Flirting with Venus

During the course of my reading last week, I came across several lines of Williams’ poetry that repeatedly seemed to celebrate the fullness and curves of a woman’s shape. Initially, I giggled to read the lines in Woman Walking, where Williams describes a:

powerful woman,

coming with swinging haunches,

breasts straight forward,

supple shoulders, full arms

This evocative description instantly drew me in; I quite literally giggled at the “swinging haunches.” I imagined myself being able to imitate this line flawlessly. Even the sound of this phrase, particularly of the word “haunches” sounds juicy. “Haunches” encompasses the whole region of thighs and buttocks. I don’t necessarily think of a thin woman and think of her butt and thighs as “haunches.” But thinking of, OH, say, ME…now, THERE you have haunches. I kept reading and thinking of the breasts, supple shoulders, full arms. I must’ve read the description three times, suddenly proud of my own “powerful” figure. The last time I felt such pride was in my eleventh grade Humanities class, when our teacher showed us Boticelli’s “Birth of Venus.” Williams’ poem whirled me back to that moment of initial pride in a curvaceous body. I remember, for the first time ever, I didn’t feel 140 pounds (20 pounds larger than any other cheerleader on my team); I felt powerful.

Pleased, I digested the poem more and more, noticing that the anticipation builds from the initial line in the stanza, wherein the narrator says “—what a blessing it is/to see you in the street again” (66). Clearly, the narrator finds pleasure in seeing this woman; indeed, he considers it a “blessing”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “blessing” as “an invocation of divine favor” (“blessing”). I found this to be the most pleasant discovery. Could it be that I was remembering the images of Venus from my earlier education for a reason? COULD this woman, this figure, perhaps represent some sort of everyday Venus? Given that the narrator later describes “fresh eggs…[she] brings so regularly”, it doesn't seem much of a stretch that the eggs could be tied to fertility, one of the areas over which Venus presides.

As I finished my assigned readings last week, I noted a few more similar sensual descriptions that made me think of a Venus figure:

First, in Portrait of a Lady, a woman is praised because “[her] thighs are appletrees/whose blossoms touch the sky” (129). Again, a bit later, in The Cold Night, there is reference to “round and perfect thighs” (154).

Upon finding these instances, I did a bit of background research (ahem, Wikipedia) and remembered that Venus was not only the goddess of love and fertility, but she was also strongly linked with April and Springtime—all subjects about which Williams writes.

I furthered my scholarly research, this time through the MLA database. OH, EUREEKA…there is nothing to describe the moment of giddiness when I found “Williams” and “Venus” rendered a few search results. I still have further research to do—which will more than likely end up in a more formalized argument supporting my little ‘ole findings I am rambling on about here. For now, I am going to safely send my humble assertion into blogland: Williams sure does seem to be flirting with Venus.

A Properly Weathered Bluish Green

I ended up in Professor Lunberry’s class through sheer serendipity. I actually enrolled for a class entitled “Cinema and Culture” that was scheduled on the same night. Upon attending the cinema class, I discovered the actual title and scope of the course: Horror Films. After suffering through a full screening of the original Scream movie, I left the “Cinema and Culture” class in hysterics. I shakily stumbled to my car, logged into my computer, and registered for the only other Thursday night class: “Major Authors: William Carlos Williams.” Already fifteen minutes late for the first class, I ran from my car back towards campus—finally entering Lunberry’s class a frazzled heap of nerves. As with most graduate seminars, the group had already congregated into a circle and introductions had begun. I crossed through the circle into the safety of a few friends I noticed the moment I walked in. Quickly sitting, I noticed a particular line from the Course Description on this new syllabus: “In this graduate seminar, we will be looking at…the manner in which Williams’ work so often returns us to the world around us, the things of this world of which ‘so much depends,’ often the humblest among them, and from which a new acquaintance with them, and with ourselves, might arise.” I didn’t know exactly what this would mean, but I knew it wasn’t horror films.

Through the course of the next week, as I worked on my readings, a particular poem stood out to me. This poem, luckily, was one of the poems another girl picked for her “close reading” assignment. I couldn’t wait to hear her interpretation of the poem in class. As I listened to her struggle and grapple with the meaning, I wasn’t sure how she had so easily missed the same dear meaning I had extrapolated from the poem. The poem, Pastoral, is as follows:

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself.

Older now

I walk back streets

admiring the houses

of the very poor:

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel-staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate,

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.

No one

will believe this

of vast import to the nation.

The moment I read this poem for homework, I knew I loved The Other William. I loved him more than Shakespeare. This William spoke to my love of the back-roads of Clanton, Alabama. Not that I ever desired to live in any of the run-down shacks that lined the streets leading to my Maw-Maw’s house, but my mother’s love of antiques and “junking” has groomed a particular interest in my heart for “found objects” and “shabby chic” styles of décor—which, by the way, involve the chicken wire, furniture gone wrong, and properly weathered blues that Williams describes above. As I read this poem, I found myself wanting to go antiquing. I wanted to get in my car, crank up Rodney Atkins' “Take a Back Road,” and go find a chair with the seat missing or a lost leg (a perfectly beautiful piece of “furniture gone wrong”) that someone sits by the curb as trash. Since I didn’t have time to do any “junking”—as my Southern mama would put it—I decided I would pay homage to this poem by taking on a creative project at home.

The line that inspired my project was “if I am fortunate,/smeared a bluish green/ that properly weathered/ pleases me best/ of all colors.” I have a special affinity for aqua of all shades, particularly the aqua that results from a weathered patina finish. I already have a pair of chairs that were a bright shade of aqua. I decided to go to Lowe’s and grab a bottle of crackle finish and a shade of antique blue/grey paint called “rain puddle.” I came home, drug the chairs to the back yard of my little beach cottage, and began to “properly weather” my perfectly aqua chairs.

As I sat waiting for the first coat to dry, I began to contemplate Williams’ closing lines of the poem: “No one/will believe this/ of vast import to the nation.” I remembered Lunberry explaining to our class that people, when Williams first began writing, would have seen no merit to a poem about such seemingly menial objects as fences, outhouses, and furniture gone wrong. I couldn’t help but wonder how Williams would feel now if he could connect with Rachel Ashwell. What would he think about the shabby chic decorating movement that celebrates a weathered, chippy-paint piece of furniture? Would he laugh to know that one of Pottery Barn’s staple items is chicken wire? Indeed, I chuckled at how the “bluish green…properly weathered” has become, indeed, of vast import to the nation. Okay, maybe that’s a stretch. It has, however, become of vast import to the nation of home décor.

And surely, it has become of vast import to my nation on Pullian Street. Every time I look at my “bluish green…properly weathered” chairs, I will think of William Carlos and smile. Through this first reflection, I have come to understand more about the description I read that first day in class on the syllabus. I've gained a new acquaintance with Williams, with my humble little 'ole aqua chairs, and--most certainly--with myself.

Here are the photos demonstrating the evolution of my project, intended to pay homage to The Other William and the "bluish green / that properly weathered/ pleases [him] best/ of all colors":