Imagist poetry: William Carlos Williams

Young Woman at a Window (Version 1)

While she sits
there

with tears on
her cheek

her cheek on
her hand

this little child
who robs her

knows nothing of
his theft

but rubs his
nose

Young Woman at a Window (Version 2)

She sits with
tears on

her cheek
her cheek on

her hand
the child

in her lap
his nose

pressed
to the glass

“I’ve Sketched the Image, You Can Fill in the Rest!”

William Carlos Williams creates an image of a woman at a window with a child looking out, his face pressed to the glass, in his second version of “Young Woman at a Window”.  In this concentrated poem, Williams paints a vignette of a woman’s life with a few strokes and the reader is invited to round out the narrative by filling in details. The sketch tells its own story and we connect the strokes. In the first version, by using words like “robs” “knows nothing of” and “his theft,” the poet is feeding us with his narrative. On the other hand, the second version of the poem invites us to enter it with our own narrative and fill in the details. We are given the space to feel with the woman crying at the window, the child in her lap. It is like looking at a painting by Vermeer or Hopper where the audience provides the narrative, thus filling in the image.

Williams’ poem therefore is imagist, because it operates by giving us a concentrated image, without the use of any decorative language.  We are invited to interpret the tears on her cheek, the child’s nose pressed to the glass, the woman’s cheek on her hand—all of these are suggestive of some loss in her life, a loss in which the child is involved. We do not need the “his theft” of the first version to have the feeling that the child is with the woman as a product or evidence of the man she was involved with, who is now not in the picture. So the absence of the male character in the second version fits the imagist manifesto of a poem being spare but direct. 

The imagist emphasis on succinctness is achieved through grammar and punctuation. In the first version, Williams uses a dependent clause followed by a main clause, which offers more narrative. Whereas, in the second version, the poem as a single declarative sentence with line breaks after three or four syllables and either at a noun or a preposition, allows the poet freedom. He does away with punctuation; instead he uses the line breaks to indicate the pause of a comma. He has no scaffolding of rhyme, but he still has a form that is dictated by himself—a free form. In the second version especially we notice the use of prepositional phrases as the frame to hang the nouns and verbs of the poem. “Sits” and “pressed” are the two major verbs used. Her sitting shows despondence on account of the tears and the hand on her cheek. The fact that she is at the window is both positive and negative. The window is open space, so it gives us hope that the woman will get on with her life despite the heaviness of a past offence. The child in the lap has his nose pressed to the glass, an image that is also hopeful, because despite the hardness of the glass, it is breakable, and the child will go out into the world. The poem also seems to be filled with light despite the sadness of the image; “glass” seems to convey this light.

Since the imagist manifesto aimed not to use any decorative word, Williams uses repetition as a way to stay directly with the image. Repeating “her cheek” seems to divide the poem into two parts: the woman and the child; the woman’s story with its past that has resulted in this present image, and the child’s story which is about to begin. The stanza breaks after every two lines gives the impression of stacking of images—woman with tears, cheek on hand, child in lap, child’s nose pressed to glass. Williams is also careful to do away with any extraneous words like “little,” “rubs” and “this” or other articles (with the exception of two articles) in order to keep the rhythm—spondee, sometimes just one full stressed syllable in a line, such as “pressed,” and sometimes the anapest, which is typical of a prepositional phrase, or an iamb.

The second version fits the imagist credo with its simplicity at the level of form, syntax, and image, by offering us a canvas with a few strokes, so we can rush to it with our brushes dripping with paint.