William Carlos Williams Embracing Nature in Spring and All - Essay Example

William Carlos Williams Embracing Nature in “Spring and All” William Carlos Williams was a man ahead of his time. A poet of the early half of the 1900s, Williams is best known for his concentration on using ordinary words to portray ordinary events in extraordinary ways. His artistic use of language, that nevertheless left his subject available for any reader who cared to browse through his books, marked him as a principle player among the Imagists and gained him recognition by the Beat writers of the 1950s and ‘60s. His topics frequently center on the middle class women and men he treated as a part of his medical profession and his plain language often had people of his time misunderstanding the artistry behind his words. However, it is in this colloquialism that he is able to capture the voice of the nation, “its multiracial and immigrant streams of speech and behaviour, its violence and exuberance, its ignorance of its own general and regional history. … It is presented as a search for the elements of a ‘common language’: a shared cultural and historical awareness to counteract the fragmentation of American society” (Rosenthal, 2001). He found part of this ‘common language’ in humanity’s essential connection within the bounds of the natural world. In William Carlos Williams’ poem “Spring and All”, the poet demonstrates through the structure and content of his poem his own connection with, and essential relationship to, the wonders of nature. To understand the artistry of Williams, it is necessary to understand some of his approach to his art. Despite his heavy influence by such writers as Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Williams worked ceaselessly to try to develop a singularly American voice. “His major difference with Pound (apart from Williams’s acutely responsive and realistic presentations of women and his revulsion against fascism) lay in his desire to create a specifically American poetics based on the rhythms and colorations of American speech, thought, and experience” (Rosenthal, 2001). A basic element of Williams’ philosophy rests on this locality of experience. “Williams saw one’s immediate environment, one’s ‘locality,’ as the only source of that universal experience, which, he thought, ‘great’ art expresses. Such universal experience was communicable only on the basis of an authentic perception of the objects of the material world, which, he reasoned, could only stem from an accurate representation of the things we know, the things with which we are intimately familiar: the ‘sensual accidents’ bred out of the ‘local conditions which confront us’” (Dijkstra, 1978: 8). In other words, Williams felt that the only way to achieve the commonly desired connection with what some philosophers have called the collective unconscious or universal connection was through a full experience of the place one was. To do this, there had to be a deep connection to the ‘objects of the material world’ so that the true nature of them can be felt. In order to inspire these close associations, the artist had to present these objects accurately, building upon what was commonly and generally known. However, to get the mind to truly accept these ideas and think about them again, it is necessary to also inspire the mind to become engaged with the material, to present objects with new ways of seeing the same old thing as a means of awakening the mind to what it has always known. At the opening of his second published book of poems, Spring and All, Williams includes a poem that remained untitled in his original version but which has come to be known by the same name as the volume in which it first appeared. On the surface, the poem is a simple description of a lifeless field along the side of a desolate road on the way to a hospital at the very beginning of spring, before the buds or the physical evidence of spring has arrived. However, there are much greater depths to be found within the poem just as Williams points out there are much greater depths to be found within the new days of spring. “Spring and All” focuses upon the more or less invisible processes that are occurring as spring approaches the land, making a connection between this unseen and unfelt yet influential and essential movement and the movement that can be found within the mind of an engaged reader. In this respect, the poem accurately reflects Williams’ philosophy even as he awakens his audience to it through the structure and content of this poem. Structurally, the poem illustrates for the reader just how Williams expects them to make the same sort of universal connection Williams himself has felt upon accurately perceiving and then attempting to represent the material objects he witnesses within his everyday environment. “Williams insisted upon the importance of the structural organization of objects, as well as upon the perceptual integrity of the perceiver and poet. But the poem is also a thing, and Williams insisted likewise upon its structural organization that the poet conveyed the meaning and aesthetic value in things, so also it is by attention to the structure that the reader constructs the meaning and aesthetic value of the poem” (Gee, 1985: 376). Like a picture, Williams structures the physical appearance of the poem so as to suggest the motion of thought he intends his reader to make. The poem opens with a six line stanza that reduces to a two line transition. This is followed by a five line stanza and another two line transition. This slow decrease of lines is repeated one more time with a four line stanza and two line transition, subtly directing the thought downward and inward as the poet’s focus moves downward and inward. This motion is halted at this level, though and expanded again as the poet reaches the inner levels and applies this knowledge to the greater being. This is how the poem, in its physical presentation, suggests to the reader the expectation that they will be moving in thought alongside the motion of the poet. “It is not that Williams presents us with a landscape and tells us its meaning – he does no such thing – he presents us rather with the active process of a perceiver attuned to drawing meaning and significance from the perceptual environment” (Gee, 1985: 388). Unlike some of his other poems that present an image or a still life, this poem immediately suggests that something more is occurring and suggests the poem itself can take us step by step along the learning process. The internal structure of the poem also presents a suggestion of motion and movement while emphasizing those elements Williams wishes his reader to notice. Gee (1985) points out how the internal structure of the poem delivers none of the structural elements a reader might expect as propositional phrases are not followed by complete sentences and noun combinations are not provided with matching verbs to complete thoughts here either. Examining the first stanza, Gee says, “Clearly, ‘a cold wind’ and ‘standing and fallen’ do not fit, while everything else matches up in some form. They are, thus, thrust out at us” (Gee, 1985: 390). He indicates the reason for the stress on these elements was intentional by the poet as a means of bringing attention to the comparisons being made between ‘standing’ and ‘falling’ and the concepts we associate with them. For example, the word ‘standing’ is used within the context of the poem to indicate something upright or vertical as well as something that is horizontal and static. “The down/horizontal position stands for the posture of death and disease, but also it is the position that one can arise from after nourishing sleep or from which new life can come after the dormancy of winter. The upright/vertical stands for the posture of life, but it must be rooted and nourished to attain and keep life” (Gee, 1985: 392). This inner structure is much easier to understand within a discussion of the content of the poem. With respect to the content, Williams begins trying to establish an engagement with the mind of his reader within his very first line, “By the road to the contagious hospital” (1). The unusual combination of words startles us into paying attention. The concept of a hospital is not typically considered in terms of illness, but rather in terms of getting better. Thus, it is not associated as much with disease-spreading as it is with sterility and disease-stopping. A contagious hospital is at once deadly and life-giving, potentially fatal and healing, a contradiction in terms yet a succinct summary of the truth. When one actually thinks about it, a hospital only exists as a gathering place for the ill to collect and hopefully find a cure for whatever ails them. In this collection of disease-ridden people, the hospital is easily a place where disease can be spread as easily and quickly as the cure. Although this is knowledge that has presumably always been present within our minds, it is not the way we usually think about the hospital and illustrates Williams’ point regarding the need to break out of the mundane thought of daily life to fully and accurately perceive the objects around us. By thus engaging the reader’s mind from the opening, Williams is then able to move forward in developing the scene. He provides us as reader with a sense of motion, time and space as he describes “The surge of the blue / mottled clouds driven from the / northeast” (1-3). This mode of delivery and imagery gives us an impression of the ocean, with the surge and roll of the waves as well as a hint of a hidden element in the form of the various forms of life that exist beneath the obscuring waves. This is a constantly moving, living and breathing thing that is, at the same time, not a living thing, once again forcing us to consider, if only for a moment, the concept of life in death and death in life. At the same time, Williams gives us an idea of an approaching storm full of electromagnetic energy in his specification of the ‘northeast.’ While the mottled clouds might spell out disaster and the need for immediate and strong shelter, at the same time we get a sense of tremendous energy and life-sustaining rain. This is immediately followed with a description of the empty, barren landscape around him. This landscape is filled with “broad, muddy fields / brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen / patches of standing water / the scattering of tall trees” (5-8). Rather than thinking of the life under the waves of the ocean or beneath the swaying grass of the prairie, we are skillfully directed to think of the lifeless unfriendliness of the environment through the structure of this stanza, as has been illustrated above by Gee (1985). With this kind of imagery, we get the impression of a lifeless, unwelcoming landscape. This impression is not improved any in the second major stanza, although there are hints that life once existed here. Williams describes the “reddish / purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy / stuff of bushes and small trees” (9-11) that pepper the landscape close by which must have been growing at one time to be standing there now. This vegetative presence of bushes and small trees is supplemented with the “scattering of tall trees” (8) as well as the “leafless vines” (13) that lie about among “dead, brown leaves” (12). Even spring itself, more typically personified as bursting with life into the winter scene in a sudden exuberance of life and energy, is here described with more reality, “lifeless in appearance, sluggish / dazed spring approaches” (14-15). Line 14 serves an interesting double role here as it provides both a description of the leafless vines, reminding the reader that the vines are not actually lifeless, just leafless, and illustrating through the intentional break in stanzas that it isn’t just the vines, but spring itself that appears “lifeless in appearance” (14). As the physical structure of the poem points out a narrowing focus in this stanza, as it loses a line from its predecessor, so the content echoes this motion. The first stanza focuses on the broadly general elements of the landscape – the hospital in the distance, the clouds in the sky, the barren, muddy overall color of the scene – while this stanza focuses more narrowly upon what can be seen in the immediate vicinity – a few scattered tall trees, some dead-seeming bushes and vines and a few dried leaves. This narrowing of focus prepares the way for the heart of the poem, which begins to reveal itself in the next major stanza. With spring introduced in such a lifeless-seeming fashion at the poem’s midway point, Williams concentrates his efforts on illustrating the essential realization and universal connection to be found in such a scene. Williams refers to a mysterious ‘They’ in line 16 that eventually emerges as referring collectively of the trees, bushes, vines and grasses that have already been mentioned in terms of dead foliage. Rather than the dead, lifeless things they appear, Williams begins to illustrate how they are now entering the “new world naked, / cold, uncertain of all / save that they enter” (16-17). The grass slowly becomes the “stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf” (21) as the growing things begin to quicken in the warming temperatures, “the profound change / has come upon them; rooted they / grip down and begin to awaken” (25-27). Having made a connection with the deep awakening of the roots of the vegetation in the field right beside him, Williams is able to experience an awakening of his own that he attempts to provide for his reader. A new summation of the poem with these increased understandings of structure and content reveals the major directions of the poem. Beginning with the broadly general lifeless description of the landscape, Williams moves closer to the viewable physical objects nearby and then down into the unknown and unseen roots of these objects and the root of himself. “We follow the thrust of his imagination downward, through obstacles, to a new union with the physical environment … At first an apparently blank and ‘lifeless’ nature invites the observer to passivity and despair; but Williams pushes through vacancy to uncover dormant life” (Breslin, 1970). Through his careful imagery, Williams presents a view of spring that is often overlooked, the slow, deep awakening that occurs far beneath the surface as the growing things begin to pull their nutrients out of the ground again, stretching up their leaves, taking on new definition and beginning a new life cycle. This method evokes an appreciation for the mysterious forces that work beyond our understanding and encourage us to look a little closer at the world around us and our connection to it. At the same time, it serves to bring attention to the dormant life within ourselves and the various ways in which we walk through life with our minds half-asleep, incapable of understanding the true connections we have with the world around us. Only when we take the time to look at these objects with new eyes, actually looking at them with an interest in perceiving them accurately, can we appreciate our connection with them and with the universe beyond. This, finally, illuminates the poem as a direct expression of Williams’ philosophy toward art and life. References Breslin, James E. William Carlos Williams: An American Artist. University of Chicago Press, 1970. Dijkstra, Bram. Cubism, Stieglitz, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams: The Hieroglyphics of a New Speech. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1969. Gee, James Paul. “The Structure of Perception in the Poetry of William Carlos Williams: A Stylistic Analysis.” Poetics Today. Vol. 6, N. 3, Poetics of Poetry, (1985), pp. 375-397. Rosenthal, M.L. “Williams’ Life and Career.” Modern American Poetry. Cary Nelson (Ed.). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2001. Williams, William Carlos. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Vol. 1: 1909-1939. A. Walton Litz (Ed.). New York: New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1991, p. 183. Read More