William Carlos Williams

Through many of his poems, William Carlos Williams presents the reality of poverty among a great portion of the American society. Within Williams’ work of Selected Poems, he not only reveals the trapped lifestyle of those living in poverty, but he also represents the horror of the war between social classes along with the coinciding war on the poor. Williams’ use of plutonic images among these poems provides powerful meaning to his argument of American societal values, claiming the men of America to be wealth seeking and those who fail to find wealth are of less importance. In contrast to this, Williams also uses his poems as a voice for the poor, asserting their lifestyle of simplicity and revealing the value they see in objects wealthy America disregards. Through his work of Selected Poems, William Carlos Williams brings about the harsh reality of what America has become and views it as a betraying place, a place not living up to its promise of equality and opportunity. He represents the imagination of those longing to find something better in life for themselves in a world that is not solely made up of subliminal beauty, regardless of what it may seem. He fixates on the unwillingness of America as a nation to change what it has become and societies lack of concern and motivation to assert this change. Among his work of Selected Poems, Williams’ poem, “Elsie”, emphasizes on the war between classes, however, closely dives into the imaginations’ yearning for a better life. Through Williams’ concentration on Elsie, a nanny he and his wife hired, we see her symbolically embodying America as a whole. Williams’ creation of a fictional lineage for Elsie in the poem represents his idea of everyone descending from “devil may care” men. Within this poem, Williams blames the lifestyle of poverty these people have become associated with on their lack of education. We see this first hand through his words stating, “and young slatterns, bathed/ in filth/ from