) caught Williams' attention for its use, with a technical skill that seemed to rival Pound's in "The Cantos", of such diverse and seemingly prosaic materials as notes from a congressional investigation, an X-ray report and a physician's testimony on cross-examination. He wrote to fellow poet Louis Zukofsky, "I've begun to think about poetic form again. So much has to be thought out and written out there before we can have any solid criticism and consequently well-grounded work here." In 1944, Williams read a poem by Byron Vazakas in "Partisan Review" that would help lead him to solutions in form and
The Personal Heresy “have concerned the critics far more than what the poem is really about, the true state of Milton’s mind when he wrote it.” As an example of what poetry is about, Lewis cites a poem, part of William Wordsworth's "Prelude". There is a personality in a poem, says Lewis, but we don’t know whose. We meet the poet “only in a strained and ambiguous sense” (9f.). Especially in drama we meet the poet's creation rather than the poet. In order to write poetry, the poet must use words to suggest what is public, common, impersonal, and objective. That is why