Poem To Elsie William Carlos Williams - Essay Example

Approaching the crescendo the poem gradually reveals and reflects the concepts about the nature of life in this country, America, at that time.

The diction is often general and seemingly flaccid; "devil-may-care men who have taken / to railroad / out of sheer lust of adventure," or "young slatterns, bathed / in filth." Its major focus is the speaker himself, who sums up in swift, passionate, and broken utterances the human condition in which he participates. (Axelrod, Roman, Travisano, 86-87)  

Along the texture of the development of the poem the gradual ascendancy evokes enlightened pastures when it says “some doctor’s family, some Elsie/voluptuous water/expressing with broken/brain the truth about us/her great ungainly hips and flipping breasts/addressed to cheap /jewelry/and rich young men with fine eyes/ as if the earth under our feet/were/an excrement of some sky”, the poem describes Elsie’s body and alert us that the female body linked to the hierarchies of the country, the class and the gender in the culture. (Axelrod, Roman, Travisano, 86-87)  

Like most of William Carlos Williams’s poems ‘To Elsie’ is revealed in a formation of translucent transparency which in retrospect is represented in the most punctual truthfulness to the point of honesty. In this context, it should be remembered that Williams's poems are uniquely honest towards themselves and they reveal everything that is possibly expressible through words. This honesty in words is deeply felt when Williams narrates in the last lines of the poem almost in a circumstantial detached mood. “It is only in isolate flecks that / something / is given off / No one / to witness / and adjust, no one to drive the car. (Axelrod, Roman, Travisano, 87)  

It is so evident in these lines that the poet is viewing the whole scenario in a circumspect manner with the mood of watching the whole expression as a passive watcher.  Going through the lines of the poem ‘To Elisie’ I was able to feel the pain of the poet is transmitted into the readers’ mind through a contour of expressions expressed not only in an honest but in an extremely informative manner. This is because the poet is willing to take himself away from the present scenario as if as a mode of protest against the then-present situation which was far from his socialist sense of utopia. (Matterson, 29)

This formation of the poem and the way it builds up from a rather unemotional scenario into words describing the common plight of Americans, at least the America of his time reflects the psyche of the poet time and again throughout the poem with such lines that says “as if the earth under our feet/was/an excrement of some sky”. It could be found that these are the things that destroy the American dream of the poet’s time. Until he can force his imagination to take account of and establish his contact with his own, local, instead of letting himself strain after the other where of "deer / going by fields of goldenrod," until such a time, the American is doomed to go crazy. (Axelrod, Roman, Travisano, 86-87)   

Structurally speaking, I felt the form is directly derived from the optimistic philosophy of life itself thereby placing the entire poem in a simplistic format that blends flawlessly with the apparent simplicity of the poem.

To me, theoretically, Williams’s poems are placed on the other side of the coin that is used by the poets like T.S. Elliot and Ezra Pound. Especially, this is true with the approach of T.S. Elliot, who contrary to the poetic philosophy of Williams, was more active in finding the philosophy of his poetry in references to foreign art, history, language, music, religion, and poetic and nonpoetic philosophy.

In this context William Carlos Williams is by nature far more down to earth and based on his roots and could be termed as more American than his fellow poets in terms of using language, depicting symbols, and regulating unconventional but true American thought processes. Me, whenever I go through his works, he is always deeply rooted within the framework of the American mind whether he likes it or not. I suggest this is the single most profound interpretation that could be derived from his poetry that makes him so American and so international at the same time. All his poems bear this same trademark and this poem ‘To Elsie’ is no different.