Apisara Yooyuen

Matthew Bishop

1202

3 Oct 2017

Natural Images with Failure in Williams Poem

Have you ever felt disheartened because of not attaining desired outcome? Some

people keep doing to reach their goal even it is impossible. William Carlos Williams was an

American poet who displayed despond from futile endeavor through poetry. His poetic style

is imagism and modernism; therefore, the content of stories and mood in poems are revealed

directly. One of his techniques is using images to transmit an idea of the poem to readers.

Williams usually writes poems influenced by his feeling in that period, and many poems

written by him contain negative emotion especially despair. In Williams poems, natural

images are reflected with futility to capture an emotion of hopelessness.

In The Desolate Field, Williams describes the image of a goat finding food with

emptiness to reveal despair as a tone of the poem. Williams wrote this poem after world war I

finished for two years. The sadness and pain were left after there were many dead bodies by

the war. The narrator in this poem presents feeling of the war. He looks at the sky while

feeling lost and sad. For example, when the author narrates the image of the goat, it says, In

the tall, dried grasses / a goat stirs / with nozzle searching the ground. (5-7). From revealing an

action of the goat that searches grasses for eating from dried area, hopelessness is created by

failure of foraging. By using nose and mouth of a goat to find grasses on the ground, it shows

a sense of difficulty while it is seeking for its meal. A goat normally takes time on finding and

eating food since the goat uses a part of its head to search for it. The way that the goat forages
is stirring which is directionless behavior. Moreover, the goat will not be able to obtain any

food in this situation that there are only dead grasses even it still keeps foraging. The image of

the goat expresses its despair as an emotion of the narrator. He intends to solve his question

about how to define abstractions such as love. However, he cannot answer even he

continuously thinks about it related to unsuccessful feeling built from image of the goat. So,

the tone of hopelessness in this poem is emphasized by using image of the goat.

In Willow Poem, nature imagery of leaves of the willow tree is used for building

sadness of being unsuccessful. The poem is also written in the same year as The Desolate

Field which is year 1921. It is about a willow tree in the early autumn. Its foliage changes

color into orange, and almost be unsteady. In the text it says, The leaves cling and grow

paler, / swing and grow paler / over the swirling waters of the river / as if loath to let go, (6-9).

By using the image of willows leaves, a sense of sadness is built because of an unsuccessful

wish. This quote also demonstrates that these foliage does not want to fall down from the tree.

The word cling is used to show the action of them to hold themselves along with the willow

tree. However, as time passes, their color fade away following the autumn season. The wind

blew willows foliage being more unstable. Williams writes, the last to let go and fall / into

the water and on the ground. (13-14), detailing the leaves finally leaving the tree since they

cannot oppose the nature. In this period, all natural factors such as weather and temperature

do not support desire of the leaves. Because of the season, even the leaves try to stick on the

tree but defoliation must occur which generates the sadness of unsuccessful attempt.

Therefore, foliage image is applied to represent despond and powerlessness.

 Williams applies nature imagery expressing with ineffectiveness to highlight

despondency. The Desolate Field has a futility of a goat forming hopeless tone; also, sadness

in Willow Poem is built through the picture of a willow trees foliage holding itself. These

poems contain natural image which rise the pointlessness of it leading to a feeling of

discouragement. After people put hard effort to do what can aim to their destination, but it is

unsuccess, they habitually despair. Hence, failure usually lead people to melancholy and loss.
This New Morning

At that time, the green grasses become hot in Spring

I sit on a rock among the wind
and breath in the fresh air and grasses
This new morning is good. I like it!

I kneel down to touch warm soil

then dig a little hole and put many old photographs in it
To not see them again, the hole is covered up
On the tree, a bird when it matures, and be ready to fly
leaves its nest flying to the sky far and far

In the morning, the sun shine to my eyes

Flowers are competing to blossom
showing their pretty bold colors
even if many days ago, they were filled
with ice crystals, and danced
in the midst of frozen

It is a time to begin
Lets seek happiness
Lets sing it
along with flowers and birds
Reflection:

My poem named This New Morning was created inspired by studying and understanding
Williams poetry. The theme of this poem is a thought in a positive way and the beginning of
new life. When I thought about the story of this poem, I used my experience in the past with
the real feeling appearing. I put my emotion happening when I bring back this memory in my
poem as a tone of it since I notice that Williams put an emotion based on the time that he
wrote in that poem. For the example, the emotion from World War I influenced the tone of his
poems.

The purpose of my poem is to encourage readers who have faced a bad experience to start
thinking positive rather than be stagnant with it. The beginning of new life as a new morning
in new day is emphasized in the poem. The setting of the poem is among a beautiful nature in
the morning in spring. I put myself as a narrator in this poem. I indulge in the spring nature
and try to forget every bad experiences in the past.

I started the first stanza with introducing about the hot weather in spring. The reason that I
decided to apply spring season is to represent the beginning the new things. Spring is the
season coming after winter which is the time that nature is covered by cold and almost trees
defoliated. So, when it turns to spring, changing from defoliation to blooming remind me
about restarting of life. I sit among the nature and indulge in the spring nature breathing in the
fresh air. I used fresh air to give a sense of clean and relaxing. I wanted to introduce my
story with positive mood like calm and peaceful.

I used an enjambment in this poem because I wanted to make this poem in free style
representing freedom, relaxing, and unlimited life. I also made most stanzas in the poem
containing unequal lines for this purpose. At the end of the first stanza, I put punctuation
which is the exclamation mark at the end of the line. I like it! presents the emotion that I
really like this morning supporting the sentence This new morning is good., and the
exclamation mark was used to show excited feeling when a new day come. In the second
stanza, I mostly described about the action of the me as a narrator and the images of nature. I
dig a small hole in the soil and put my old photos in it. Leaving old photographs in the hole
is like when I wanted to discard the memory in the past that I do not want to remember any
more.

I used an image of a bird reaching maturity to express the tone of this poem. When the bird
grows up and can fly, then it will be able to leave the nest. This action of the bird reveals that
the time we being free and able to leave old memory behind will come in some day. I tried to
apply this image to show narrators hopefulness. It presents the beginning of life as well since
the bird starts adult life by leaving its nest. Moreover, I used repetition in flying to the sky far
and far to highlight the word far. This word displays that the bird will fly very far away
never coming back like when I leave my bad memory in the hole forever.

I, as a narrator, describe the nature surrounding including weather, sunshine, and flowers. I
applied personification of flowers competing to capture jolly feeling since competing is an
action commonly used with human showing their merry mood. I created joyful in the story.
However, I mentioned about the flowers before the ending of winter to build a negative
emotion. This situation is included to bring the readers back to when we have bad experiences
in the old days. I wrote nature imagery of flowers such as ice crystals to reveal the flowers in
an extreme cold weather which is bad for plants presenting when people were in bad
situation. I included the word dance as a personification of flowers to demonstrate that the
flowers cannot stop moving in an extreme cold.

In the last stanza, after I just talked about bad old memory in previous stanza, I tried to
encourage readers that we can restart and leave poor experiences behind. I repeated Lets to
stress inducing readers. I wanted to make to make these lines continue and create a melody
showing joy and happiness, so I made an alliteration by using word choice. I chose the words
seek and sing. I ended this poem with the personification of flowers and birds to connect all
emotion formed by their images to the feeling of the narrator.

I am really interested in Williams style that he used natural imagery to express emotion as a
tone of the poem. I think that this way is a good choice to reveal mood and tone because it is
easy for readers to imagine the picture reflecting feeling. This is his technique that I most
enjoyed, so it inspired me when I created my poem. I really wanted to include this style in my
poem, so I applied natural images in my poem as well to create positive emotion such as
hopefulness and happiness. Besides, his line break usually builds an emotion which matches
with the tone of the poem. I decided to use enjambment to form free and relax tone of the
poem. From studying his poem, I found that he did not write abstract words much. He mostly
chose simple words instead. His style as an imagist influenced me to make my poem being
simple but also include the words or images that lead to tone of the poem. Personification that
he used is another technique that I am really interested. He created an action of the nature
such as tree building mood and he related that mood to the narrators emotion. I tried using
this technique too. By learning Williams poetry, the main lesson that I got from him is
knowing how to use many kinds of techniques including line break, imagery, personification,
and others to lead to same mood and tone of the poem.