Poem Explication: “The Dance” by William Carlos Williams Essay

William Carlos Williamss The Dance (1944) illustrates the joyous, lively atmosphere of a fair. It too uses textual patterns to represent the dance depicted in Brueghels great painting, The Kermess. The verbalizer, who is describing the painting, uses the poems tempo, rhymes, and repetitions to accomplish this effect.The Dance stands out from some of Williamss much famous poems. The Red Wheelbarrow (1923) and This Is and To Say (1934) be both entirely motionless and describe specific moments in time. While The Danse address a single moment as well, it is full of motion. This obvious difference comes to life in the first base line when the poem begins to describe Brueghels painting, The Kermess. Kermess literally representation peasant dance. It depicts men and women dancing in celebration of the founding of a church. The speaker makes it clear that the dancers are not professionals with his description of their bodies, their hips and their bellies off balance to overthrow them swinging those butts (7-9). These are evidently everyday people dancing for joy.Williamss text is overwhelmingly joyful. The squeal and the blare and tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (3-5). These peasants are happy and lost in the squeal of music. One can almost hear the upbeat rhythm of bagpipes, bugles, and fiddles as they read the poems words. Just as the speaker describes the specific moment, the crowd is lost in this moment. They are not thinking of debt or financial problems, only the ever-moving dance.The dance becomes more fell and out of tune. The dancers never loose their get by or passion, only their rhythm. They are fat and off balance, but they keep on dancing. Those shanks must be skilful to bear up under such rollicking measures (10-11). Williamss poem shows us that life is beautiful in the most ordinary ways. The speaker depicts ordinary people dancing in great detail. We see the splendor of a simple event. We see the life worth livi ng. This parallels Williamss belief that poetry is equipment for living. The speaker actually advises readers to live with the same enthusiasm as the dancers in Brueghels painting. Prance as the dance in Brueghels great picture, The Kermess (11-12). Repetition of the first line of the poem also adds to the sudden sentimental feeling.Williams mirrors the joyous rhythm of the fair with the words on the page. The poem opens with a sense of interlacing movement. The dancers go round, they go round, and around (2-3). At the same time that the speaker repeats the word round, he opens the rhyming pattern, beginning with round. Throughout the poem, we hear the same rhyming end roundaroundroundimpoundFair Groundssound. Like the dancers, the words bring the interlacing feel round and round through the poem.The wrench feel and movement of the poem goes very fast. There is only one full stop in the poem, which is on line eight. Additionally, the fist letter of for each one line remains lower case, increasing the velocity at which one reads. The reader moves with the same force and enthusiasm as the joyous dancers in Brueghels painting. The text moves with circular motion in two ways. First, it moves round and round with the rhyme scheme. Then, it finishes with the same line as it began, again suggesting circularity.Williams echoes the tone of a Brueghels painting, The Kermess, in his poemThe Dance. The poem was indite towards the end of his career, almost 20 years after he famously wrote The Red Wheelbarrow. The Dance is appropriately written in open form, as it captures the painting to words translation. The words dance like the peasants in the painting. Williamss speaker touches on the simple life of love and dance the life of the moment.View as multi-pages