Distinguishing Between Human and Non-Human in Spring and All

Although established as nonhuman, poets often use animals, nature, and other objects to comment about the human condition in poetry. While in some cases this may lead to a clear distinction between human and non-human, William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital], breaks down the barrier between what is human and what is not. By analogizing the coming of spring, and relying on imagery and line, Williams comes to an understanding about being stuck between life and death, and concludes that the intersections between human and non-human are too intermingled to be separated.

Williams uses decaying imagery to create a bleak depiction of the human life cycle. That is to say, Williams uses imagery to say something about humanity by describing the nature that surrounds it. The subject of the poem begins “By the road to the contagious hospital,” an image which juxtaposes something deadly—like a contagious disease—to something life-giving—like a hospital. This image immediately blurs distinctions between humanity and nature, suggesting the road to be the path of life, a path with an inevitably pitiful end. Williams doesn’t even allow for the possibility of an alternative path. Instead of other roads, “the road to the contagious hospital” is surrounded by “broad, muddy fields/ brown with dried weeds,” suggesting that humanity is completely powerless to the natural world and a predetermined path toward death. He expands this idea with the “cold wind” in line 5, which brings “mottled clouds” to the scene. Williams suggests the sky is vast and untouchable, while the subject is small and insignificant. The imagery Williams uses to describe the winter landscape induces an anxious sense of foreboding. With no other options, and completely alone, the subject must embark on the tumultuous path of life.

Williams also creates movement in Spring and All, starting with a large image and moving toward a smaller, more focused one. The zoomed-out image of the “waste of broad, muddy fields” underneath “the surge of the blue/ mottled clouds” begins to zero in on the nature that lines the road in the stanza. Still, almost unbearably slow crawl toward clarity leaves the sense of unease in the reader. The third stanza reads “All along the road the reddish/ purplish, forked, upstanding, twiggy/ stuff of bushes and small trees/ with dead, brown leaves under them/ leafless vines-” Although this stanza mainly consists of detailed descriptions of the scene around the subject, the image is still broad and unclear. Instead of focusing on the individual characteristics of the nature in the scene, Williams combines them, blending the image of the bushes with that of the trees in line 12. And although this stanza features more color than the barren brown of the first, he avoids using a distinct hue, instead describing the image as “reddish/ purplish.” Williams’s refusal to give the reader a clear image, in conjunction with the images of decay, introduce a sense of frustration in the reader—frustration over not being able to grasp the image, and also, frustration over the cemented quality of human existence, always stuck between life and death, with no control over it’s pace. Here, Williams’s images of the non-human becomes entangled with vulnerability: one of the most prominent emotions in the human world.

And this vulnerability that Williams addresses is expanded in the imagery of the following stanzas, where a “sluggish/ dazed spring approaches.” The imagery of the oncoming spring described in Spring and All, however, differs from the hopeful connotations we normally associate with the season. Though the end of winter finally brings a hyper-focused image, even focusing on individual blades of grass and “clarity, outline of leaf,” the image described is far from cheerful. Perhaps the most startling language used in the poem is in the fifth stanza, where Williams describes the budding of plants: “They enter the new world naked,/ cold, uncertain of all/ save that they enter. All about them/ the cold, familiar wind-” Describing plant life as “enter[ing] the new world naked” is Williams’s most blatant use of anthropomorphism, as he relates nature to childbirth. This connection is rooted in Williams’s omission of a distinct they, as well as the use of the word naked, shifting the poem from images of nature to images of childbirth, and indicating that the meaning of the poem extends past the realm of non-human. Buried under images of winter and spring, Williams reaches a fundamental truth of human existence: a person is vulnerable in their birth, in their death, and at every moment in-between. Additionally, Williams suggests that the human life cycle is cynical and doesn’t leave anyone behind; all those birthed in spring must eventually die in the winter. Finally, one should be weary of looking for beauty (spring) in winter.

Through the imagery alone gives Spring and All much of its meaning, the conspicuous anxiety of the poem is heightened by William’s use of line and syntax. The two longest stanzas—stanzas two and three—are mainly compromised of descriptions of winter. As the poem shifts to clearer images of spring, the stanzas get shorter. While this serves to allude to the drawn-out length of winter and its accompanied suffering, it also draws out the length of time the reader must wait for a clear image, thus extending their frustration. The poem does begin, however, with a single I separated form the other stanzas. This isolation of the subject introduces an overwhelming loneliness that Williams strings throughout the rest of the poem.

Line also plays an important role in building the tone of Williams’s poem. Williams uses enjambment throughout Spring and All to deprive the reader of familiar structures and further distort his images, therefore contributing to the sense of foreboding and anxiety throughout the poem. For example, Williams’s description of “the blue/ mottled clouds driven from the/ northeast-a cold wind. Beyond, the/ waste of broad, muddy fields” breaks up the images he describes, adding to the fuzziness of the poem’s imagery, and the frustration that it induces.

Williams takes the choppiness of his line breaks a step further by frequently using dashes to break up ideas, leaving fragmented thoughts scattered throughout the poem, like in the line “One by one objects are defined-/ It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf” or “But now the stark dignity of/ entrance-Still, the profound change has come upon them.” Though these unfinished thoughts give the reader little closure, their frequent and constant use throughout the text gives a consistent and cyclical impression to the poem, reminding the reader of the undeviating cycle of life and death.

All of these elements come together in Williams Carlos Williams’s Spring and All [Road to the contagious hospital] to break down the distinctions between what is human and what is not. Williams’s distortion of the line between nature and humanity leads to epiphanies about the cycle of human existence.