Peasant Wedding
Peasant Wedding - context Summary
Ekphrastic Brueghel Homage
This poem is an ekphrastic, close visual description of a peasant wedding drawn from Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting. Williams records small, concrete details—the enthroned bride, guests at trestle tables, bagpipers, a hound, simple dishes—using plain, spare lines. It belongs to his late-career Pictures from Brueghel series and reflects his interest in rendering visual art as a sequence of focused, everyday images.
Read Complete AnalysesPour the wine bridegroom where before you the bride is enthroned her hair loose at her temples a head of ripe wheat is on the wall beside her the guests seated at long tables the bagpipers are ready there is a hound under the table the bearded Mayor is present women in their starched headgear are gabbing all but the bride hands folded in her lap is awkwardly silent simple dishes are being served clabber and what not from a trestle made of an unhinged barn door by two helpers one in a red coat a spoon in his hatband.
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