William Carlos Williams

To Waken an Old Lady

To Waken an Old Lady - context Summary

Published in Spring and All

Published in 1923 as part of Spring and All, this brief poem reflects the collection’nd Williams’xperiment with fresh, pared-down language. Placed amid poems about rebirth and the taut present, it uses spare imagery to register a shift from frailty to unexpected abundance. The poem’rames old age as a trembling, weathered movement that, in the collection’ontext, becomes a quietly affirmative moment of replenishment and renewed perception.

Read Complete Analyses

Old age is a flight of small cheeping birds skimming bare trees above a snow glaze. Gaining and failing they are buffeted by a dark wind -- But what? On harsh weedstalks the flock has rested -- the snow is covered with broken seed husks and the wind tempered with a shrill piping of plenty.

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