Poem

 As the cat
 climbed over
 the top of

 the jamcloset
 first the right
 forefoot

 carefully
 then the hind
 stepped down

 into the pit of
 the empty
 flowerpot.

Commentary

It’s so incredibly simple isn’t it. There’s a cat. It moves from point A to point B. That’s all. But Williams captures the instinctive soft-footedness of that movement so well. The first time I read this poem, I BRISTLED with excitement, literally. The words themselves so sleekly feline, and the last paragraph leaping down on to the page so nimbly that just reading the words, just hearing the sound of them, you can see the cat moving. One of my favourite Williams.

— Aseem

Links

poem #83 for a biography of Williams and what is probably his best known poem.

The Wondering Minstrels, poem #659 · 6 January 2001

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul

Fair use

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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.

Julian Tepper · 7 January 2001

Early in life I was taught that poetry is meant to be read aloud, even if one is alone when reading it. This poem, I think, is great evidence of the value of that teaching. The nature of its words, themselves, causes them to be read haltingly, consistent with the purposeful steps that all cat observers watch with great pleasure.

Yvette R Sangiorgio · 7 January 2001

Hi,
I agree with Aseem that this poem is so simple and captures the movement of the CAT. Yes, you feel the excitement in the action expressed in the words, but you are jetisoned into a void where the spigot is suddenly turned off. Your emotions drop, as if you experienced a letdown. The CAT moved but gained nothing, achieving nothing because the CAT landed in an empty flowerpot. Is that typical of a CAT’s behavior, of the psychology of a CAT, of the raison d’etre of a CAT. As much as you flow with the music of the poem, its power lies in the fact that you, the reader, are jolted!!! That’s not what a CAT’s about. It is the unexpected that jolts the reader at the end.
Thank you for bringing this poem to our attention. Yvette R. Sangiorgio

Ylfnogard614 · 7 January 2001

Greetings. As a cat lover, I thank you.

Would you like to know, how I first came upon your web site? I had been looking (it seems like forever) for this poem, PANGUR BAN, which was briefly mentioned in a book (forgot the name) I was reading. It never left my mind and I kept searching, until one day, surprise, surprise, there it was, on your web site.
Thanks, your pages are GREAT! Keep up the good work.

A.E. Lang · 2 May 2002

i too adore this poem - particularly for its wonderful use of metre & the way that just as the syllables start tumbling together at the end, the cat puts a foot into an empty flowerpot (and presumably topples over just after the poem ends. but debatable) - this is not my own insight, btw, but my partner’s, who spent an entire essay eulogising this one poem.

anyway - there is a canadian poet called f r scott who has written a cute response to this poem, in what i think is an homage rather than a parody. you be the judge.

anouk

CARLOS CAT
(After a poem by William Carlos Williams)

As the cat
stepped into the
flowerpot
first the right forefoot
then the hind
the poem was
over

so CARLOS
wrote it down and
hearing the Brahms
variations on a
theme by Handel

I suddenly saw the cat
watching CARLOS
writing the poem at a
little desk so

I had to write this
poem about me
watching the cat
watching CARLOS and

that is already a
bigger poem and
possibly nothing more
should be written
on this
cat

(p261 of The Collected Poems of F R Scott)