William Carlos Williams’s Calling Card

Sharp, Clear Images and Short, Direct Lines

It’s definitely up to you to decide how clear and easy Williams’s poems are in general. There’s no doubt that some of his other poetry gets a lot weirder and more experimental. In any case, no matter how strange the poems get, you can usually tell a Williams piece by the way he uses images. Like in this poem, the individual lines are mostly clear and direct. These short lines are meant to create a mental picture immediately. Even if he mixes up the order of the pictures, each one stays in sharp focus. That’s Williams’s style, and you’ll find it all over his poems.