In "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" William Carlos Williams makes the notable choice to write about grief in the context of spring. This seems odd given that spring is typically imagined in literature as a season of new life, growth, and renewal. However, Williams is able to make productive use of the dissonance between his setting and his main theme, by showing how the speaker is unable to appreciate spring's beauty because it reminds her of her late husband. This combination of unlike elements in poetry is not unusual and has often been used to similarly powerful effect.
One of the best examples of this technique is "Sonnet 98" by William Shakespeare:
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leapt with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
Much like the widow, the speaker of the sonnet is unable to properly take pleasure in spring because he is forced to wait for his lover's return. As such, the season is stripped of its traditional meaning.
Take this short poem by Emily Dickinson as another example:
The morns are meeker than they were—
The nuts are getting brown—
The berry's cheek is plumper—
The Rose is out of town.
The Maple wears a gayer scarf—
The field a scarlet gown—
Lest I should be old fashioned
I'll put a trinket on.
While autumn typically has more haunting associations of decay and death, this poem is written in a playfully jovial style. Autumn is greeted lightly, like a welcome guest, and the figures that populate it are shown as cheerfully engaging in small adjustments. It ends with the speaker trying to imitate their perceived stylishness, jokingly stating that she will "put a trinket on" for fear of being seen as "old fashioned."
Like Shakespeare and Dickinson, Williams was interested in making use of the productive dissonance between subject matter and temporal setting. In doing so, he rewrote an image of spring, offering a new vision of what it could mean to someone in the throes of grief.
