Distinguishing Between Human and Non-Human in Spring and All Anonymous College

Although established as nonhuman, poets often use animals, nature, and other objects to comment about the human condition in poetry. While in some cases this may lead to a clear distinction between human and non-human, William Carlos Williams’s Spring and All [By the road to the contagious hospital], breaks down the barrier between what is human and what is not. By analogizing the coming of spring, and relying on imagery and line, Williams comes to an understanding about being stuck between life and death, and concludes that the intersections between human and non-human are too intermingled to be separated.

Williams uses decaying imagery to create a bleak depiction of the human life cycle. That is to say, Williams uses imagery to say something about humanity by describing the nature that surrounds it. The subject of the poem begins “By the road to the contagious hospital,” an image which juxtaposes something deadly—like a contagious disease—to something life-giving—like a hospital. This image immediately blurs distinctions between humanity and nature, suggesting the road to be the path of life, a path with an inevitably pitiful end. Williams doesn’t even allow for the possibility of an alternative path. Instead of other roads,...