n Spring and All, Williams explains that the imagination is the
opposite of fantasy; it penetrates fantasies to reveal realities. It
clears away personal and conventional associations and meanings that
human beings have attached to things, and to the words that represent
them, enabling human consciousness to perceive the things of reality as
directly as possible. In Spring and All, Williams writes: “To
refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone
live there is but a single force—the imagination.”
