The Commonplace
One of the most consistent and notable threads in Williams's work is the commonplace. Williams was continually concerned with portraying quiet scenes from daily life. In the poem "This Is Just To Say," Williams shows his speaker expressing heartfelt regret while remembering his consumption of his wife's plums, which he pilfered from their icebox. In "Danse Russe," a young father has a joyful, reflective moment alone before the day begins. These poems effectively mine the unremarkable moments in a day to elucidate a feeling or idea about life. These moments could take a turn for the somber, such as in "The Widow's Lament in Springtime" when a widow looks out at her backyard and acutely feels the loss of her husband. In all of these examples, Williams sought to elevate stories that might have traditionally been overlooked or disregarded. He believed in the dignity and inherent meaning of these moments, such that they deserved the careful attention of a poet. As became increasingly apparent in the development of his career, Williams treasured immediacy and directness in his poetry. He believed that poetry should be accessible and capture the most pressing daily struggles. All of these poems, in one manner or another, were part of his efforts to better understand and appreciate the minutiae of the commonplace.
Heavily influenced by the all-inclusive poetry of Walt Whitman, Williams aspired to capture grounded topics in his own work. The subject matter of Williams’s poetry spans many of the most common aspects of American society in the first half of the twentieth century. He writes of crowds attending baseball games, trains pulling into Penn Station, wheelbarrows, firetrucks, and a host of other minor everyday subjects situated within the landscape of Americana. Although inventive with language and form, he generally eschews allusions to ancient myth and literary archetypes, preferring to write not only in the American vernacular, but striving to lend his verse the unique distinctions of American diction and syntax as oppose to the more formal conventions of European literary traditions.
Material Things
Williams wrote many poems about inanimate objects, seeking to capture their materiality in his verses. In the poem "The Red Wheelbarrow," Williams draws attention to specific aspects of the wheelbarrow, describing its dependability and the remnants of rainwater that cover its red exterior. In "Between Walls," Williams takes note of the way some green shards glitter amid a pile of dull, lifeless cinders. In both cases, Williams attempts to highlight the aesthetically pleasing aspects of these things, while never straying from their physical attributes. The wheelbarrow sits still. The glass shines. These moments are not dressed in additional figurative language; they merely serve to provide a passing detail. Williams often wrote about these objects because he wanted to dig into the core of their physical form, seeking descriptions that would encapsulate their most essential qualities. By resisting the gloss of more abstract depiction, Williams found significance in grounded images of these objects. In all of these poems, Williams carefully chose details that highlighted their material appearance.
Beauty
One of Williams's major thematic interests was beauty. In poems like "Between Walls," Williams is able to extract beauty from an unlikely source, simply by paying close attention. He takes particular note of the way some green shards of glass shine. In the same way, in "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," he finds beauty and dignity in the farmer's toil beneath the sun on his seaside field. Williams is interested in the way that beauty can be unearthed in unexpected places. He chooses not to rely on traditional settings or imagery, instead choosing new subjects from which he thinks poetry can draw inspiration. This impulse is closely related to his interest in the commonplace and in its literary value as source material. In these examples, Williams's interest in beauty stems from a desire to show the unusual places where it might be discovered.
City Life
As a lifelong resident of the densely populated state of New Jersey, Williams had a recurring interest in city life. In his epic poem Paterson, he sought to capture the ebb and flow of daily life in the city at every level. He pursued this idea by bringing together details ranging from small personal narratives to massive historical backstory. The resulting work was a pastiche of reportage-like snapshots that, taken together, offered a portrait of the electricity of the city itself. Williams also demonstrated this interest, more casually, in the poem "Between Walls." In the text, the speaker notices some glimmering pieces of green glass in the back wings of a hospital. This area is lifeless and ugly, full of cinders, and clearly unseen by most of the hospital staff. By noticing the glass pieces, Williams establishes that beauty can still be found in even the most blighted urban spaces. On a larger scale, Williams was trying to capture the overall feeling of a major city. But on a smaller one, he was attempting to show that it is possible to find something meaningful or redeeming in even the most out-of-the-way small corner of a cityscape.
Meaning
In "The Widow's Lament in Springtime," Williams explores the shifting meaning of an object. In the poem, a widow looks out at the spring bloom occurring in her backyard but feels unable to enjoy it as it reminds her of the recent loss of her husband. This shift becomes particularly apparent because the sight of the backyard in spring (with trees, bushes and flowers blossoming) was a source of joy that she previously shared with her husband. Now that he is gone, she finds that it no longer holds its former meaning and in fact only makes her feel additional pain. Williams explores themes around the movement of meaning as it is displaced by various events. A lighter example of this occurs in the poem "This Is Just To Say," as the speaker's consumption of his wife's plums makes him feel guilty. In the present moment of the poem, the plums function as a symbol of his guilt, but while he was eating them, as he vividly recalls, they were delicious, sweet, and cold. Their meaning shifted from something desirable to something shameful after he consumed them. Williams was interested in the instability of meaning and often used his speakers to explore the way it could change dramatically in unexpected ways.
Williams's poetry often occurs in the moments preceding a dramatic turn of events. For example, “The Great Figure” describes the visceral experience of a firetruck speeding past the speaker on its way to an emergency. In doing so, the poem gives the reader the moment before the overt climax of arriving at the fire. In a piece titled “Poem,” the poet replicates the slow deliberative pacing of a cat climbing down over a jam closet and into an empty flower pot. The text ends the moment before something more conspicuously dramatic happens, like the pot tumbling over or the cat getting stuck. In these examples, interpretation is left more open because the poems don't reach an obvious climax.
Work
Fitting with Williams's interest in the commonplace, work is another major theme that runs through the majority of his poetry. Williams, both directly and indirectly, shows careful depictions of scenes from physical labor. In "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus" he deliberately chooses to hold focus on the farmer plowing his field. This choice highlights the foreground of the Bruegel painting it depicts, while also prioritizing the farmer's actions over the mythic story of Icarus. In "The Red Wheelbarrow," the titular wheelbarrow is described physically while also being noted for its dependability. While its direct application to farm work is not being shown, its utility is clearly stated. In both of these examples, Williams is making an effort to elevate average, unglamorous day labor by making it the subject of verse. In seeking to make his work both direct and honest, Williams often found the theme of labor to be a significant part of his writing. Williams directly opposed what he saw as the exclusive classicism of the other Modernist poets and clearly saw work as thematic material that was being underutilized.
Love
One of the subtler themes in Williams's work is love. With the exception of the collection dedicated to his wife, Williams rarely wrote straightforward love poetry. That said, undercurrents of romantic love ran throughout his major works. In "This Is Just To Say," the speaker shows a clearly familiar affection for his wife, underscored by the magnitude of guilt he feels for eating her plums. The poem also draws inspiration from the style of a note which Williams's wife, Flossie, left for him on their kitchen counter. In "The Widow's Lament in Springtime," a wife whose husband has recently died reflects on the spring bloom occurring in her backyard. She is unable to find any joy in the scene unfolding before her because it reminds her of shared moments with her husband. The love in Williams poetry is not fiery or dangerous, for the most part. It is familiar love, shown as amplified by the passage of time and resulting in the development of a close fondness. While not all of the poems are strictly autobiographical, this dynamic seems to reflect the kind of marriage Williams himself had.
