EMAIL<\/a> | SYLLABUS<\/a> | POLICIES<\/a> | QUESTIONS<\/a> | PRESENTATIONS<\/a> | JOURNALS<\/a> | PAPER<\/a> | EXAM<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Note: see Journals page for details on keeping your journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assigned: Williams, William Carlos. From Spring and All<\/em> (Norton Vol. D 346-47); Poems: \u201cQueen-Anne\u2019s Lace\u201d (Vol. D 305); \u201cSpring and All\u201d (Vol. D 306-07); \u201cTo Elsie\u201d (Vol. D 307-09); \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d (Vol. D 309); \u201cThe Dead Baby\u201d (Vol. D 309-10); \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d (Vol. D 310); \u201cA Sort of a Song\u201d (Vol. D 310); \u201cBurning the Christmas Greens\u201d (Vol. D 311-13); \u201cLandscape with the Fall of Icarus\u201d (Vol. D 313).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cQueen-Anne\u2019s Lace\u201d (Norton Vol. D 305)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. In W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cQueen-Anne\u2019s Lace,\u201d the speaker gives whiteness a connotation that differs somewhat from the one we often give it, the simple notion of purity and innocence. What do whiteness and other colors or color references mean in this poem? If someone — me, for example, right now — asked you bluntly what the poem is \u201cabout,\u201d how would you respond?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSpring and All\u201d (Norton Vol. D 306-07)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cSpring and All\u201d is of course partly a landscape description — it helps us to visualize a patch of land alongside the road to a hospital as winter begins to turn into spring. But that isn\u2019t the most interesting thing about this poem. What does it tell us about natural process, and about the relationship between natural process and the speaker\u2019s own consciousness as a perceiver of the natural world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTo Elsie\u201d (Norton Vol. D 307-09)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. In W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cTo Elsie,\u201d the name apparently refers to Elsie Borden, Williams\u2019 mentally challenged maid, but the poem is sometimes read as representing America\u2019s failure to imagine itself in a sustainable or coherent way. What can you find in the poem\u2019s references to Elsie and others as well as its landscape description that might support such an interpretation? Or if you have some other way of understanding it, what\u2019s the basis of your own reading?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d (Norton Vol. D 309)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. W. C. Williams himself, in a recorded March 19, 1952 interview at Princeton University, jokingly called \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d a \u201cperfect poem,\u201d and suggested (seriously enough, I think) that \u201cIt means just the same as the opening lines of {Keats\u2019} Endymion:<\/em> \u2018A thing of beauty is a joy forever\u2019.\u201d What do you suppose he meant by talking about the poem in that way? Furthermore, what is it that \u201cdepends\u201d on the red wheelbarrow, and why so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe Dead Baby\u201d (Norton Vol. D 309-10)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. In W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cThe Dead Baby,\u201d what perspective is offered on the departed child as well as the suffering of the parents? How do you understand the poem\u2019s conclusion from lines 19-24, with their reference to displaying the child for visitors somewhat like a curio-item in the parents\u2019 home — what kind of strategy does the poem seem to imply for coping with the child\u2019s premature passing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d (Norton Vol. D 310)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. In what way does W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d challenge the ordinary way of thinking about poetic form and subject-matter? If someone were to say, \u201cbut this isn\u2019t poetry at all!\u201d how might you defend it? Or would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. With regard to his \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d poem, in a June 1950 interview with John W. Gerber, Williams himself says, \u201ceverything in our lives, if it\u2019s sufficiently authentic to our lives and touches us deeply enough . . . is capable of being organized into a form which can be a poem.\u201d He also says it would be a bonus to set it down in \u201cconventional metrical form.\u201d Do you favor something like this rationale for writing poetry with such unassuming, humble subject matter? Why or why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. In his \u201cPreface to Lyrical Ballads,<\/em>\u201c William Wordsworth references the following deliberately foolish \u201cpoem\u201d from Samuel Johnson: \u201cI put my hat upon my head \/ And walked into the Strand, \/ And there I met another man \/ Whose hat was in his hand.\u201d Wordsworth explains why it doesn\u2019t measure up thus: \u201cthe matter<\/em> expressed in Dr. Johnson\u2019s stanza is contemptible. The proper method of treating trivial and simple verses \u2026 is not to say, this is a bad kind of poetry, or this is not poetry; but this wants sense; it is neither interesting in itself, nor can lead to anything interesting \u2026.\u201d Do you suppose that Wordsworth would say the same thing, more or less, about W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cThis Is Just to Say\u201d? Why or why not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA Sort of a Song\u201d (Norton Vol. D 310)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. What relationship between words and things does W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cA Sort of a Song\u201d advocate? How is the metaphor of the saxifrage plant useful to the poet in that regard? What about the comparison between \u201csnakes\u201d and the words of a poem\u2014how does that help deepen our sense of the relationship the poet may be asserting between words and the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. In W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cA Sort of a Song,\u201d the speaker says in a parenthetical musing, \u201cNo ideas \/ but in things\u201d (9-10). In saying that, what basic perspective on the nature and source of \u201cideas\u201d does the speaker apparently reject?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBurning the Christmas Greens\u201d (Norton Vol. D 311-13)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 11. W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cBurning the Christmas Greens\u201d explores the meaning of the practice whereby one goes out and cuts little branches from trees to serve as wreaths and other Christmas decorations; some time after the holiday is done, one burns this greenery, as here it is cast into a fireplace. How does the speaker draw out the value of these ornaments, beyond their obvious decorative uses? How are they made to relate to the great power of the seasonal cycles (nature\u2019s pageantry of perpetual death and rebirth), and to the renewal of the human spirit itself?<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLandscape with the Fall of Icarus\u201d (Norton Vol. D 313)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 12. W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cLandscape with the Fall of Icarus\u201d is partly a description of the famous Brueghel painting in which Icarus, his wax wings having melted because he flew too close to the sun, is shown just as he has fallen into the sea where he drowns. What forces referenced in the poem seem to strive to prevent the title event from taking center stage? Even so, how does Williams keep the death of Icarus before us or in our thoughts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 13. The Daedalus and Icarus story from Greek mythology is often interpreted as relevant to the fate of flights of poetic imagination. How might we enlist that insight in reading W. C. Williams\u2019 \u201cLandscape with the Fall of Icarus\u201d? How, that is, might the poem be understood as a meditation on the limitations of artistic and literary representation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS QUESTIONS FOR E222 AMERICAN LITERATURECSU FULLERTON, FALL 2014 Note: see Journals page for details on keeping your journal. Assigned: Williams, William Carlos. From Spring and All (Norton Vol. D 346-47); Poems: \u201cQueen-Anne\u2019s Lace\u201d (Vol. D 305); \u201cSpring and All\u201d (Vol. D 306-07); \u201cTo Elsie\u201d (Vol. D 307-09); \u201cThe Red Wheelbarrow\u201d (Vol. D 309); \u201cThe Dead […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"wf_page_folders":[11],"class_list":["post-781","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4739,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/781\/revisions\/4739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"wf_page_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ajdrake.com\/academic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_page_folders?post=781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}