 William Carlos, Williams. “The Portrait of a Lady.” The Norton Anthology American Literature. Volume D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2012. Print.

William Carlos Williams’ poem, with it’s vivid use of images in comparison to body parts immediately causes one to imagine such images in their head, thus producing a near complete picture of the way Williams’ views the woman he describes in his poem. Not only are these images extremely clear, but also they lack abstraction and are mostly concrete elements such as blossoms, the shore, tall grass, snow, petals, etc. Our group intends to use the medium of visual imagery through photography in hopes to convey a certain feeling and tone to the audience who will by observing and analyzing these images without first reading the poem. Therefore, such concrete and vivid images will be useful in capturing through photography and will thus give us as a group a clearer chance to summarize the tone we sense in the poem through these concise images. While the concrete images such as the appletrees and the sky should not be difficult to photograph, Williams does use a few abstract images that we would also like to capture by film and challenge ourselves by photographing such visuals in an intangible or perhaps theoretical way that may further allow our audience to impose their own interpretations onto the images. Images such as a “southern breeze” or “white summer days,” can be very open to interpretation and may invoke a sense of happiness for one viewer and a completely different emotion for the next.

 Pound, Ezra. “In a Station of the Metro.” The Norton Anthology American Literature. Volume D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2012. Print.

This poem in contrast to Williams’ The Portrait of a Lady is extremely short and lacks the easily accessible images that would be easily photographed and thus analyzed in a personal way. Only two lines and fourteen words long, Pound’s poem is very abstract. Many would most likely agree that the cheerful images of William’s poem convey just that; a cheerful and happy tone similar to that of springtime and romance. Pound’s poem however can be taken in a multitude of different contexts, and we observe that this is one of the most important reasons as to why this poem is such a necessity to use in our collection. It is almost as though the title of Pound’s poem is an extension of the poem itself, it too is poetic, and presents us with the location of where we should picture the following lines that present us with the image of a crowd. The description of the “apparition” of the faces in this specific crowd allow one to think of ghost like faces – so intertwined and busy that the almost disappear amongst one another. Pound also clearly makes it a point to leave out the word “like” in between the description of the faces and their comparison to “petals on a wet, black bough.” Instead of using a simile, Pound implies that the faces are the petals; they are not like the petals. This further pushes the realness and starkness of the poem, implicating a somber yet severe plainness that will hopefully be captured through the medium of photography.

 Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” The Norton Anthology American Literature. Volume D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2012. Print.

Similar to Williams’ poem, Robert Frost’s contains vivid pastoral imagery that is easily able to visualize just from reading the lines of his poem. The poem is filled with images of grassy and weary paths in the woods, yellow woods in specific, which imply that the time of year may be closer to autumn. Frost’s poem though rather visual, is extremely interpretive in the tone it suggests. Frost speaks of himself from the perspective of a traveler, almost using himself as a representation of every human being in life, for metaphorically we are all travelers in life, navigating which path suites us best in our ever present journey. The poem however, can be interpreted in different ways for different people, for the speaker in the poem ponders the dilemma over which road he should embark. The idea of choosing a path in life is adventurous and exciting for some, but for others the idea is extremely daunting and anxiety producing. Therefore, the image of the paths in the wood could be portrayed as beautiful and intriguing, or ominous and eerie.

 Goldberg, Dave. "Survey Monkey." . SurveyMonkey, n.d. Web. 5 Nov 2013. <www.surveymonkey.com>.

This website is a survey template processor that will easily allow us to create the interactive aspect of our project. The overall goal of our project is that the photographs we will be taking ourselves will capture and convey the tone that the author intends to portray in his or her poem. To observe this goal, we intend to create a survey that will be given to the participants after viewing our photographs and one that will be given after the participants read the poems that correspond with the specific visuals. If our project is successful, the visual and literal interpretations for each survey will correspond. However, the two interpretations need not match up at all, but it is our hope that the photographs will produce some kind of an effect on the literal interpretations of the poem. This specific tool is also helpful to our project in that it will allow us to attach and incorporate images into our survey, which will be very helpful in that the participants will have both images and questions located in the same spot. This will produce a more efficient response to the questions asked.

 William Carlos, Williams. “The Young Housewife.” The Norton Anthology American Literature. Volume D. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2012. Print.

Williams’ The Young Housewife, though seemingly a beautiful poem loaded with concrete images similar to his previous poem that was discussed, is surprisingly a rather risqué and scandalous poem. The poem is not presented in this way however, and it would be a rather interesting task to attempt to capture the hidden messages William provides in his poem through photography and perhaps certain filters with specific photography based editing tools. Williams’ narrator is a man who is driving by and observing this housewife of whom he cannot see, because as he tells us she is “behind the wooden walls of her husband’ house.” It is curious then as to how he knows she “moves about in negligee.” This small fact completely changes the tone of the seemingly innocent poem that in actuality is a fantasy of the housewife through the mind of the narrator. The poem reveals itself to be especially scandalous after the man compares the woman to a fallen leaf, and ends by the “noiseless wheels” of his car rushing over dried leaves. This particular image can be interpreted in a rather graphic way, and would therefore lead to many different interpretations.