Danse Russe
BY WIL LI AM C ARL OS WIL LI AM S
Known for minimalist poetry, William Carlos Williams was not only one of the greatest
Modernist and Imagist poets, he was also Passaic General Hospital’s chief of pediatrics,
which strongly influenced his poetry. In fact, all of his poems are based upon his own life
experiences.
According to Williams, his most well-known poem, The Red Wheelbarrow from his 1923
collection Spring and All,
“sprang from affection for an old Negro named Marshall. He had been a fisherman, caught
porgies off Gloucester. He used to tell me how he had to work in the hold in freezing
weather, standing ankle deep in cracked ice packing down the fish. He said he didn’t feel
cold. He never felt cold in his life until just recently. I liked that man, and his son Milton
almost as much. In his back yard I saw the red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white
chickens. I suppose my affection for the old man somehow got into the writing.”
His greatest inspirations were John Keats, Walt Whitman, and his friend and fellow
modernist poet Ezra Pound. Williams' second series, The Tempers, was published with the
help of him. He was also great friends with Helda Doolitle (H.D.), whom worked with him
and Pound to start the imagist movement.
Meanwhile, the poet he did not have excellent terms with was T.S. Eliot, whom he believed
to be his rival. Eliot’s release of The Wasteland threatened Williams' definition of modernist
poetry, but at the same time, influenced his collection Spring and All greatly.
Williams himself was a great inspiration to Allen Ginsberg, whom he wrote an introduction
for in Ginsberg’s famous Howl and Other Poems.
Epithets: a flame-white disc / silken mists / shining trees
Metaphor: the sun is a flame-white disc
Alliteration: singing softly
Repetition: sleeping / I / lonely / my
Polysyndeton: and the baby and Kathleen
Asyndeton: dance naked, grotesquely
Enumeration: my arms, my face, my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
Rhetorical question: Who shall say I am not the happy genius of my household?
If when my wife is sleeping
And the baby and Kathleen
Are sleeping
The speaker is a husband and father. He is isolated in his own
house, not only physically in his “north room”, but also as the sole male figure in a
family of females or sexually ambiguous babies.
Kathleen refers to Kathleen McBride, the Williams' nanny, which places William Carlos
Williams immediately in the position of speaker. This is a personal poem.
And the sun is a flame-white disc
In silken mists
Above shining trees,-
Beautiful morning imagery. The speaker is waking up to a rare moment of solitude and
quiet.
Dance naked, grotesquely
Before my mirror
This behavior isn’t what society would expect from a man, let alone a doctor and a
father. The use of “grotesque” in this instance refers to uninhibited passion completely
divorced from the constraints of society.
"I am lonely, lonely
I was born to be lonely
I am best so!"
Clearly, Williams is not alone, with a wife in bed, a new baby and the nanny to keep his
house together. His loneliness spawns from a lack of personal identity. He feels lonely
because as a man he is unable to connect with the women in his house.
If I admire my arms, my face
My shoulders, flanks, buttocks
Against the yellow drawn shades,-
Williams then stands in the North room, admiring himself in the mirror. He’s no Adonis,
but he revels in his body. To him, it is beautiful even in its age.
Who shall say I am not
The happy genius of my household?
Williams brings the poem back to the beginning, reminding the reader that he is still the
head of his household despite the previous moment of reckless abandon. He is able to
play “contradictory” roles.
