Intro and body paragraph

Michelle LaRosa

ENG195A

Paper #2

 

Through reading a number of poems by William Carlos Williams, it became apparent that he was consistently interested in the idea of people being blind to important things. The poems “The Great Figure,” “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” all include a central figure in the text, in which this figure is neglected or ignored in some way. Williams’ poetry is also usually very simplistic, and uses mainly imagery to create a simple image. I think that what Williams is trying to convey in his poetry is that the world is full of unseeing people, and the simplicity in the way he describes things helps us to simply see the world around us rather than take it for granted.

The poem “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams has a lot of imagery elements as well as strong word choice. William Carlos Williams refers to Icarus as “a splash quite unnoticed,” which sort of dehumanizes him and makes him seem insignificant and isolated. Referring to him as a “splash” rather than a boy makes the reader care less about the subject, and therefore make the reader feel more like the farmer in the picture, who also only sees him as a splash. Williams also describes the year as a “pageantry” and says that it is “concerned with itself,” which gives the poem a feeling of isolated self-absorption. By making Icarus’ fall seem so insignificant despite its actual significance, Williams intends to expose how blind people can be, and show how even a person falling from the sky can fail at grabbing people’s attention from their daily lives. I think Williams is trying to get us to remove ourselves from our methodical every day routines and to focus on bigger issued that are currently beyond our one-track minds.