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William Carlos Williams : Craft Analysis Essay

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William Carlos Williams: Craft Annotation The poet William Carlos Williams stands apart as one of the most influential poets of modern times. Williams' poetic voice composes a unique picture in which the reader is immersed in the poet's world of sensory perception. Williams believed that everything in our lives, no matter how simple, can be organized into poetic verse. Through Williams' rather simplistic straightforward language and observations he speaks directly to ordinary individuals. Williams' poetry utilizes objectivism to craft the poem into an object and to emphasize the action of perception. The poems, "Poem," "The Great Figure," and "Spring and All" are each representative of Williams' ability to craft language and imagery into …show more content…

With a few exceptions, the poem primarily follows the form of accentual-syllabic verse. The majority of lines are composed of three syllables, most often two unstressed and one stressed. Using a combination of structural technique and descriptive language, Williams emphasizes the action of visual perception. Similarly, in Williams' poem, "The Great Figure," he reinforces the idea of brevity over elaboration in order to draw the reader into a moment of pure objectivism. Williams employs a visually disjointed poetic pattern to express the minute details of an ordinary scene. Between line six and line nine, Williams places single words as enjambed lines. The power of each word is emphasized by its solitary line placement. The lines "firetruck," "moving," and "unheeded" each ends with mute sounds (Williams 1). The sound at the end of each line creates a hard stop, further emphasizing the solitary power of each word. Additionally, "moving" and "tense" are placed at the center of the poem each shaping both the motion and mood of the poetic landscape (Williams 1). The structure of "The Great Figure" carries the observant reader swiftly through each component of the scene. The reader's attention is drawn between different objects by using prepositions. An example of prepositional use to direct attention occurs in the line "on a red" (Williams 1). When using the objectivist style, the perception of the poet is emphasized

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