Summary
The speaker describes the back wings of a hospital. It is mostly barren, filled with cinders. He characterizes it as a place where nothing is able to grow. In the poem's final moments, he reveals that there are shards from a green glass bottle glimmering in this dim place.
Analysis
"Between Walls" is representative of William Carlos Williams's efforts to find the most efficient means of communicating imagery. He writes with an almost shocking level of economy, each line carrying only what is necessary to convey the scene. However, what makes this poem unique is its ability to communicate a fragment of beauty in an otherwise barren landscape. This idea fits well with the style he has crafted, as it focuses in on a small detail in the context of an unremarkable scene.
The poem begins with matter-of-fact scene-setting ("the back wings") before delving deeper into a full typification of the place. He is depicting the unattended back area of the hospital. He states that these "back wings of the hospital" are a spot "where / nothing / will grow" and also notes that there "lie / cinders." These brief lines are heavily enjambed; two of them only contain a single word. For all of this brevity, Williams is effectively able to evoke industrial blight and ugliness and a forgotten space. The combination of the details about nothing growing and the ground covered in "cinders" gives the distinct impression that this bleak environment is devoid of any sort of aesthetic virtue or natural beauty. The use of the word "cinders" also gives the poem a particularly unsettling quality as it carries overtones of ruin, the dead remnants of fire and smoke. From there, the poem then makes a meaningful shift in its last two stanzas, zooming in on a small, important image.
The fourth stanza hints at a brief glimmer of something different: "in which shine / the broken," establishing a mystery that is quickly resolved in the next stanza. Williams is describing the shards of a broken glass bottle: "pieces of a green / bottle." Williams paces this moment with significant exactitude as he builds out the scene before taking notice of this tiny instance of beauty. He saves the most important moment for last, allowing the reader to perceive it with the emphasis it requires. The image of the shattered bottle is a little wonder in this dead space. He uses the word "shine" to make the audience aware of this glimmer against a backdrop of drabness. The word "green" has a similar effect, standing out brightly in a scene that has been, thus far, shown to be uniformly grayscale. These chromatic details serve to show beauty persevering in this industrial space. Williams is showing the reader that even in this relatively grim locale, there is still beauty to be perceived.
This also feels, appropriately, like something of a mission statement on Williams's part, as he was a poet always looking for transcendent moments in the material of the everyday. What is interesting about the choice of the bottle as an image is that it is still something man-made. Williams has not forgotten his declaration about nothing being able to grow; the bottle is not a natural thing. Much like the wheelbarrow in one of his other most well-known works, the glass bottle here assumes a position of central importance. It is the image around which he has constructed the most careful semblance of details, investing it with a passing significance as an aesthetic object. He is demonstrating the possibility for poetry to draw artistic grace in even the most unlikely of situations, giving objects as seemingly forgettable as broken glass bottles a transient elegance.
On the level of form, the poem is very restrained. It contains no punctuations and features enjambment throughout. The lines are very brief, the poem as whole is roughly a single sentence, but is divided to provide imagistic clarity on individual objects. The rationale behind this notably spare style appears to be a focus on finding the precise details that will capture the elements of a scene. This is true of a number of Williams's poems, but in "Between Walls" this takes on a specific significance. In searching for an efficient means of transmitting his ideas, Williams found a style that focused on decluttering the text. This is well-suited to a poem that is about, at its core, finding beauty in a desolate place, homing in on the image of the glass bottle as a means of talking about the beauty and meaning that can be found anywhere—even the back wings of a hospital.
