A Close Reading - Part 1

In his 1944 essay “Introduction to The Wedge,” William Carlos Williams explains how “When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them—without distortion which would mar their exact significances—into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses. It isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art, it’s what he makes, with such intensity of perception that it lives with an intrinsic movement of its own to verify its authenticity.” The last part of this quote—that the poem “lives with an intrinsic movement of its own”—stood out to me as an important tool in analyzing Williams’ two versions of “Young Woman at a Window.” It is not necessarily just the words themselves that construct meaning; rather, it is the movement of the poems that changes the meaning from the first version to the second. In contrasting the two versions of “Young Woman at a Window,” I found that the grammatical placement and grouping of the stanzas affects the forward motion of the poem, thus impacting my overall perception of the young woman.

In the first version, my perception of the young woman is that the child she is holding is the cause of her tear-stricken cheek. The first three stanzas move in a way that allows a pause between stanzas: “while she sits there” stands on its own, and I didn’t anticipate an addition; the stanza could end there. It goes on, however, to add “with tears on her cheek”—again I stop there, feeling satisfied. Then, Williams adds “her check on her hand.” These first three stanzas, though they add information, could stand independent from one another. The second three stanzas shift the focus to “this little child who robs her.” The child, because of the structure of the poem, is literally separate from the mother. The words of the poem describe the detachment: the child “knows nothing of his theft / but rubs his nose.” However, the structure and movement of the lines—the fact that the description of the child is a separate grouping of stanzas entirely—is what truly adds an authentic feeling of detachment for the reader.

In contrast, the movement of the second “Young Woman at a Window” left me with an entirely different reading of both mother and child. The flow of the stanzas is very smooth, and it becomes unclear whether the child is the source of her tears; in this poem, the mother and child are connected rather than detached. The first two stanzas end with a preposition—which causes readers to move forward in search of the next noun. The woman, in this rendition, “sits with tears on”…on what? “Her check.” Then the poem moves forward in the same stanza, pairing “Her cheek” with “Her check on”…again, on what? “Her hand.” The middle stanza in this poem marries “her hand” and “the child”. Literally, the woman is connected with the child through the structure of the poem. The final stanzas continue to intermingle the woman and child, since “the child” is “in her lap/his nose/ pressed to the glass.”

In the second version, the woman is crying the same tears as the first. This is proof that it “isn’t what he says that counts as a work of art”; it is not the words themselves that make the meaning. It is, instead, the structure that makes the poem have authenticity and meaning—just as Williams claims in his essay. By contrasting the two versions of “Young Woman at a Window,” it is easy to see Williams’ concept of the poem as a machine. It is the motion of the machine—the placement of the parts (or words) in the machine (or poem)—that produces a completely different product (or meaning).


Works Cited:

Williams, William Carlos. "Young Woman at a Window." The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams Volume 1 1909-1939. Ed. A. Walton Litz and Ed. Christopher MacGowan. New York: New Directions Books, 1986. 373. Print.