William Carlos Williams and some French "Portraits"

In 1920, William Carlos Williams published a poem called "Portrait of a Lady."   It has nothing to do with the Henry James novel of the same name.  Its central theme is the efforts of the speaker to describe his passion for a lady with references to the French rococo painter Jean Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), but fumbling over himself and also referring to another, late-rococo painter Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806).   Here is the poem:


Your thighs are appletrees
whose blossoms touch the sky.
Which sky? The sky
where Watteau hung a lady's
slipper. Your knees
are a southern breeze -- or
a gust of snow. Agh! what
sort of man was Fragonard?
-- As if that answered
anything. -- Ah, yes. Below
the knees, since the tune
drops that way, it is
one of those white summer days,
the tall grass of your ankles
flickers upon the shore --
Which shore? --
the sand clings to my lips --
Which shore?
Agh, petals maybe. How
should I know?
Which shore? Which shore?
-- the petals from some hidden
appletree -- Which shore?
I said petals from an appletree.

My first advice: Ladies, if a guy compares your thighs to appletrees, run the other way.

In very general terms, we might imagine that this poem is either a dialogue between the speaker and his "lady love," or it's the speaker trying out lines of praise and correcting/sabotaging himself.  The questions being asked throughout -- "which sky?" "what sort of man was Fragonard?" "Which shore?" "How should I know?" -- undermine the speaker's efforts.  

One way of understanding the poem is to look at two paintings, one by Watteau, one by Fragonard, whose titles are both usually translated the same into English: The Swing.  Here's the Watteau:

It's a crappy image, but you can see the kind of pastoral texture: the soft, "perfect" sunlight, the bucolic setting.  It's an image of innocent love.

Now for the Fragonard:

It's a bit naughtier, eh? First you have a "threesome"! The man on the left has, shall we say, a rather interesting view.  So, interestingly do the cherubs in statuette, from behind the woman's, er, behind. This is no idyll: it's a very bawdy parody of the Watteau.

Williams first introduces the Watteau in answer to the "which sky" question: "The sky/Where Watteau hung a lady's/slipper." Except, the speaker is wrong: look at the Fragonard, and you'll see the lady's slipper hanging in the air, and evidently having just been kicked off her foot, in a suggestive manner.  Later, the rhetorical question appears: "Agh!what" sort of man was Fragonard?/ --As if that answered anything." Again, is this another speaker? Is this the poem's speaker?  By mentioning Fragonard, we can see that the speaker -- or perhaps Williams, though I doubt it -- is conflating the two paintings.

One way of reading the poem is that while the speaker may have as his spoken intentions the innocent romance of the Watteau, the poet's "true" intentions are those represented by the Fragonard.  It's worth noting that all the imagery of the woman herself refers to her lower half: thighs compared to apple trees, knees to a southern breeze, the ankles to tall grass.  The trope of comparing the female body parts to things found in nature is an old one; it was a popular convention during the Renaissance, for example.  But the constant interruptions on the part of the lady -- or of the speaker himself, struggle to write a love poem -- completely undermine the attempt at romance, and place it squarely where the meaning lies: below the waist. The reference to the two paintings helps the reader to get to the heart  of the matter...or rather, the thighs of the matter.