William Carlos Williams was from Rutherford, New Jersey, born in 1883. By trade, he was both a doctor and writer. Williams published poetry, novels, and essays in small magazines. Williams started as an imagist movement poet, “which emphasized simplicity, clarity of expression, and precision through the use of exacting visual images” (poets.org). He later began to write more about the life of everyday people. His poem, “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” follows this writing style.
The poem “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime” is a poem about a women who has lost her husband of thirty five years. Williams writes in the voice of a grieving woman instead of in his own voice. Now that her husband has died, the widow cannot find joy in her yard that she used to love. The widow may even be considering suicide. Williams, writing in free verse, writes a metaphor comparing the grief of a widow to her blooming yard in the springtime setting a tone of great sadness for the widow.
The title itself gives us important clues about this poem. From the beginning before even reading the first line of the poem, we know that it will be a sad story. The widow being someone who has experienced a loss and lament is a word used for passionate grief and sorrow. Springtime is a time of growth and rebirth, the affirming of new life. Williams’ title may lead us to believe that the widow is in the early stages of life without her husband and the early stages of grief. This may be her first spring without her husband. She is exploring the overwhelming feelings of grief over losing her husband, comparing her grief to the new life or blooming of her yard. The widow begins by telling us “Sorrow is my own yard” (Reed). She, the widow is comparing the sorrow and grief that she feels with her yard. She takes ownership of her pain in the phrase “my own”. Springtime is usually a time of renewal and growth, but for the widow it is a time of sorrow and pain, deep sadness because her husband is not there with her this year. The new growth of her yard just “closes round me this year”. Something that is closing around you may make you feel trapped, or uncomfortable. This year her yard brings her feeling of pain. The widow’s
Explain (tell me what image the poem brings to mind)She begins by describing the "death of winter's leaves".
In “Spring and All”, Williams personifies spring, and the season takes on anthropological attributes, to change the dimension of the poem. When Williams brings up the season, he characterizes “spring” as “sluggish and dazed” (line 14-15). He uses these attributes to describe the season in order to personify the spring season, in order to make it more relatable to the reader. Williams’ poem is personified again, in a way that defines the cyclical nature of plant life. Williams describes plants as entering “the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter” (line 16-18) therefore comparing plants to human babies by using the words “naked” and “uncertain”. The use of these keywords furthers his intention for the reader to relate directly with the natural realm. He spends a significant amount of detail in defining the characteristics of dead plants. This image is significant to the poem, as leads us to knowing that winter is truly exanimate and cold. In the context of the entire poem, it tells us that there has to be a death in order for a new life to
Bruce Dawe, a well-known Australian poet, writes about a variety of topics, including death, suicide, cruelty and apathy of society, destruction of the environment, prejudice and the senselessness of war. Dawe uses vivid visual and aural poetic techniques to express his emotions towards the theme of the poem. This helps the reader grasp a better understanding of what Dawe is writing about. The poems being discussed are his poem ‘Life Cycle’ which describes the life of being like an AFL player; the poem ‘Soliloquy for One Dead’ known as a very emotive poem, which deals with the thought of loss and the feeling of grief and lastly, ‘Planning a Time Capsule’ discussing the views Dawe has on what humans are doing to the environment.
In ‘I kneel to pick frail melancholy flowers among ashes and loam’ a tone of loneliness and sadness is established as the persona enters. Harwood describes the violets as ‘frail’ and ‘melancholy’, terms that arn’t usually associated with flowers. This is also explored in the juxtaposition of ‘ashes’ and ‘loam’. Ash is symbolic of death and decay which contradicts the ‘loam’, symbolic of life and birth. The persona’s dark and unpleasant perceptions reveal their uncertainty and state of mind. The present tense indicates the persona’s adulthood and their sense of longing and unsatisfaction conveyed through the nostalgic delivery of
The seasons in the poem also can be seen as symbols of time passing in her life. Saying that in the height of her life she was much in love and knew what love was she says this all with four words “summer sang in me.” And as her life is in decline her lovers left her, this can be told by using “winter” as a symbol because it is the season of death and decline from life and the birds left the tree in winter. The “birds” can be seen as a literal symbol of the lovers that have left her or flown away or it can have the deeper meaning that in the last stages of our life all of our memories leave us tittering to our selves.
Spring reflects a deep communion with the natural world, offering a fresh viewpoint of the commonplace or ordinary things in our world by subverting our expected and accepted views of that object which in turn presents a view that operates from new assumptions. Oliver depicts the natural world as a celebration of wonder and awe, the almost insignificant wonders capturing the true beauty nature beholds.
The poem describes the weather and its effect on cotton flower by pointing out the dying branches and vanishing cotton. The image of insufficiency, struggle and death parallel the oppression of African American race. The beginning of the poem illustrates the struggle and suffering of the cotton flower; which represent the misery of African Americans and also gives an idea that there is no hope for them. But at the end the speaker says “brown eyes that loves without a trace of fear/ Beauty so sudden for that time of year” (lines 13-14). This shows the rise of the African American race, and their fight against racism. The author used mood, tone and
By the end of the poem there is another shift in tone. The tone takes on a more hopeful meaning. Now, Bryant uses the spring season to compare to a new age. He mentions, “The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes/ In the full strength of years, matron, and maid,/ The bow'd with age, the infant in the smiles.”(68-70) The rebirth of human life compares to nature in the sense that when nature is reborn in springtime everything turns green. The reader ends the poem with an enlightened sense of feeling instead of the dark and gloomy feeling they felt at the beginning of the poem.
This poem Spring Sorrow by Rupert Brooke might have connected with Ireland because of his somewhat lonely childhood. He lost both his parents by the age of 15, and lived both world wars. This seems like a sorrowful lifetime. The subtle dissonance in the piano part illustrates the meaning, but it goes a step farther to highlight specific words in the text, like “pain,” “heart” and “spring.” This dissonance also often comes at the end of lines, showing that the sorrow will never truly end, but will be dreaded until it inevitably comes back next spring.
The tone of the speaker was very sad, cold and lonely for misses his father. Evidence that support that he misses his father can be found in the poem. The second and the third stanza reflects how he feels about the weather and I think he meant the fall season in which he uses a cold tone “the garden is bare now. The ground is cold, brown and old”, he clearly just mentioning the negative sounding around fall. A lonely tone also found in the last few stanzas, when he mentioned that his food is almost cooked “White rice steaming, almost done. Sweet green peas fried in onions. Shrimp braised in sesame oil and garlic. And my own loneliness. What more could I, a young man, want.”. The part where he said, “And my own
To start off the analysis, the setting of the entire poem is significant. Though the poem takes place in a house, the atmosphere the house is set in is also important. The month is September which is a month of fall which can be seen as a symbol for decline. It definitely insinuates that the poem is leading towards death. Line 1 has “September rain falls on the house” which gives the feeling of a dark and cold night with a storm on top of that. To further develop that, Bishop gives us the failing light in line 2 to also give us an idea of the grandmother’s struggle. Bishop uses the cyclical theme of changing seasons to show the unending nature of what is transpiring within the
Heartbreaks, we all get them and they hurt a lot. It takes us to an extreme where we would shut down other people or just give up on love. In Midwinter Blues the author talks about how a woman was abandoned in a holiday by her boyfriend or husband. It had really affected her because she states that if a man loves a woman then there is no reason to leave. But through it all, he would forever be the only man that she would love till the day she dies. Towards the end, she uses a phrase that helps us feel what she is feeling. She talks about how she is going to buy a rose bud and plant it in her back door so when she dies nobody would need to buy her flowers. I see this last part as she would rather depend on herself than depend on other people.
The author uses several types of poetic terms in this poem to develop the theme of a person accepting grief in their life. One poetic term she used was a metaphor. The metaphor is “Ah, grief, I should not treat you like a homeless dog.” Although grief is not a type of dog, the author wants us to think of grief in the same way that we would think about a homeless dog. The same phrase can also be considered a simile. The author intends for us to think of grief as being like a homeless dog. Another way that the author expressed her theme was by using a specific kind of repetition like anaphora. Several words are repeated at the beginning of two or more lines and sentences in the poem. These words are “you,” “your,” “my,” and “and.” There are also several phrases that are repeated throughout the poem. These phrases are “your own,” “I should,” and “you need.” She uses these repetitive words and phrases in the poem to describe a conversation that a person is having with grief.
Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi on March 26, 1911 to Cornelius and Edwina Williams. He was the second of three children and was raised mainly by his mother because of his complicated relationship with his father. Aside from not seeing his father much, he had an overall happy childhood while living in Mississippi. He struggled with the family’s move to St. Louis but used that and his parents’ bad marriage to his advantage and began writing. He attended the University of Missouri for a little while but was taken out of school because his father discovered that he had a girlfriend at the University. He moved back with his father and worked for him at a shoe company. During that time Williams fell into a depression
Then, Williams finds a way to change the depressing mood of his poem by using specific words to convey feelings of hope. He does this in his fourth stanza with the lines: “Lifeless in appearance, sluggish/dazed spring approaches” (L14-15). Williams is saying that the plants, the trees, and the vines only appear to be dead, but they are not. Once again imagery is being used here. Also, what is going to save this otherwise seemingly desolate land is the approaching spring; “sluggish” and “dazed” as it may be, it is imminent – life is forthcoming. Williams also proffers up more hope with the lines: “One by one objects are defined/rooted, they/grip down and begin to awaken” (L22,26-27).