The following text is from William Carlos Williams’s 1925 creative nonfiction book In the American Grain.
Williams is discussing how works by nineteenth-century US poet and fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe were received by American readers.
Poe must suffer by his originality. Invent that which is new, even if it be made of pine from your own yard, and there’s none to know what you have done. It is because there’s no name. This is the cause of Poe’s lack of recognition. He was American. He was the astounding, inconceivable growth of his locality.
Williams is discussing how works by nineteenth-century US poet and fiction writer Edgar Allan Poe were received by American readers.
Poe must suffer by his originality. Invent that which is new, even if it be made of pine from your own yard, and there’s none to know what you have done. It is because there’s no name. This is the cause of Poe’s lack of recognition. He was American. He was the astounding, inconceivable growth of his locality.