("The Potato Eaters" Vincent Van Gogh, 1885)
I remember boiling 4 "new Potatoes (those are
the small ones others call salt potatoes) making myself a small sauce
pan of melted butter with pepper, and eating the potatoes whole and
scewered on my swiss army blade as I read Williams' Selected poems. I
was 18 years old, and the only one awake in the house at three in the
morning. It is one of the happiest memories of my life. Maybe it was the
linoleum which was torn just under my seat. I scratched an itch on my
bare foot with it. Maybe it was the flourescent light. It could have
been Williams' poems, too, but I know, know beyond all doubt that,
without those 4 potatoes, no happiness would have been as possible.
– Joe Weil