Young Woman at a Window
Young Woman at a Window - context Summary
Published in Spring and All
Published in 1923 in the collection Spring and All, this brief vignette reflects William Carlos Williams's modernist, imagist impulse to render an immediate scene with spare language. The poem offers a compact domestic image—a woman with a child at a window—that exemplifies Williams's interest in ordinary American life and photographic clarity. Its publication marks his turn toward pared-down, image-focused poetry in the early twentieth century.
Read Complete AnalysesShe sits with tears on her cheek her cheek on her hand the child in her lap his nose pressed to the glass
This is Williams’s later, condensed version of “Young Woman at a Window,” often treated as the standard text. It tightens the diction and ends with the child’s “nose / pressed / to the glass,” omitting the earlier version’s moralizing lines about the child “robbing” the woman.
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