Modern American Poetry

(^102) Thomas R. Whitaker
“grass,” then tomorrowthe more specific “stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf”), there
will be a little relapse into: “It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf.” The poem is
on the edgeof clear definition:
But now the stark dignity of
entrance—Still, the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken (CEP,241f)
The kinesthetic mode implicit in the earlier visual imagery fully emerges in
that “grip.” The conclusion renders the mysterious edge of quickening:
movement in stillness, interior action arising from being acted upon, an
awakening that implies descent into the sustaining ground.
Other poems in Spring and Allextend Williams’ study of local culture,
sometimes with fresh economy. There is “To an Old Jaundiced Woman,” for
example, with its spare and metaphorically heightened details—or “Shoot it
Jimmy!” in which the line is a unit of musical measure, with regular beat and
syncopated verbal stress. But most important of these is “To Elsie,” which
focuses three of Williams’ main concerns: a despoiled America, the alienated
and self-alienating human condition, and the ravished Eden of the
imagination.
The considerable power of this poem resides neither in the summary
image of Elsie herself, which occupies so few lines, nor in any texture of
precise particulars. The diction is often general and seemingly flaccid: “devil-
may-care men who have taken / to railroading / out of sheer lust of
adventure,” or “young slatterns, bathed / in filth.” As a dramatic monologue,
however, the poem surmounts such language. Its major focus is the speaker
himself, who sums up—in swift, passionate, and broken utterance—the
human condition in which he participates. The well-worn counters give the
speed and immediacy of actual speech; but, through the careful disposition
of those words, Williams presents the speaker’s fresh awareness:
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and