Earn Duangjarin Sirijongkolthong

Mr.Matthew Bishop

English 1202

2 October 2017

The Contradiction

Williams, a man who is not only a well-known poet but also a successful poet, has

composed myriad beautiful poems through his life. One of the greatest American poets in 20th

century, William Carlos Williams was born on 17 September 1883 and died on 4 March 1963.

Williams was born in the strict family that his parents put him expectation and sent him to

medical school for his success. Although he had occupation as a doctor, he spent his leisure time

in writing literature—poems. Later, he started imagist movement with Pound, but he later

disagreed with Pound as Williams wanted to have solely American poetic style. Thus, he joined

modernism movement. As a modernist, he focused his poems on reality—objects that can be

seen and touched, so most of Williams’ poems usually consisted of concrete words, such as

flowers, white curtains, glass tray in “Nantucket”, which used to express his ideas and

feeling.Not only that he uses the words to express his ideas but he also uses it to show the

contradiction. In “Compliant” and “Danse Russe”, Williams typically uses irony to contrast

emotion and action.

Williams uses the word “Joy!” as to mock the distressing action of giving birth. In the

beginning of the poem, Williams is called to a woman house who is going to labor her tenth child

in the past midnight. While he is watching woman who is sick and vomiting, he thinks about her

misery, but he also describes it as a joy. In the poem it says, “a tenth child. Joy! Joy!” (15). It can
be seen that in the beginning of the poem he describes the setting around him as dim and

depressed. However, he interrupts the feeling of dimness by using the contrast word—“Joy!”—

because he wants to show that even though the room and people are darken, he does not concern

about the dilemma that the woman faces ,and he sees it as the wonderfulness situation in giving

birth.

In “Danse Russe”, Williams displays sarcasm by contrasting the narrator’s loneliness

with his vigorous action. In the beginning of the poem, he describes the setting around him that

everyone is sleeping because it is still in the morning, but he is awake, dancing, and singing in

his north room. Williams writes, “I am lonely, lonely. / I was born to be lonely, / I am best

so!” (12-15). Normally, lonely means unhappy because a person is alone or does not have

anyone to talk to. (Longman, n.d.). In contrast, Williams uses this word to show that he is happy

to dance and sing alone by keeping repeating this word to emphasize how excited he is, and he

uses exclamation mark in the last line as to stress and reflect his strong emotion of happiness.

Also, singing and dancing are amusement activities that people usually do them with others, but

he choses to be isolate to perform them, and he does not feel sad but rather he is joyful to be

alone.

In conclusion, Williams uses irony to show the contrast of his emotion and action. In

“Complaint”, he mock the miserable action of the pregnant woman with the delightful of his

emotion as to show the importance of giving birth. Also, in “Danse Russe”, he says that he is

lonely ,but he is actually ecstatic in dancing and singing alone.The history of his reputation in

writing poem is one of the most remarkable and considered as the truly modernist poet,

especially, that he uses different irony to describe his physical action and emotion as it can be
seen in many other poems such as “This Is Just To Say”. His the poems he wrote not only

famous in his era ,but they have a great influence for modern people to learn from his poetic

device.
Jungfraujoch

Mountains through the window

fern and snow

passed by engine tram —

Smell of cold —

Snowflakes of mid december —

Fall on the hands

the ski boots, the mask

carried on, by which

people are walking — And the

crystal clear lake
 Reflection

In this project, I decided to use William Carlos Williams as my mentor in writing

poem ,and I had used my personal experience to compose one. My poem is called

“Jungfraujoch” which comes from the name of the highest peak in the North of Switzerland.

There are three main reasons why I chose to write the poem about this mountain. First and

foremost, it came from my impression in visiting this place. When I was 14 year-old, I visited

Switzerland in the mid December, and my parents brought me to Jungfrau as we were going for

skiing. To get to the top of the mountain, we needed to take a tram to the train station, so I could

take pleasure in seeing the landscape which was so beautiful and incredible for me that I had

never imagined of this wonderful place before, which made me feel like I was in a fairy tale

Another reason is that I spent a great time with my family at Jungfraujoch and did many

activities together such as skiing and driving. The last reason is that this place opened the world

for me and made me realize some facts because before I visited this place, I did not think and

concern about the beauty of nature, which was so powerful, and I started changing my aspect

about important of nature that it really needed to be protected as to keep the world beautiful and

for the people in the future generation.

As I had Williams as my mentor, I used some of his literary devices to compose this

poem. First of all, I chose to use “Nantucket” as my guide poem because this poem describes

about the setting and objects in the hotel room where Williams spent his vacation which similar

to mine since I also described about my holiday. It can be seen that I used rhymes which are

“Mountains” and “fern” which have ’n’ sound at the end of the words ,also “window” and

“snow” which have ‘w’ sound in the first stanza. Also, I used the strong line breaks to create the
movement of the poem in the second, third, and fourth stanza. Most importantly, I used the

concrete words in my poems, such as ski boots and mask, as to show the way of modernists.

Lastly, the verb in my poem is significant because it creates the image that people are walking

which helps to depict the setting.

As I experienced studying about Williams’ technique, one thing that surprised me was

that he can used simple words to convey big idea in his poem which I think that his talent is so

powerful and not many people can be like him. Normally, I usually read poems when I had

leisure time ,so I was very enjoy that I had read a lot of Williams’s poem. In my opinion, I think

that I need to make my poem valuable for the world just like Williams did which means that I

need more practices in writing the poems, and what I had not notice earlier is that I am an

creative writer because I usually think what to write quickly and my peers say that I have good

ideas. Lastly, Williams has a big influence on me:he makes me think out of the box and make me

understand more deeply about poetic world.