Joyce Chiu

Professor Michael Borshuk

ENGL 3325
29 October 2014

Artistic Experimentation in "The Rose"

In 1913 there was an art exhibition called the Armory Show, also known as the
International Exhibition of Modern Art. During this exhibition many different artists came and
showcased their works, works which broke the traditional standards for what good art was
supposed to look like. The showcased artwork took the forms of abstract paintings and
sculptures.
The Armory Show inspired many other artists and writers to break away from the old rules of
creative expression, and to find new ways to express themselves. One of the writers that were
inspired by the Armory Show was William Carlos Williams. In "The Rose," William Carlos
Williams, through the way he structures the poem and his use of imagery of the rose, reveals this
new idea of artistic experimentation that the Armory Show displayed as well as provide the
reader with a visual experience within the poem.
Williams uses imagery of the rose to compare it to an abstract painting or sculpture that
an individual might have seen at the Armory Show, giving the reader something to experience
visually. He describes how each petal of the rose "ends in/ an edge, the double facet cementing
the grooved/ columns of air" (Williams 2-4). The way in which he describes the rose is very
different from what traditional writers would have described it. Traditional writers would have

described the rose in a realistic, natural way, such as describing its color and how delicate it
looks. Williams, however, talks about how the rose petal is a "double facet" (3). Rather than
discussing how soft the rose petal is, the image that he creates is of a hard polished surface. He
even goes on to state that it is the rose's petals that hold the air together. This is a rather unusual
way to describe the petal and air, but it provides the reader with a new perspective of looking at
the relationship between the two which was the main idea of Modernist art and literature.
There is also a point in the poem where Williams seems to be mocking the traditional
standards for judging good poetry. In the three stanzas in the middle of the poem Williams writes
about the rose and love in a way traditional poets would have wrote it, the rose symbolizing love.
Following these three stanzas, Williams writes a single word ("what") in a stanza by itself (29).
By doing this, he places emphasis on the word and this word seems to be his response to how the
traditional poets wrote. The way it is placed right after he writes the three stanzas gives the
what
a tone similar to What? This is what you want poetry to remain as? He directly challenges and
questions the traditional expectations of what makes poetry have value.
The structure of the poem shows Williams experimenting with new ways to structure
poetry as well as to challenge previous expectations of order in poetry. Throughout the poem,
Williams creates pauses randomly in and between the stanzas. Some of the lines are suddenly cut
off, leaving the thoughts incomplete. As mentioned previously, he even dedicates one stanza to a
single word. There does not seem to be any specific structure or order to the poem and that is
Williams's pointthere does not need to be a structure and order in a poem for it to have value.
In this poem, Williams not only incorporates the artistic experimentation which the

Armory Show inspired, but he also includes a level of visual experience for the readers as well.
Williams's experimentation with poetry can be seen through the way he structures the poem and
by how he creates disorder within and between the stanzas. The visual aspect of the poem can be
experienced through Williams's use of imagery to describe the rose.