Spring and All by William Carlos Williams

By the road to the contagious hospital

under the surge of the blue

mottled clouds driven from the

northeast-a cold wind.  Beyond, the

waste of broad, muddy fields

brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water

the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish

purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy

stuff of bushes and small trees

with dead, brown leaves under them

leafless vines-

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish

dazed spring approaches-

They enter the new world naked,

cold, uncertain of all

save that they enter.  All about them

the cold, familiar wind-

Now the grass, tomorrow

the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined-

It quickens:  clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of

entrance-Still, the profound change

has come upon them:  rooted, they

grip down and begin to waken

--

About the author:

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883.  He began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor.  He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound.  Pound became a great influence in Williams' writing[...].  Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions.  Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh--and singularly American--poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.  His influence as a poet spread slowly during the twenties and thirties, overshadowed, he felt, by the immense popularity of Eliot's "The Waste Land"; however, his work received increasing attention in the 1950s and 1960s as younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility of the language and his openness as a mentor.[...]  Williams's health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey in 1963.