the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

D) Biography: William Carlos Williams was born The 17th of September 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey. He received his primary and secondary Education in Rutherford, and later on, he moved to Pennsylvania in 1902 to study medicine. When he finished university, he did several interships in hospitals, until he went to Leipzig to study pediatry. In 1909 he published his first book of poems called "Poems", and in 1912 shortly after getting married he published "The Tempers", his 2nd book. He had 2 children, the first one in 1914 and the second one in 1917.
Although he was a doctor he had a succesful literary creer as a poet. He was part of The Imagist movement but his opinion was ver different from the other members of The movement. In 1920, Williams was very critized by Ezra Pound When he published "Kora in Hell: Improvisations". In his last years he mentored and influenced many young poets such as Allan Ginsberg. He died on March 4th 1963 as a consequence of several heart attacks and strokes.

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe 

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you. 

Ach, du. 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller 

Of wars, wars, wars. 

But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend 

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root, 

I never could talk to you. 

The tongue stuck in my jaw. 

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich, 

I could hardly speak. 

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene 

An engine, an engine 

Chuffing me off like a Jew. 

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew. 

I think I may well be a Jew. 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna.

Are not very pure or true. 

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack 

I may be a bit of a Jew. 

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache 

And your Aryan eye, bright blue. 

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You

Not God but a swastika 

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you, 

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who 

Bit my pretty red heart in two. 

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die 

And get back, back, back to you. 

I thought even the bones would do. 

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do. 

I made a model of you, 

A man in black with a Meinkampf look 

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do. 

So daddy, I’m finally through. 

The black telephone’s off at the root,

The voices just can’t worm through. 

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year, 

Seven years, if you want to know. 

Daddy, you can lie back now. 

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you. 

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you. 

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

AUTHOR´S BIOGRAPHY:

Sylvia Path, was one of the most outstanding poets from the 20th century. She was borned in Boston, America, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before she becomed a famous writer.

She was married to Ted Hughes who was also a poet, whith whom she had two children in comun, but they divorced in 1962. 

She was depressed during most of her adult life, what later on lead to her death, because she commited suicide. Even though she was conceded a Pulitzer Prize for The Collected Poems, after her death. Some of her major works are: The Colossus and Other Poems, Ariel and The Bell Jar a semi-autobiographical novel.

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