Poems comparison

“Spring and All” by W.C Williams

The author constantly discovers things throughout the poem, just like the doctor with a patient "Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted they grip down and begin to awaken". He realizes that the movement of life never stops and that the new born have to grip to what they see in order to defend themselves and struggle to survive. He has no romantic thoughts about realities of life and views spring more as a physical act of nature.

“Spring and All” is primarily descriptive. Though the imagery is rich and detailed, it is not lush in the traditional manner of poems to spring. No blossoms, buzzing bees, or fragrant perfumes animate the poem. Instead, the imagery focuses on precision, on a realistic rather than affectionate evocation of reasonable detail. The items delineated early in the poem seem to be distributed randomly: “patches of standing water,” “the scattering of tall trees,” “twiggy/ stuff of bushes.” After the appearance of spring in line 15, objects take on the definition and are enumerated “one by one,” as individual living things.

The stark visual imagery is complemented by the tactile imagery of coldness. The wind is twice described as “cold,” and the word “cold” modifies “they” — presumably fresh spring plants — of line 16. This repetition is significant: The warmth of spring is only anticipated in the poem. This quality is expressed by the unusual word choice of “familiar”, to describe the cold wind of line 19. The setting unites birth and death (Whitaker, Pp. 25).

The adjective “naked” suggests human birth; indeed, one can read this poem (written by a pediatrician who assisted at hundreds of deliveries) as a poem about the birthing process. Perhaps the ambiguous words “and all” of the title connect the traditional images of spring to the conditions that precede it and connect the burgeoning of the natural world with the human life cycle. In a poem, dominated by natural imagery, abstract terms such as “dignity” and “profound” in the concluding lines stand out. These more abstract words, with their connotations of importance, contrast with the realist assembling of drab natural details that characterize the poem. The poet is a clear-eyed observer, who, by paying attention to the early signs of spring growth in a muddy field, is allowed a glimpse of “the profound change” represented by coming alive. The concreteness of the bulk ...