In "Portrait of a Lady", William Carlos Wililiams presents what at first seems to be a a poem seeking to describe an unidentified woman. However, by the third line Williams has made it clear the poem takes the form of a conversation of sorts. By not having any information that precedes the start of the poem, the most likely identity of the other person in the conversation is indeed the woman Williams seeks to describe. Although, Mordecai Marcus makes a good point that it could very well be an imaginary conversation taking place in the head of the author. Were this the case, the slightly stream of conciousness feel that the poem has would make more sense. I say that it has a stream of conciousness feel because right after Williams answers the first question of, "Which sky?", he goes off on an random tangent that brings into the character of the painter Fragonard. Also, when the woman (either real or imagined) asks, "Which shore?", Williams replies, "the sand clings to my lips" and when pressed again for his answer, "Agh, petals maybe. How should I know?" These statements taken together do suggest the author to be writing in a slight stream of concious manner and could serve as further evidence that the conversation is taking place in the author's head as opposed to real life.
Also worth noting about the poem, is the fact that the woman even presses for the specific sky and shore which the author say describe her. Had the author directly compared her to a painging for example, it would make sense to ask which painting they meant. However, the fact that the author has these be the types of questions asked could point to his own attention to detail or his own need for specificity, even though his ability to answer the questions is not quite perfect.
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Remy,
You've done a good job of subordinating the critic's ideas to your own ideas. You use Marcus's observation that the poem could be an imaginary conversation in the poet's mind as a starting point for your own analysis of the Fragonard/Watteau tangent.
For your long essay, work on contextualizing the information you include from secondary sources. In this post the reader has no sense of who Marcus is, why she's qualified to speak about Williams, or why you've chosen to mention her observation about the poem you're discussing. Make it clear to your reader why you are including another critic's reading or other secondary material. Explain the signficance of the information and how it relates to your own argument.
Kelly
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