Trees
by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Because I could not stop for Death
by Emily Dickinson
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.
We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then ‘t is centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Blizzard
Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down —
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes —
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there —
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.
Analysis of Poetry
The imagery in Kilmer’s and Dickenson’s poems are opposing complements to that of William Carlos Williams. The first two poems create images of somewhat intangible ideas, while Williams aims at more concrete imagery though he paints them in much less obvious ways. All three poems use some personification, though again, Williams is more subtle about it. In looking at these poems, from three different time periods we can see the progression from simple and somewhat didactic imagery through more complicated, though less formal imagery to the very subtle imagery of poetry without a stated aim, and one that communicates on a deeper, more emotional and less intellectual level.
Imagery is the poet’s most important tool, and it has been refined over the centuries as poets explored its use and, through dialogue, shared and learned from each other. What is most interesting about these three poems is that each requires progressively more participation on the part of the reader, and progressively more meaning can be found if the background and history of the poets and their environments are known. The final poem shows the use of imagery at its best as Williams packs immense meaning into this short poem by using imagery which is both evocative and filled with cultural content. The impact of his poem is carried, not by the words, but solely by the images.
Kilmer’s poem begins with a not so subtle image of a hungry suckling child, as he sees the tree as dependent upon the earth. Dickenson begins with the image of death, personified as a gentleman caller who brings her the gift of immortality. Williams begins his poem with a very subtle image of the very intangible “Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down.” His image is a mere suggestion of a connection as the blizzard is a marker of time passed.
The first poem, Trees, requires very little participation on the part of the reader. Joyce Kilmer shows us images of his tree through seasons, and tells us that this living creature “looks at God all day”, as if the tree is, somehow, more holy, more perfect than man (also God created). Once past the first image of the suckling child, he describes the tree as a woman: praying, wearing flowers, supporting snow on her breast and living intimately with rain.
Then the poet tells us that poetry created by men pales next to God’s creation of the tree. Kilmer uses imagery only to describe his perception of a tree, to show us how beautiful it is and then he tells us that no poetry can possibly equal that beauty.
There are others, such as Arthur Hobson Quinn (1952), who would agree with him if all poetry were this simplistically didactic. Speaking of WWI, Quinn says, “It also brought into prominence young poets who might never have been heard of if they had not made the supreme sacrifice in battle. A typical instance is that of Joyce Kilmer ( 1886-1918), whose most impressive lyric “Trees” possessed all the elements of popularity and none of poetic distinction.”(Quinn 1951 834) It is a simple statement and we can agree or disagree, but the poet’s point is very easy to understand.
Emily Dickenson requires a bit more of the reader, and makes more extensive use of connected images as we go with her on her journey in the coach with death. However, it is not difficult to follow her lead as she takes us along. She makes the journey seem quite leisurely and long as we pass an image of youth in the school yard, then the fields of “gazing” grain, followed by a setting sun to wind up, finally at a grave, which she describes as a house. The entire progression is very “southern” in its style. Wendy Martin considers that the trips made by Dickenson to the south might be responsible for what Tate (1932) believed was her southern temperament.
The chill she describes is a deviance from most of the tone of the poem, but she explains this as she describe her very insubstantial, though elegant, clothing. The last image is quite odd, where we see her sitting quietly, or perhaps reclining, looking back on this journey. Dickenson uses a handful of images of different things she passes to communicate how she feels about this journey, and how she feels about death and eternity.
Is many of Dickenson’s poems we find shared imagery with other poets contemporary with her, as noted by Rebecca Patterson (1959) in her book, The Imagery of Emily Dickenson. She discusses the cultural factors and the literary dialogues among the poets of the time and how they influenced the poet. In her last verse we know that she is content, and we see the reason as she describe that the horses which were drawing the coach were pointing their heads toward eternity. This unexplained image is left for the reader to interpret.
The poem of William Carlos Williams is also about a journey, but this is not really known until the end. He starts out with odd images of falling snow as years, and then hours, of anger and the blizzard drifting its weight for three hours or sixty years. It is here that we begin to get the hint that he is paralleling a blizzard and life, probably his father’s life, since he died two years before the poem was published in 1920.
The next image is a snow storm with the sun shining, with the “clutter of yellow and blue flakes” giving a feeling of busy-ness and maybe hinting at a full and active life. This “clutter” of flakes could easily be blowing in the sunshine, adding to the bright feeling of the poem.
In fact, this entire, rather organic metaphor, “a purer notion of ‘organic metaphor’-stripped of allusion and intellectual reference” (Balakian 90) , of yellow and blue snowflakes with the sun shining brightly during the middle of a blizzard lends itself to even more interpretation as we see opposing forces, complementary colors and the sun shining over all. The last six lines of the poem create a complete image of a man in an alley where “hairy looking trees” are standing isolated, probably because everything is covered in snow. The man looks back to see his “solitary track stretched out upon the world. Williams shows us these images and lets the impact of the poem be carried solely by them touching on a deeper level and eliciting a reaction.
All three poets were connected to other poets of their time, and they also read extensively, so they learned from one another. Letters flew back and forth and many published poems were parts of a dialogue among poets. Over the decades, or even centuries, poets refined their poetry, and especially refined their use of imagery. It started out that poetry had very stringent rules and a message was required.
By Dickenson’s time the art had progressed enough to not need the messages or the lesson, so she was free to merely describe and hope the reader would follow. By the time of William Carlos Williams, imagery was becoming quite sophisticated and the message was no longer required. By the time of Williams, and his friend Roethke, the impact of poetry was being delivered by vision and sound, and not by the content or meaning of the words at all.
References
Balakian, Peter. Theodore Roethke’s Far Fields. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.
Kusch, Robert. My Toughest Mentor: Theodore Roethke and William Carlos Williams (1940-1948). Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1999.
Martin, Wendy, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Emily Dickinson. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Patterson, Rebecca. Emily Dickinson”s Imagery. Ed. Margaret H. Freeman. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1979.
Quinn, Arthur Hobson, ed. The Literature of the American People: An Historical and Critical Survey. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951.
Tate, “New England Culture and Emily Dickinson, ”Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Foreign Literature, 3 (1932), p. 206.