Blog Post 25/ Poetry Response 5

The Dance 

By William Carlos Williams

In Williams "The Dance" the Kermess find the elegance of life that is breathed into dance by the thumping tune of festive melodies. Two grand forms of art blended elegantly, collaborating in a partnership of give and take. It is as though the music carries the dancers "a bugle and fiddle tipping their bellies" a symbol for the harmony in this great life of Breughel. With vivid descriptions of the dancers every motion, every sensitive movement enacts a reaction "their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them." This rather short poem formed in a circular platform shows the art of dance from beginning to revolving end of "Breughel's great picture." But this seemingly perfect description of a night of dance seems almost a dream, something Breughel has conjured up to the perfect imagination of his mind.

  This poem grows very euphoric as it progresses seeming to be too good to be true. With " Kicking and rolling about the fair grounds." A dream for a future for this to be an everyday occurrence. This leads me to believe the authors reality if very dull or almost melancholic, a desire for the life to dance with beautiful women in this snow globe vacation away from his world of boredom. Drinking and partying also play their roll in the dancing "(round as the thick-sided glasses whose wash they impound)" hinting at the lavish boozing that incorporates into the night. Williams envious tone with this give the euphoric sentiment a almost faint begotten joy emitting from the poem. A happy memory of the past long forgotten or of a dream fading with the waking of morning.


Overall this is a lovely poem very blended with the varying emotion portrayed by Williams. Puts me right in the mood to dance my sorrows away and envy that which i wish i could live in for eternity. If only our realities worked as the ones you envisioned Beurghel.