On William Carlos Williams' Ekphrastic Poetry

William Carlos Williams is a representative modernist poet of the 20th century in the United States.He has devoted his life to creating poetic works with simple text and outstanding imagery.His poetry is often short with novel forms,and he emphasizes the development of the visual features of poetry to form a sense of picture.So,it is no wander why Williams has created many ekphrastic poems,which are based on real paintings or photographic works.At present,some scholars have studied Williams'poetry from the visual expression,and believe that Williams has applied painting techniques in his poetry,such as color language,spatial awareness,etc.Some scholars also have studied from the perspective of influencing factors,color expression and visual form.But these studies have neglected the special exploration of Williams's poetic notions and still remain at the technical level.This thesis has selected "The Pot Flowers,""Roses,""Young Sycamore," "Dance," and ten poems in Paintings from Brueghel and the Other.Through close reading and comparative study of poems and paintings,ekphrastic measures and the poetic notions of Williams' ekphrasis are explored.According to the characteristics of each ekphrasis,the author explores Williams'ekphrastic measures in detail.Williams borrows painting techniques and mainly employs the structure iconicity to dig out the spatial form of poetry,making the appearance of the poem on the page resembles the shape of the object depicted on the canvas,and creating a spatial structure,vividly presenting the sense of the screen.Williams adopts linguistic equivalent and phonetic iconicity to create a sense of immersiveness.In addition,Williams emphasizes the secondary design of painting works,breaking the original painting structure,and injecting rich imagination to recompose painting content,and designing the inner relationship between each poetry.Although Williams' ekphrastic measures are to some extent interlinked,the theme and poetic notions reflected in these ekphrasis are not the same.At his formative stage,Williams pursues the iconicity of shape and structure to reflect the natural aesthetic value.This is a direct and pure way of poetry presentation.In the mature stage,Williams puts painting skills aside,focuses on the lives of people,especially the bottom people,and shows concern for their living conditions.Among the religious and mythological ekphrasis,Williams strips various divine symbols to deify them and remove their central positions.The creating center of Williams' ekphrasis shifts from nature and the world,to the concern for the survival of people in reality,to the decentralization of religion and mythology.From the transformation process,we can see the evolution of Williams'poetic notions.