The Dance

William Carlos Williams’ poem The Dance is notable for its structure and its interesting use of grammar.  The poem itself consists of two sentences.  The first sentence begins “In Breughel’s great picture, The Kermess”, and the last sentence ends with the same phrase.  This phrase, which establishes the setting at the beginning and closes out the scene at the end of the poem, gives the poem a circular quality.  This circular structure is reminiscent of the medieval dance that Breughel represented in his painting.  The peasants in The Kermess drink beer and dance around in circles, circulating around and around just like the poem does.  This is an example of the poem’s form imitating real life, with the correlating circular motions of reading the poem several times and being able to envision the medieval dancers as they “go round, they go round and around.” 

The poem’s use of language is also patterned after the reality of the painting.  The syntax is unconventional, and the grammar is often wrong.  The repetition of words in quick succession creates the impression that perhaps a drunk peasant at this medieval dance is uttering them.  The fragment “the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them” is somewhat jarring because of its grammatically incorrect appearance, but accurately portrays the speech and thought process of someone happily and drunkenly dancing the day away. 

Both the structure and the grammar of The Dance are artificial poetic structures that serve to imitate real life.  The circular nature of the poem, and its curious, almost scatterbrained grammar adds an extra dimension of truth and reality to the poem.  The external patterns in the text emphasize the internal themes in the poem.