It Is a Living Coral
It Is a Living Coral - context Summary
Part of Paterson (1948)
This poem is a section of William Carlos Williams's epic Paterson, published 1948. It assembles civic monuments, historical figures and tableaux into a cascading catalog that exposes how public art and myth compose a national story. The fragmentary listing and ironic asides suggest both admiration for craft and skepticism about the narratives these sculptures enforce. The result reads like an urban inventory that questions official American identity.
Read Complete Analysesa trouble archaically fettered to produce E Pluribus Unum an island in the sea a Capitol surmounted by Armed Liberty— painting sculpture straddled by a dome eight million pounds in weight iron plates constructed to expand and contract with variations of temperature the folding and unfolding of a lily. And Congress authorized and the Commission was entrusted was entrusted! a sculptured group Mars in Roman mail placing a wreath of laurel on the brow of Washington Commerce Minerva Thomas Jefferson John Hancock at the table Mrs. Motte presenting Indian burning arrows to Generals Marion and Lee to fire her mansion and dislodge the British— this scaleless jumble is superb and accurate in its expression of the thing they would destroy— Baptism of Poca— hontas with a little card hanging under it to tell the persons in the picture. It climbs it runs, it is Geo. Shoup of Idaho it wears a beard it fetches naked Indian women from a river Trumbull Varnum Henderson Frances Willard’s corset is absurd— Banks White Columbus stretched in bed men felling trees The Hon. Michael C. Kerr onetime Speaker of the House of Representatives Perry in a rowboat on Lake Erie changing ships the dead among the wreckage sickly green
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