William Carlos Williams: The Dance

In Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling
about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Brueghel's great picture, The Kermess.
- William Carlos Williams
 

This poem was hard for me to undestand at first. My initial reaction about the poem was that it was about some kind of exotic dancers that he wasnt so fond of. I kind of got a sense of lust in the words though. Upon further research, I learned that a kermesse was originally a special celebration on the feast day of the saint who stood as patron for the town or village in which it occurred. So it is safe to presume that he made these obsevations about dancers while at a party or celebration. I also learned that this poem is attached to a painting, in which he uses the poem to describe the scene in the painting. Accoding to analysis at the University of Minnesota, the poem s also fast and rollicking. We're not supposed to pause at the end of each line, as we are with some poems, but rather to keep reading, to keep the dance going. This technique of running over lines is called "enjambment," and Williams uses it here to create through form the sense of motion and circularity he describes in the poem. (Source: University of Minnesota). As I read the poem a 2nd time I realized that he actually refers to the painting. The name of the painting "Brueghels" I posted the picture abovee accurately accesses what is occuring in the picture. From the dancers to each detail of what he wrote in his poem. The last thing I would like to add, thouugh, is that for some reason I thought that the scene would have been taking place inside. (I thought this before I saw the painting)