AP Success - AP English Literature Poetry Analysis: Two Poems About the Coming of Spring

"Spring and All" by William Carlos Williams:

By the road to the contagious hospital under the surge of the blue mottled clouds driven from the northeast—a cold wind. Beyond, the waste of broad, muddy fields brown with dried weeds, standing and fallen

patches of standing water the scattering of tall trees

All along the road the reddish purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy stuff of bushes and small trees with dead, brown leaves under them leafless vines—

Lifeless in appearance, sluggish dazed spring approaches—

They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind—

Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf One by one the objects are defined— It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of entrance—Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted they grip down and begin to awaken

"For Jane Meyers" by Louise Glück:

Sap rises from the sodden ditch glues two green ears to the dead birch twig. Perilous beauty— and already Jane is digging out her colored tennis shoes, one mauve, one yellow, like large crocuses.

And by the laundromat the Bartletts In their tidy yard—

as though it were not - wearying, wearying

to hear in the bushes the mild harping of the breeze, the daffodils flocking and honking—

Look how the bluet* falls apart, mud pockets the seed. Months, years, then the dull blade of the wind. It is spring I We are going to die I

And now April raises up her plaque of flowers and the heart expands to admit its adversary.

*bluet: a wild flower with bluish blossoms