William Carlos Williams

“The Great Figure”

William’s apparent experience with the Imagists becomes quite apparent in his poetry from the early 1900’s following his partnership with Ezra pound. Imagistic poetry can sound overly simplistic, and lacking of depth, but I suppose that is what is attempted to be portrayed. It is a sort of visual snapshot through words. This poem captures the entire essence of a fire truck rushing in the rain (ironically) to some destination at night while its siren goes. In 33 words (later 29 after line 7 was omitted) Williams paints a movie clip in the minds of readers. In reality this scene would have lasted about 15 seconds, but that is all that he wished to portray evidently. What other meanings this poem could mean, and why he wrote it is beyond me. I may as well just write a poem about this cup of water sitting on my desk and call it an imagist poem, just as well as a painter might paint a still life. It is poetry, and it is art.

Mina Loy “Songs to Joannes”

I get the feeling that Loy is poet equivalent in nature to the impressionist painters of the beginning of the 20^th century. I feel that she uses more emotional words, adjectives and adverbs than there should be in relation to nouns and verbs making the whole poem a fragmented montage of expression rather than meaning. I frequently hear that art is a medium of self expression, and this piece illustrates that quite nicely. This poem has a narrator and is speaking to only one person. It is full of a mixture of innuendos and descriptive imagery. There seems to be an air of secrecy about the poem “…Something only for you / Something that I must not see” (part XIII, lines 9-10). I can’t put a finger on it exactly, but this poem also seems to be glorifying the darker themes associated with love.

Let us be very jealous

Very suspicious

Very Conservative

Very Cruel

                (lines 14-18)

The Wasteland, by T.S. Eliot.

When one thinks of poetry, it is usually a few stanzas, but in the case of the wasteland, Eliot puts a new outlook on poetry. With countless allusions, and varying changes in rhyme scheme throughout the stanzas and a great many characters, it is no wonder it became one of his most notable works. In a preface, I read that Eliot, never intended to derive a certain meaning to his poem, and that he was really just writing what he thought was best. This is comforting, because the poem itself is very difficult to understand, and a greater than renaissance or literature education would be required to grasp it all without the footnotes. I like how Eliot frequently adds a rhyming couplet near, but not on, the end of the stanzas. He frequently makes use of enjambed lines, often times marking the first word of a sentence at the end of a line. there are many literary techniques involved, and this poem is clearly far from anything prosy sounding.

T.S. Eliot “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”

                After reading this lengthy poem, I would like to make a conclusion or moral of the story; that woman should be sought out before a man’s head begins to bald, and that it doesn’t hurt to work out, if only for aesthetic purposes. However, this I feel is not the meaning of the poem itself. What is Important to take note of is that this “Love Song” is an Ironic, a satire even, version of what love poetry has always been before. I think when one first begins their journey of poetry, they stereotype it with love poems; roses are red… etc. In terms of literary elements, the concept of poetry that I think is most important in this poem is the use of metaphor. When J. alludes to his being as a yellow fog is one time (line 15) is one example, or “I should have been a pair of ragged claws” (line 74). In the end he uses the metaphor of a peach to be a woman, or love, and sets up a whole scene in which he describes the women as mermaids. Let’s not forget line 111 when J. says, “No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;” Hamlet is alone in his play by Shakespeare, and although this is more of an allusion, than a metaphor, the comparison qualities are still strong.