146 PA RT T W O
exercise in metaphor jumps straight from old age to nature—a feat of imagina-
tion. Usually figures of speech go back and touch base with what they’re figures
for. Take Shakespeare:
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.“To Waken an Old Lady” finesses old age to immerse in an ecologic drama of
small birds surviving harsh weather. Immersing in nature ’s doings turns out to
be the real prescription, after all. His mother lived to one hundred and two.
Springtime in the northeast is welcome but slow in coming, since “April is
the cruellest month,” Eliot says, “stirring dull roots with spring rain.” Echoing
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Dante, Milton, Spenser, et al., The Waste
Landmightily spurred Williams to compose an American antidote, Spring and
All,part prose manifesto and part poem sequence. “There is a constant barrier
between the reader and his consciousness of immediate contact with the world,”
William Carlos Williams
Reprinted courtesy of New Directions Publishing Corporation.