William Carlos Williams -

It is a small plant 
delicately branched and 
tapering conically 
to a point, each branch 
and the peak a wire for         
green pods, blind lanterns 
starting upward from 
the stalk each way to 
a pair of prickly edged blue 
flowerets: it is her regard,         
a little plant without leaves, 
a finished thing guarding 
its secret. Blue eyes— 
but there are twenty looks 
in one, alike as forty flowers         
on twenty stems—Blue eyes 
a little closed upon a wish 
achieved and half lost again, 
stemming back, garlanded 
with green sacks of         
satisfaction gone to seed, 
back to a straight stem—if 
one looks into you, trumpets—! 
No. It is the pale hollow of 
desire itself counting         
over and over the moneys of 
a stale achievement. Three 
small lavender imploring tips 
below and above them two 
slender colored arrows         
of disdain with anthers 
between them and 
at the edge of the goblet 
a white lip, to drink from—! 
And summer lifts her look         
forty times over, forty times 
over—namelessly.

-William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams has always been known as an experimenter, an innovator, a revolutionary figure in American poetry. Yet in comparison to artists of his own time who sought a new environment for creativity as expatriates in Europe, Williams lived a remarkably conventional life. A doctor for more than forty years serving the New Jersey town of Rutherford, he relied on his patients, the America around him, and his own ebullient imagination to create a distinctively American verse. Often domestic in focus and "remarkable for its empathy, sympathy, its muscular and emotional identification with its subjects," Williams's poetry is also characteristically honest

Jorie Graham - Mind

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
the unrelenting, syncopated
mind. Not unlike
the hummingbirds
imagining their wings
to be their heart, and swallows
believing the horizon
to be a line they lift
and drop. What is it
they cast for? The poplars,
advancing or retreating,
lose their stature
equally, and yet stand firm,
making arrangements
in order to become
imaginary. The city
draws the mind in streets,
and streets compel it
from their intersections
where a little
belongs to no one. It is
what is driven through
all stationary portions
of the world, gravity's
stake in things, the leaves,
pressed against the dank
window of November
soil, remain unwelcome
till transformed, parts
of a puzzle unsolvable
till the edges give a bit
and soften. See how
then the picture becomes clear,
the mind entering the ground
more easily in pieces,
and all the richer for it.

Jorie Graham

 

In the first lines of "Mind," the speaker offers a metaphor for the mind, comparing it to "the slow overture of rain." Overture in this context denotes an orchestral introduction to a musical dramatic work. The speaker compares the way the mind moves from one perception to the next, one thought to the next, with the way an overture leads into the musical work itself. The mind is "unrelenting" because it never stops. It is "syncopated" (also a musical term) because, as in an overture, there is a shift to something else, maybe another perception, another subject, or another way of thinking. These lines comment both on the workings of the mind and the workings of this poem, which also shifts subjects. The speaker continues comparing the mind with natural phenomena. The speaker imagines that the hummingbird and the swallow perceive the world in.

 

Williams Carlos Williams - Approach of Winter

The half-stripped trees
struck by a wind together,
bending all,
the leaves flutter drily
and refuse to let go
or driven like hail
stream bitterly out to one side
and fall
where the salvias, hard carmine,—
like no leaf that ever was—
edge the bare garden
                                   -William Carlos Williams



My intial reaction was that he was talking about the ruthlessness of winter and its grip on nature. Williams uses various adjectives to describe the scene of the poem.Williams's poetry here is very succinct. He is remarking how winter makes its presence known, and he uses imagery to show how it seems to seep into autumn, as leaves gradually fall off of trees, the air grows a little bit colder each day, and the ground hardens as you get closer to winter.

Jorie Graham - Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re- infolding, entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of themselves a visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing motion that forces change-- this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself, also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go. I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never. It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never. - Jorie Graham      This poem, to me, starts off with her watching waves and sort of analyzing them. She takes the movemoents and actions of the waves and compares them to hard times of life. Graham uses the “unity” of minnows forming a “current”, to show that change in inevitable and it is something that she hopes to stay away from. Just as unity conforms the “minnows”, even that togetherness cannot prevent change in the world, it in inevitable and even nature must conform to that notion. When I first read this poem, I felt that it was entitled, “Prayer”, because she was so devastated and frustrated by change that she needed to look to a higher power to help her overcome her difficulties with the world. I thought that she looked to prayer, for god created the minnows and the nature surrounding her and the changes occuring within her world, therefore she would need the stability and calm that only a spiritual hope can achieve. However, while reading this poem a second time I got a completely different meaning. I felt her new message was that faith and change are both forced upon you. I get the feeling that she feels “trapped” because even faith can trap you and “change” your beliefs against your will. The main part of the poem that completely changed my view was when she stated, “motion that forces change—this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets what they want. Never again are you the same.The longing is to be pure. What you get is to be changed”. I feel that she wants her own beliefs to remain intact, not the “faith” and the beliefs of others. I still feel that she is against change, but maybe in this case it is dealing with a change in her beliefs rather than change in general. I find it very interesting that she has such abstract yet meaningful poetry that I can find two completely different meanings from this poem. That is true talent.

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)

Jorie Graham: San Sepolcro

     In this blue light I can take you there, snow having made me a world of bone seen through to. This is my house, my section of Etruscan wall, my neighbor's lemontrees, and, just below the lower church, the airplane factory. A rooster crows all day from mist outside the walls. There's milk on the air, ice on the oily lemonskins. How clean the mind is, holy grave. It is this girl by Piero della Francesca, unbuttoning her blue dress, her mantle of weather, to go into labor. Come, we can go in. It is before the birth of god. No one has risen yet to the museums, to the assembly line--bodies and wings--to the open air market. This is what the living do: go in. It's a long way. And the dress keeps opening from eternity to privacy, quickening. Inside, at the heart, is tragedy, the present moment forever stillborn, but going in, each breath is a button coming undone, something terribly nimble-fingered finding all of the stops.  - Jorie Graham
 

 

      My initial reaction to reading this poem was that, in the beginning, she basically set the scene of the poem and then goes into the story. I conceived that it was about a woman is giving birth but that the she is having complication or that the baby is a still born. I was surprised at the nature of the content of the poem. To me, it was aimed toward a more mature reader. There was not much informatioon on this poem on the internet. Leaving me to only infer more about this poem. Some symbols I noticed is, blue light, Etruscan, lemontrees, church, and the airplane factory. All of these represent seperate things. Since there was not much information on this poem, I cannot only infer what these symbols mean. I believe the theme that stands out the most, though, is the rooster. I say this because a rooster can represent so many things. It can represent the onset of something new, such as a day. It can also represent a signal, such as an alarm. I think that the rooster connects to the new life or beginning of the babies life, or a signal of distress of the complication of the pregnancy. I did find out that San Sepolcro is a city in Italy. I think that it is pretty safe to inferthat the poem takes place in this town in Italy. I also found out that a famous structure in Sansepolcro is a church. Which might be the church she is referring to in the poem.

Williams Carlos Williams: The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens
 - Williams Carlos Williams

     This poem is simple yet meaningful. The opening lines set the tone for the rest of the poem. Since the poem is composed of one sentence broken up at various intervals, it is truthful to say that "so much depends upon" each line of the poem. This is so because the form of the poem is also its meaning. This may seem confusing, but by the end of the poem the image of the wheelbarrow is seen as the actual poem, as in a painting when one sees an image of an apple, the apple represents an actual object in reality, but since it is part of a painting the apple also becomes the actual piece of art. These lines are also important because they introduce the idea that "so much depends upon" the wheelbarrow. There is also alot of symbolism in the poem. The image of the red wheelbarrow is pretty darn powerful. We see it very clearly in our minds, and all our speaker has to do to paint the image for us is to tell that it is a "red wheelbarrow." If that isn't magic, we don't know what is. William does a great job in creating a vivid image in our minds of the picture of what the poem is trying to get us to imagine. I really like the simplicity and straight forwardness of the poem. It kind of represents me as a person, very straight forward and simple. One of the themes of this poem is Man and the Natural World. We see a harmonious relationship between an manmade object (reflective of the human world) and nature. The red wheelbarrow sits unused and neglected, while rain seems to wash it clean and make it look brand spanking new. Chickens hang out with the wheelbarrow and keep it company. It almost seems like this wheelbarrow is part of nature. The absence of humans in this scene makes us feel the wheelbarrow's loneliness and makes us appreciate nature for paying attention to the wheelbarrow. (Source: http://www.shmoop.com/red-wheelbarrow/man-the-natural-world-theme.html)