/ but not more than with any moments despair, the old, surging wish to / be freed, finished. (30). He perfectly illustrates the intense, sweeping emotion that we all know as grief. (Sidenote: Before I read this poem, I had never read anything that describes grief in such and accurate way. Breathtaking.)Part Three personifies the poem (although in the subtitle we learn that it is about his mother). His mother, although dying, is concerned about her makeup. He tells of her putting on her makeup, and calls it out as her moment to intensely focus on her own face. Williams writes, my mother puts on her morn- / ing makeup; / the broad, deft strokes of foundation, the blended-in rouge, powder, eye / shadow, lipstick; / that concentration with which you must gaze at yourself, that ravenous, unfaltering focus. He feels grief for his mother before she has even died, for whatever she thought her face had to be (31).In the final stanza, Williams style almost becomes like a prayer. He focuses on all the things in his life that have brought him to grief in the past: the flesh, the mind, and the moment, its partial beauties (32). Although this poem is dark and reminds us of our own loss and grief, it remains one of the most beautiful in The Vigil. This brings up the question: How can something so painful be so beautiful? Any true work of art, however tormenting, stays beautiful simply because it is pure. And that is what makes Grief just that a beautiful, accurate poem that helps all of its readers to relate and understand an emotion unlike any other.In his poem Fire, Williams focuses more on the literal aspects of fire and its ability to consume. He writes of a house consumed by fire: The plaster had been burnt from the studsceilings smoke-blackened, soaked rags of old / rug underfoot (39).By giving vivid descriptions of the charred house, Williams sets up his reader for the most powerful stanza of the poem the last one. He transfers the readers mi...
