{
 "id": "william-carlos-williams/foreign",
 "title": "Foreign",
 "poet": "William Carlos Williams",
 "poet_slug": "william-carlos-williams",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems",
 "book_slug": "al-que-quiere",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 19,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1917,
  "venue": "Al Que Quiere! A Book of Poems (1917)",
  "note": "First located printing is this volume; an earlier periodical printing has not been established.",
  "uncertain": false,
  "sources": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51997"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/william-carlos-williams_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31878",
   "https://archive.org/details/temperscarlos00willrich",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51997",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006060238",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35667",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007676947"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-12"
 },
 "stats": {
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  "n_stanzas": 4,
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  "longest_line_chars": 34,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Artsybashev is a Russian.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I am an American.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Let us wonder, my townspeople,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "if Artsybashev tends his own fires",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "as I do, gets himself cursed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "for the baby’s failure to thrive,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "loosens windows for the woman",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "who cleans his parlor⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "or has he neat servants",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "and a quiet library, an",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "intellectual wife perhaps and",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "no children⁠—an apartment",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "somewhere in a back street or",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "lives alone or with his mother",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "or sister⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I wonder, my townspeople,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "if Artsybashev looks upon",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "himself the more concernedly",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "or succeeds any better than I",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "in laying the world.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "I wonder which is the bigger",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "fool in his own mind.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ],
  [
   {
    "text": "These are shining topics",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "my townspeople but⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "hardly of great moment.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}