Loveliness Lost in Anticipation

Williams, a physician-poet from the modern period 1910-1945 demonstrates in two poems the power of the mind. In Portrait of a Lady, Williams portrays a conversation between a man and a woman in praise of her loveliness and sexual appeal to the man. Williams embraces descriptions of her thighs, knees, and ankles, as if the man’s eyes descend down her body. The essayist Mordecai Marcus comments on their playful conversation, jumping from the man’s initial rejection in conversation with the woman to her inquisitive nature which propels their discussion. “With “the sand clings to my lips” the man accepts a tentative and self-mocking defeat, the sand representing her success at warding off his incipient physical gesture.” Williams values the man’s need to find composure in their exchange in “ah, yes” or simple hints at frustration in sounds like “agh.” The reality of his portrayal of initial attraction and sexual appeal generates feelings of the ascent and the occasional descent of this relationship as it seems to have a loveliness associated with Williams’ style.

The Descent, a visual expression of Williams’ later grasp on gaining something from losing is a jagged representation of loving in the anticipation of something great. The connection of Portrait of a Lady with the (perhaps evitable) descent of their relationship is expressed in this later poem. Was the man in the first poem is challenged with the love he once sought after and is later portrayed as recovering from “what [was] lost in the anticipation?” Essayist Carl Rapp claims that “Williams finds a similar way of looking at defeat and loss that enables him to see those negative experiences as positive ones with implications not yet “realized.” Perhaps the relationship formed in Portrait of a Lady was short-lived and later visualized in The Descent. Though what was gained in memory was lost in desire: “grow[s] sleepy now and drop[s] away from desire.” Sexually, an ‘ascent’ is naturally met with a ‘descent’ from pleasure and Williams captures, if anything, the memory of a lady whose “thighs [were] appletrees” with an “endless and indestructible” feeling.