Spring and All by William Carlos Williams

Spring and All

by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital
under the surge of the blue
mottled clouds driven from the
northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the
waste of broad, muddy fields
brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water
the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish
purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy
stuff of bushes and small trees
with dead, brown leaves under them
leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish
dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,
cold, uncertain of all
save that they enter.  All about them
the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow
the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf
One by one objects are defined-
It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of
entrance-Still, the profound change
has come upon them:  rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken

Williams was one of the foremost poets of American modernism.  In this poem on nature, Williams personifies the spring that is entering the world naked and uncertain. The most striking element of this poem, the title poem of Williams' first major collection, is the imagery. Williams manages to paint complex scenes with few words such as "broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds." Williams makes it easy for the reader to see the world through his eyes.

Spring in New Hampshire by Claude McKay

Spring in New Hamphire

by Claude McKay, 1920

Too green the springing April grass, 
Too blue the silver-speckled sky, 
For me to linger here, alas, 
While happy winds go laughing by, 
Wasting the golden hours indoors, 
Washing windows and scrubbing floors. 

Too wonderful the April night, 
Too faintly sweet the first May flowers, 
The stars too gloriously bright, 
For me to spend the evening hours, 
When fields are fresh and streams are leaping, 
Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

Source: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21416

Analysis: Claude McKay whose work preceded, influenced and participated in the Harlem Renaissance was a unique poet. His work can nearly be divided into two categories his pastoral contemplative work, and his activist modern work. Though McKay gets most of his acclaim for his bleak unapologetic poetry primarily about racism and the urban experience, he wrote enough poetry that is softer in tone that we have to accept it as sincere, and not simply as subversive and ironic. "Spring in New Hampshire" is an excellent example of this style. 

     McKay's poem, which encourages us to get out doors and experience nature, is as relevant today as ever. He is proposing simply, that the day is too beautiful to stay inside. The most striking poetic touch has to do with how he's constructed his two stanzas. Each use a simple end rhyme scheme ABABCC, familiar as the last six lines of a Shakespearean sonnet, but also starts the sentence with the same letter scheme TTFWWW, except his second stanza adds switches the third W for a third T.

Sound and Sense by Alexander Pope

Sound and Sense

by Alexander Pope, 1711

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
But when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar;
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise,
And bid alternate passions fall and rise!

Source: http://www.poetry-online.org/pope_sound_and_sense.htm

Analysis: Alexander Pope was an English Poet of the early 1700's. His work is most often identified with the Baroque period. To the student reader, Pope is often very accessible because of his use of heroic couplets, a form widely used by Dr. Seuss and still used in greeting cards. A heroic couplet is two lines of text immediately together that use end rhyme, they also form a complete thought. We can see in "Sound and Sense" that at the end of each couplet Pope ends either with a semi-colon, colon, period or at the end an exclamation point.
     This poem comes from Pope's first collection, published when he was only twenty three years old, and as a man many described as arrogant, Pope apparently couldn't pass up the chance to praise himself saying that being a writer was not a matter of chance, but of being an artist. He uses a series of Greek mythological characters throughout the rest of the poem. Zephyr was the god of the west wind; Ajax the a tremendously strong warrior from The Iliad; Camilla a Roman character who walked across the corn fields so fast the grass beneath her feet burned; and Timotheus was a Greek poet who added a string to the lyre, bringing much praise and scorn.

Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas

Notes on the Art of Poetry by Dylan Thomas I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on in the world between the covers of books, such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,, such staggering peace, such enormous laughter, such and so many blinding bright lights,, , splashing all over the pages in a million bits and pieces all of which were words, words, words, and each of which were alive forever in its own delight and glory and oddity and light.

Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins

Introduction to Poetry

by: Billy Collins, 1996

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Source: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/

Analysis: Collins is talking about the difference between what the reader experiences in reading a poem, and how teachers ask students to analyze poetry. This poem was the inspiration for the website, since I wanted to give poetry meaningful analysis, while avoiding the temptation Collins warns us of "beating it with a hose." Collins manages to succeed with this poem using a series of simple metaphors. Collins talks about experiencing a poem like an exploration of the unknown. His simple conversational language is typical for Collins' poetry, and common among many contemporary poets.

Beating it with a Hose

The Goal of this blog is to help make poetry more accessible to a large group of people. Each week we will be exploring a subject in poetry among many generations of poets. The poems will be written by the best poets the English language has ever seen, and we will analyze them in simple ways to help open up their meaning to the student and casual reader alike. In addition to talking about interpretation of the poems, if you have poems that you feel should be included with that week's subject let the other readers know about it. In addition the tags we will use should help teachers and students find poems based on themes, poetic devises, and the age it was written in, among others.

This week our topic will be on poetry itself. We will look at 7 poems.

Today we will start with "Introduction to Poetry" by Billy Collins. This poem informs the blogs name and approach.

Monday: "Notes on the Art of Poetry" by Dylan Thomas

Tuesday: "Sound and Sense" by Alexander Pope

Wednesday: Selection from "Ars Poetica" by Horace (translated by Ben Jonson)

Thursday: "Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish

Friday: Selection from "Don Juan" by Lord Byron

Saturday: "There is no Frigate Like a Book" by Emily Dickinson

Next week's theme: Spring

Introduction: The use of poetry to explain poetry can be traced at least back to the Roman poet Horace. His poem "Ars Poetica," which is translated to mean, "On the Art of Poetry," gives a self-referential examination of what it means to be a poet. Today the art form is alive and well in many creative writing class rooms around the world, where students, stuck with a blank page, inevitably revert to talking about their blank page. While no consensus will ever be reached as to what constitutes poetry, many of the best poets have attempted to answer this and other important questions such as what makes good poetry, what effect does poetry have on the reader, and why does a poet write. I hope you enjoy reading and examining this week's poetry.

Source: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20035