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The Comedian as the Letter “N”: Sight and Sound in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams

The fifth section of William Carlos Williams's Collected Earlier Poems (1951) bears the title “Della Primavera Transportata Al Morale”; this is also the title of the first poem within that section. A close look, however, reveals a slight discrepancy: “Transportata” at the head of the section is spelt “Trasportata” in the poem title on the page following. A mistake perhaps. And yet, if it is a mistake, it is certainly persistent. On the Contents page at the beginning of the volume the word is also shown as “Trasportata”. Thus of three appearances in the book, the word occurs first without an “n”, becomes “Transportata” in the sectional heading, only to contract again in the poem title to “Trasportata”: the “n” seems to ghost through the text as a flickering shape poised between presence and absence. There is insufficient evidence to decide whether this is deliberate or accidental, or even – if it is accidental – whether the anomaly began with Williams or with his printer, but the history of the poem holds so many parallel variations that it is difficult to doubt that Williams enjoyed the anomaly and wanted to preserve it.