University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Supervised Undergraduate Student Research Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects and Creative Work Spring 4-2007 Agonized Approaches to the Moment: William Carlos Williams, the Camera, and the Dream of a Natural Poem Scott Patrick Thurman University of Tennessee - Knoxville Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj Recommended Citation Thurman, Scott Patrick, "Agonized Approaches to the Moment: William Carlos Williams, the Camera, and the Dream of a Natural Poem" (2007). Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_chanhonoproj/1124 This is brought to you for free and open access by the Supervised Undergraduate Student Research and Creative Work at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. agonized approaches to the lI1oll1ent William Carlos Williams, the Camera, and the Dream ofa Natural Poem Scott Patrick Thurman I Dr. Lee I Dr. Elias I English 498 I April 20, 2007 N early all writing, up to the present, if not all art, has been especially designed to keep up the barrier between sense and the vaporous fringe which distracts attention from its agonized approaches to the moment. William Carlos Williams, Spring and All Life is not about significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are. Susan Sontag, On Photography Scott Patrick Thurman A Polemic What do we see when we look at a photograph? And why do so many people, especially writers and readers, see a threat when they look into the photographic image? This first question's banality reveals its urgency: we are too used to photographs, to their daily presence in our lives and in our sense of vision.