American Literature / Unit 14 AML 1330 short lesson, about 20 seconds
"No ideas but in things"
Captions available
The idea
Williams's formula holds that a poem should reach its ideas through concrete particulars rather than state them, which is the American line of modernism against Eliot's learned allusion. The phrase is on the exam attached to his name.
In practice
Ideas, reached only through things.
Where people slip
The phrase is a position in an argument.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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