Explicate a poem visually
Between Walls
By William Carlos Williams
the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle
The whole image of
the poem is quite a complicated one, where the meaning is quite well hidden.
What the speaker is describing is a shard of a green glass bottle, in the
middle of some ashes in the back section of a hospital. The “back wings” in the
first line start the poem off with a sense of mystery, since usually when one
thinks of wings we think of a bird, however, they don’t have back wings, it’s
just wings. However by continuing on to talk about how these are back wings of
a hospital, it solidifies an image. Usually hospitals tend to be quite busy, and
usually the back area of a hospital is where they treat people with more severe
things, people who might be there for a while. Therefore, when the speaker says
“the back wings /…/ of the hospital”, it implies a place of lasting sickness. What
is interesting though is the line “where / nothing / will grow”. The only
things that grow in hospitals are babies and bacteria. The idea that nothing
will grow makes the scene suddenly seem much more abandoned and dead, which
ties in rather neatly to the next line, “lie / cinders”. Cinders only come
after a fire, so this adds a plot to our hospital scene, it was burned down and
it is now abandoned. To final piece of our puzzle is actually a piece of glass.
The last two stanzas talk about the broken pieces of a green bottle that shine
in the cinders. These are glass shards that did not burn down and got mixed in
with the ashes, and they’re there for a reason. Usually, green bottles aren’t part
of hospital equipment, and are associated with alcoholic beverages. This whole poem
tells the story of how someone got drunk, burnt down a hospital wing, and it
was never fixed.
This was a very clear and concise explication of this poem. At first I was very confused about what underlying message the poem could convey, but after reading through this post, I understood clearly. You followed a logical order for explaining the details as well, which helped make the explication cohesive. Good job.
ReplyDeleteI like how the poem was relatively short and contained only several images, but you were able to explicate the poem so vividly and in a detailed way. I liked how everything in the poem fit together to bring a hidden meaning, and I wonder why William Carlos Williams supposedly wrote about a drunk man who burned down a hospital. Hearing about all the implied meanings made me really want to see a visual interpretation of the poem, especially with the shiny glass and cinders.
ReplyDeleteInteresting interpretation of the visual clues this poem gives and the visual scene it sets. I'm not sure who posted this. Alice?
ReplyDeleteThis was pretty interesting, but what if it wasn't an alcoholic that burnt down the hospital, but was burned with the hospital. She/he could've been using alcohol as a coping method and died in the flames after pouring out a cold one with a corpse. This poem has so many interpretations and yours just has me thinking of endless possibilities. I wonder if the ashes were left there from a body or just the building itself being burnt, because it doesn't necessarily say where they came from. This was a well thought out post and I'm going to mull it over for a while, good job!
ReplyDeleteThis is an interesting interpretation of the poem. Reading what you explicated the poem out to be, it added more meaning to the simple image of the green bottle. Reading back over the poem it felt more cinematic as if the bottle piece was the centerpiece in a tense moment of a movie.
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ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting. To be honest, I didn't really have a good idea of what the poem was about before. I was wondering what the significance of the green bottle was. I like you look at every single detail and put it all together into a bigger message. Great job!
ReplyDeleteThe interpretation that you give is very interesting and I quite like it. You also manage to explain the deeper meaning of the poem in a very concise but informative manner. The way you talked about the green bottle really brought this poem to light. Nice Job!
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