The Dance
William Carlos Williams (1883 ‐1963)
| In Brueghel’s great picture, The Kermess, the dancers go round, they go round and around, the squeal and the blare and the tweedle of bagpipes, a bugle and fiddles tipping their bellies (round as the thick‐ sided glasses whose wash they impound) their hips and their bellies off balance to turn them. Kicking and rolling about the Fair Grounds, swinging their butts, those shanks must be sound to bear up under such rollicking measures, prance as they dance in Brueghel’s great picture, The Kermess. |
1. Read the poem aloud and mention 3 phrases in the poem you find unusual and fun
to say.
2. Read the poem again and list vocabulary connected to
a. Movement
b. Sound
c. Bodies
d. Musical instruments
3. Compare your own observations of the painting and Williams´ poem describing the
Kermesse.
- Draw tree boxes: one to the left, one to the right and one in between overlapping the other two circles.
- Put your observations from the previous task in the box on the left if they are
different from the ones in Williams‘ poem. - Put Williams´ descriptions in the box on the right if they are different from
yours. - Put everything you and Williams both mention in the box in the middle.
