The+Widow’s+Lament+in+Springtime

__**William Carlos Williams:**__


Williams was a PuertoRican-American Poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright who was involved with the modernist and imagism movements. Modernist poetry is the movement where writers desire to break with the past and reject literary traditions that seem outdated. The Imagism movement that favors precision in imagery and the use of clear, sharp language. He also had great interest in painting as well, which would influence the detailed imagery in his poems. He is considered a revolutionary figure in American Poetry. Williams won many accolades, such as the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, The United States Poet Laureate, the Bollingen Prize, the National Book Award for Poetry, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Metal for Poetry. In addition to his poetry career, he was also a physician who practiced pediatrics as well as general medicine at St. Mary's General Hospital, in Passaic, NJ.
 * Born:** September 17, 1883, Rutherford, NJ
 * Died:** March 4, 1963, Rutherford, NJ

__**"The Widow's Lament in Springtime" page 611 Published in 1921:**__
Sorrow is my own yard where the new grass flames as it has flamed often before but not with the cold fire that closes round me this year. Thirty-five years I lived with my husband. The plum tree is white today with masses of flowers. Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and color some bushes yellow and some red but the grief in my heart is stronger than they for though they were my joy formerly, today I notice them and turned away forgetting. Today my son told me that in the meadows, at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance, he saw trees of white flowers. I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them.

__Theme:__

 * Death
 * The widow speaks about how she is dealing with the loss of her husband, and she is not doing very well.
 * Man's relation to the natural world.
 * The poem takes place in the spring, and everything is coming to life once again; however, for this life and beauty to happen there needed to be death (fall and winter).
 * Seasons symbolic of a life cycle, and the descriptions of nature are symbolic for the pain she is suffering.

__**Literary** **Devices:**__

 * Visual Imagery:**
 * "Masses of flowers load the cherry branches and some bushes yellow and some red."
 * "at the edge of the heavy woods in the distance"


 * Personification:**
 * "with the cold fire that closes round me this year"
 * "where the new grass flames as it has flamed"


 * Metaphor:**
 * "Sorrow is my own yard"


 * Diction:**
 * "cold fire"
 * "grief"
 * "sorrow"
 * "sink"

__**Meter:**__

 * None. It is a free verse!
 * Mimics a way a person would speak
 * Enjambment: breaks off in short little lines
 * Emphasizes the meaning of dullness and nothingness

__**Emotion:**__

 * Tone:
 * A depressed tone, as the woman is missing her husband deeply
 * Emotion:
 * The widow is telling her story of how everything is blossoming and the grass is turning green, but she is unhappy. Almost like she is a friend or a neighbor talking to the reader about her feelings. "I feel that I would like to go there and fall into those flowers and sink into the marsh near them."

"Widow's Lament in Springtime." Shmoop, http://www.shmoop.com/widows-lament-in-springtime/rhyme-form-meter.html/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.

"William Carlos Williams." Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Carlos_Williams/. Accessed 21 Mar. 2017.