William Carlos Williams: The Rose - Essay Example

Although he was heavily influenced by the prominent writers Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Williams remained dedicated to developing his uniquely American voice.  “His major difference with Pound (apart from Williams’s acutely responsive and realistic presentations of women and his revulsion against fascism; see especially Paterson III-V) lay in his desire to create a specifically American poetics based on the rhythms and colorations of American speech, thought, and experience” (Rosenthal, 2001).  The topics of Williams’ poetry are most often centered upon the middle class, usually the men and women he treated as a part of his medical profession which often reflected some of the pain or confusion they were experiencing.  His simple language sometimes fooled people into believing his poetry was as simple and lacking in overall artistry.  However, it is through this seeming simplicity that he was able to truly capture the voice of the nation through “its multiracial and immigrant streams of speech and behavior, 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).  His attempts to illustrate complex ideas and sentiments within the common language and imagery of the American understanding are easily seen within his poem “Rose” (1923).

 The poem is immediately and obviously centered upon the image of the rose as a common symbol to the American people that has lost much of its meaning because of its overuse.  This was a continuation of a tradition that started in the Victorian period when people would use flowers as a means of communicating instead of words because of the strict taboos placed on ‘polite’ communication (Rose-Works, 2007).  The poem begins with a simple description of the flower, but the words used provide it with dangerous and sharp edges.  He begins the poem by immediately letting the reader know that this poem is not to be the more common form of adoration that was common in this period.  This is done in the first line as he says “The rose is obsolete” (1).  From here he describes how each petal has an edge, it creates ‘grooved columns of air (4-5).  These descriptions make the rose sound like a deadly weapon rather than a delicate flower.  This idea is reinforced in the following line when he describes how “the edge/cuts without cutting/meets – nothing” (5-7).  In every sense, unless the flower is made of metal, Williams points out that it must end, it must wither and die.  However, we continue to place importance on it as if it will last forever.  As a symbol of love, it symbolizes the endless death and decay rather than the bright and brilliant bloom it once was. 

In making this kind of comparison, Williams builds a strong metaphor between the flower and the human emotion it is commonly used to represent.  A metaphor is defined as “a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison” (Metaphor, 2009).  However, the metaphor he makes is much different from the one that is more commonly made regarding this particular flower.  While most people associate it with love in all its varying forms (depth of meaning was commonly associated with the number and color of the roses), Williams makes it a symbol of the pain and misery that will be brought about when the passion of the relationship dies.  He makes this clear in the cutting description of the flower as well as in the way that the flower has a tendency to die almost immediately as soon as it is cut off from its stalk.  As a result, the poem emerges as a means of warning the young lover of what might happen should the lover be cut off from his love, which, he warns, is most likely to happen because of the nature of love as a fleeting thing like the bloom on a rose.

Through his poetry such as the poem discussed above, Williams is able to convey very different ideas regarding very common objects and images.  This reveals a different side to the image that most people don’t consider, or at least not often.  While this is often the goal of poetry, Williams’ brilliance lies in his ability to use very common objects and very common language to convey very deep ideas and considerations.  While his poems may seem to make almost no sense when you read through them quickly, an analysis of the poet and his words can reveal that the poem has a very deep meaning to it that escaped you the first time through.  Poetry is confusing to most people, but when one is willing to spend some time with the poem and tease out its meanings, it can often surprise you with the depth of understanding you might achieve.