Bob Perelman on William Carlos Williams' "The Sea-Elephant"

The Sea-Elephant

• (1:52 full poem): MP3


• 1. Trundled from
  the strangeness of the sea—


• 2. a kind of
  heaven—
  
  
• 3. Ladies and Gentlemen!
  the greatest
  sea-monster ever exhibited
  alive
  the gigantic
  sea-elephant!


• 4. O wallow
  of flesh where
  are
  there fish enough for
  that
  appetite stupidity
  cannot lessen?
  
  Sick
  of Aprils smallness
  the little
  leaves—
  
  Flesh has lief of you
  enormous sea—
  Speak!
  


• 5. Blouaugh!  

6. feed

me) my
flesh is riven—
fish after fish into his maw
unswallowing

to let them glide down
gulching back
half spittle half
brine

the
trouble eyes—torn
from the sea.

• 7. (In
  
  a practical voice.)  


• 8. They
  ought
  to put it back where
  it came from.


• 9. Gape.
  Strange head—
  told by old sailors—
  rising
  
  bearded
  to the surface—and
  the only
  sense out of them
  
  it that woman's


• 10. Yes
  it's wonderful but they
  ought to
  
  put it
  back into the sea where
  it came from.


• 11. Blouaugh!


• 12. Swing—ride
  walk
  on wires—toss balls
  stoop and
  
  contort yourselves—
  But I
  am love. I am
  from the sea—


• 13. Blouaugh!


• 14. there is no crime save
  the too-heavy
  body
  
  the sea
  held playfully—comes
  to the surface
  the water
  
  boiling
  about the head the cows
  scattering
  fish dripping from
  
  the bounty
  of . . .  


• 15. and spring
  they say
  Spring is icummen in—


• comparison of Williams' three "Blouaugh!"
  16, Blouaugh! x 3

Williams' commentary (1:39)

• Printceton-1952-MP3


• 17. My wife tells me I read the rougher pieces. Every man hates to expose himself in the . . . public (I was going to say) [Laughter].  


• 18. You don't like to reveal the more sensitive . . . feeling you may have perhaps. It's always easier to be a little . . . a little rough. At least it's a way of being timid, I suppose, showing your timidity anyhow.  


• 19. Because modern, the modern poet, such a one as I am, at least, does not seek the temple. There are those — and I don't mean to belittle them — such as Ezra Pound, who are always — T. S. Eliot, or some of the French, the distinguished poets of the past, W. B. Yeats,


• 20. they carry about with them an aura that is poetry it seems.  


• 21. Forgetting [louder] that you are the poetry for God's sake! Let 'em come down to you and lift you up!  


• 22. Anyhow, it's very attractive to have these wonderful people stand above you and make you feel like a worm. [Loud, sustained laughter]  


• 23. Uh? There're other things.  


• 24. Poetry in the past has been gutsy, it's been rough, it's been Villon, it's been parts of Shakespeare. It isn't only that temple thing.


• Williams concludes the poem with a sly hommage to the ur-text of English literature, "Caedmon's Hymn," when he observes


• 15. "and spring / they say / Spring is icummen in—".

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only.
© 2008 Bob Perelman & the Estate of William Carlos Williams. All rights reserved. Distributed by PennSound.