Sour Grapes (poetry collection)

Last updated
First edition SourGrapesWilliams.jpg
First edition

Sour Grapes: a book of poems is an early work by William Carlos Williams. Published in 1921, by The Four Seas Company in Boston, the collection includes poems such as "A Widow's Lament in Springtime", "The Great Figure", "Complaint", and "Queen-Ann's-Lace".

Williams was still struggling to find his audience at the time that he published Sour Grapes and he was forced to pay for some, if not all, of the publishing expenses himself. As a book, it is highly representative of Williams's early writing. The book is filled out with improvisational pieces that Williams seems to have thrown together in the spare moments that he stole from his medical practice. However, this poetic improvisation produced remarkable language, which is evident in "A Widow's Lament in Springtime". and "Complaint".

Like most of Williams' early works, Sour Grapes was ignored by most critics at the time, but it was well received by Kenneth Burke in The Dial in February 1922.


Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Book of Lamentations</span> Book of the Bible

The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot alongside the Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther although there is no set order. In the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah, as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author. However, according to modern scholarship, while the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586/7 BCE forms the background to the poems, they were probably not written by Jeremiah. Most likely, each of the book's chapters was written by a different anonymous poet, and they were then joined to form the book.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Carlos Williams</span> American poet (1883–1963)

William Carlos Williams was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Dunbar</span> Scottish poet and civil servant

William Dunbar was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie. His surname is also spelt Dumbar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Williams Buchanan</span>

Robert Williams Buchanan was a Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lament</span> Literary genre

A lament or lamentation is a passionate expression of grief, often in music, poetry, or song form. The grief is most often born of regret, or mourning. Laments can also be expressed in a verbal manner in which participants lament about something that they regret or someone that they have lost, and they are usually accompanied by wailing, moaning and/or crying. Laments constitute some of the oldest forms of writing, and examples exist across human cultures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aisling</span> Irish poetic genre

The aisling, or vision poem, is a poetic genre that developed during the late 17th and 18th centuries in Irish language poetry. The word may have a number of variations in pronunciation, but the is of the first syllable is always realised as a ("sh") sound.

<i>Wulf and Eadwacer</i> Old English poem

"Wulf and Eadwacer" is an Old English poem of famously difficult interpretation. It has been variously characterised, (modernly) as an elegy, (historically) as a riddle, and as a song or ballad with refrain. The poem is narrated in the first person, most likely by female speaker. Because the audience is given so little information about her situation, some scholars argue the story was well-known, and that the unnamed speaker corresponds, for example, to Signý or that the characters Wulf and Eadwacer correspond to Theoderic the Great and his rival Odoacer. The poem's only extant text is found at folios 100v-101r in the tenth-century Exeter Book, alongside certain other texts to which it possesses qualitative similarities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fredegond Shove</span> English poet, 1889–1949

Fredegond Cecily Shove was an English poet. Two collections of her poetry were published in her lifetime, and a small selection also appeared after her death.

"The Wife's Lament" or "The Wife's Complaint" is an Old English poem of 53 lines found on folio 115 of the Exeter Book and generally treated as an elegy in the manner of the German frauenlied, or "women's song". The poem has been relatively well preserved and requires few if any emendations to enable an initial reading. Thematically, the poem is primarily concerned with the evocation of the grief of the female speaker and with the representation of her state of despair. The tribulations she suffers leading to her state of lamentation, however, are cryptically described and have been subject to many interpretations. Indeed, Professor Stephen Ramsay has said, "the 'correct' interpretation of "The Wife's Lament" is one of the more hotly debated subjects in medieval studies."

<i>Y Gododdin</i> Medieval Welsh poem

Y Gododdin is a medieval Welsh poem consisting of a series of elegies to the men of the Brittonic kingdom of Gododdin and its allies who, according to the conventional interpretation, died fighting the Angles of Deira and Bernicia at a place named Catraeth in about AD 600. It is traditionally ascribed to the bard Aneirin and survives only in one manuscript, the "Book of Aneirin".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alicia Ostriker</span> American poet and scholar (born 1937)

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is an American poet and scholar who writes Jewish feminist poetry. She was called "America's most fiercely honest poet" by Progressive. Additionally, she was one of the first women poets in America to write and publish poems discussing the topic of motherhood. In 2015, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. In 2018, she was named the New York State Poet Laureate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Fox and the Grapes</span> One of Aesops fables

The Fox and the Grapes is one of Aesop's fables, numbered 15 in the Perry Index. The narration is concise and subsequent retellings have often been equally so. The story concerns a fox that tries to eat grapes from a vine but cannot reach them. Rather than admit defeat, he states they are undesirable. The expression "sour grapes" originated from this fable.

Sour Grapes may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">A Lover's Complaint</span> 1609 poem by William Shakespeare

"A Lover's Complaint" is a narrative poem written by William Shakespeare, and published as part of the 1609 quarto of Shakespeare's Sonnets. It was published by Thomas Thorpe.

The Famous Flower of Serving-Men or The Lady turned Serving-Man is a traditional English language folk song and murder ballad. Child considered it as closely related to the ballad "The Lament of the Border Widow" or "The Border Widow's Lament".

"Unusually, it is possible to give a precise date and authorship to this ballad. It was written by the prolific balladeer, Laurence Price, and published in July 1656, under the title of The famous Flower of Serving-Men. Or, The Lady turn'd Serving-Man. It lasted in the mouths of ordinary people for three hundred years: what a tribute to the work of any writer, leave alone the obscure Laurence Price. Oral tradition, however, has made changes. The original has twenty-eight verses and a fairy-tale ending: “And then for fear of further strife, / he took Sweet William to be his Wife: / The like before was never seen, / A Serving-man to be a Queen”. - Roy Palmer, A Book of British Ballads

<i>Night-Thoughts</i> Long poem by Edward Young published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745

The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, better known simply as Night-Thoughts, is a long poem by Edward Young published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745. It was illustrated with notable engravings by William Blake.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Takarai Kikaku</span> Japanese poet

Takarai Kikaku also known as Enomoto Kikaku, was a Japanese haikai poet and among the most accomplished disciples of Matsuo Bashō. His father was an Edo doctor, but Kikaku chose to become a professional haikai poet rather than follow in his footsteps.

<i>By the Candelabras Glare</i>

By the Candelabra's Glare is a 1898 collection of poems written by L. Frank Baum. One of his earliest works, the book was significant in Baum's evolution from amateur to professional author.

Three main sets of works are attributed to Florus : Virgilius orator an poeta, an Epitome of Roman History and a collection of 14 short poems. As to whether these were composed by the same person, or set of people, is unclear, but the works are variously attributed to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dinogad's Smock</span> Old Welsh lullaby

"Dinogad's Smock" or "Dinogad's Cloak" is an Old Welsh lullaby recounting the hunting prowess of the dead father of an infant named Dinogad, who is wrapped in a smock made of marten skins. This garment gives the poem its modern title.