Poem (As the cat) Analysis

As the cat
climbed over
the top of

the jamcloset
first the right
forefoot

carefully
then the hind
stepped down
into the pit of
the empty
flowerpot


Anonymous submission.

.: :.

Since I was a kid, I always remember being told to read poetry aloud, even if you are alone, because the power of the poem is in the sound of the words as much as the structure. With this poem, I think that this is true. The nature of its words causes them to be read with pauses, consistent with the purposeful steps that all cat observers love to watch. I used to have a cat myself, who I loved to watch stalk around the house, climbing on top of and into things like flowerpots. I did not think that this movement was possible to capture. It seems like it is so simple, but it’s not. There's a cat. It moves from one place to another. That is all. But Williams captures the instinctive soft-footedness of that movement like I thought nobody could. The words of the poem themselves so feline in the way that they have to be read aloud is almost unreal, and the last stanza leaping down on to the page so nimbly that just hearing the words, you can see the cat moving. It is so simple, yet it still captures the movement of the cat; a feat far from simple.

| Posted on 2009-04-01 | by a guest