Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady’s
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze — or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
— As if that answered
anything. — Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore —
Which shore? —
the sand clings to my lips —
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
— the petals from some hidden
appletree — Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.
– William Carlos Williams, Portrait of A Lady
In This Is Just To Say, William Carlos Williams likened revenge to a plum that is “so sweet and so cold.” Inscribed on a wall in the city of Den Hague, the poem has become well beloved and countlessly parodied. Then in Portrait of A Lady, the author likened a lady’s body parts to the breeze, the flowers, and the trees. Perhaps as noted from the start, this poem should well deserve to be inscribed onto the sky.
The protagonist’s first answer to, “Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady’s slipper”, is wrong and later corrected to, “Agh! what sort of man was Fragonard? — As if that answered anything.” It was not Jean-Antoine Watteau, but Jean-Honore Fragonard, who painted The Swing, in which a woman’s dainty pink slippers sails off her foot into the air. The painting depicts an untamed, overgrown flora garden, where a rosy-cheeked young woman in a sumptuous pink gown rises high on a crimson-seated swing. Crouched in the bushes below the swing, a man stares up at his beloved’s skirts with starry-eyed adoration. Above the man, Cupid raises a finger over his lips. The sculpture is a direct reference to the Menacing Cupid, made for King Louis XV’s mistress Madame Pompadour by Étienne-Maurice Falconet. Cupid’s playful gesture hints at the illicit affair between the woman and her paramour. Sensual and visually arresting, The Swing encapsulates the frivolously delightful heights of the Rococo art era.
The audience of the poem can thus speculate that the protagonist is an amateur poet attempting to seduce a woman. Perhaps he is corresponding with her directly. Perhaps he is struggling to write this poem and consequently, corresponding with himself. Similar to the man in The Swing, our protagonist’s focus is on the lady’s legs. Her thighs are likened to appletrees, and since the appletrees are flowering, it must be springtime. But what their blossoms insinuate are left up to imagination. Then he moves down to compare her knees to a southern breeze, …or a gust of snow. Then, following seasonal movement, below the knees is one of those intense and bright white summer days, when the tall grass of her ankles flickers upon the shore. Upon the shore however, he appears to have writer’s block. He’s got sand clinging to his lips. After being questioned repeatedly, “which shore?”, in which the protagonist struggles to answer, his lips in the end return to the top of the poem, with the hidden appletrees and their petals.
Published in 1919 for the Dial papers, a magazine of the new verse, Portrait of A Lady is an example of modernist literature’s influence upon the poet. In the early 20th century, American poetry embraced the imagism movement, which favored directness of presentation, economy of language, and experimentation with free verse. During an interview in 1950, Williams fondly called it “one of the older ones, one of the first ones”, showing his “proclivities as a young man, a very modest young man.” The poem is a humorous take at a romantic, if also erotic, interaction between two characters. Its satirical undertone is fresh, yet awakens with its blunt depiction of nature – of flora, of seasons, and of time and space.
In my portrait of a lady, I imagine her in a silky dress. White like a bright summer day, adorned with floral patchworks like the apple blossoms, it floats like a southern breeze. Made of silk in a classic form, the dress, like our lady, transcends seasons and time. It is timeless.
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