Tuesday, June 26, 2007

The Kermess

NOTE: This poem by William Carlos Williams was not in my book, Pictures From Brueghel and other Poems. I found it on another blog when I was searching for the pictures to put with the poetry. I had to add it. If anyone knows of other Williams poems about Brueghel's art, please let me know! To read a well written commentary on this poem go to Chris Couto's blog


The Kermess by Pieter Brueghel the Elder

The Dance
by William Carlos Williams

In Breughel's great picture, The Kermess,
the dancers go round, they go round and
around, the squeal and the blare and the
tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles
tipping their bellies (round as the thick-
sided glasses whose wash they impound)
their hips and their bellies off balance
to turn them. Kicking and rolling about
the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those
shanks must be sound to bear up under such
rollicking measures, prance as they dance
in Breughel's great picture, The Kermess.

7 comments:

Oscar1986 said...

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Unknown said...

yes this poem is from a different book by williams called 'the wedge' published earlier in 1944. quite different in style and meter etc to the 'pictures from brueghel' sequence as you can see.

Anonymous said...

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RAF digital said...

I've always been a fan of William Carlos Williams - I found your blog when I was scouring the internet to find these images myself -

GREAT WORK!

Anonymous said...

hello, im searching for materials for my BA thesis and i wanna writ sth about williams' poetry and relations to brueghel - do you know some books/authors/sources/libraries where i can find the books on which i can base my thesis ? my email is olanna@wp.pl im from poland , i'll be glad if you answer me

victor said...

Very nice blog indeed! Thank you. I will attempt to translate these poems to Turkish. I had already translated Auden's poem. All of my translations are published here
http://forum.mevsimsiz.net/index.php?showforum=42

Unknown said...

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus