Nantucket

Nantucket: analysis

Introduction

"Nantucket" is a ten-line poem that lists what is in a room in the late afternoon. It moves from flowers seen through a window to curtains, a smell, the light, a tray with a pitcher and a tumbler, a key, and a bed. The poem makes no statement about any of it.

It has only one finite verb, "is lying" in line 9. The title names the island, but the lines never mention the sea or the town. What the poem gives is a still, clean, sunlit room, set down in the order an eye might take it in.

Summary

Lines 1–2 begin outside the room. The speaker sees flowers through a window. Their colours are "lavender and yellow". There is no verb, and no speaker is named.

Lines 3–4 say the colours are "changed by white curtains". The light passing through the curtains alters how the flowers look. Line 4 then turns from sight to smell. The room has a "Smell of cleanliness", and the line ends with a dash.

Line 5 gives the time of day, "Sunshine of late afternoon". Line 6 brings the eye down to a surface inside the room. That surface is "the glass tray". The stanza ends mid-phrase, so the reader must go on to learn what the tray holds.

Lines 7–8 name the objects on the tray. There is a glass pitcher and a tumbler. The tumbler is "turned down", set upside down on the tray. The words "by which" at the end of line 8 point ahead to one more object.

Line 9 completes the phrase: beside the tumbler "a key is lying". After a dash, the words "And the" begin a new item. Line 10 names it as the "immaculate white bed". The poem ends on this noun phrase, with no full stop.

Themes and meaning

The first subject of the poem is looking itself. It records objects in the order the eye meets them. The view runs from outside to inside, from far to near, and last to the bed. Nothing is explained or judged, so the reader receives the room as bare perception and must supply the mood.

Whiteness and cleanliness run through the poem. The curtains are white in line 3, and the bed is "immaculate white" in line 10. Between them come the "Smell of cleanliness" and two glass objects. The room can be read as one freshly prepared for someone, perhaps a rented room on the island.

The poem also sets outside against inside. The flowers are beyond the window, and their colours reach the room only "changed by white curtains". Window and curtain stand between the natural world and the interior. After the lavender and yellow of line 2, the room holds almost no colour. One reader sees the glass as both a barrier and an opening.

No person appears, yet every object implies one. A tumbler is turned down, a key is laid beside it, and a bed is made. The key suggests an arrival or a departure. The bed suggests rest, and some may read in it the promise of intimacy. The poem stops at the bed and leaves what happens there unsaid.

Tone

The tone is calm and exact. The speaker names things plainly and adds no comment on them. The dashes at the ends of lines 3, 4 and 5 act as pauses, like a slow look moving from one thing to the next. The effect is quiet and unhurried.

The ending shifts the tone slightly. The words "And the" at the end of line 9 hold the reader in suspense across the line break. The last line then gives the one strongly charged adjective in the poem, "immaculate". The close can be read as serene, or as expectant, with the empty bed waiting for someone.

Form and structure

The poem has 10 lines in 5 stanzas of 2 lines each. None of the lines rhyme. The lines are short, from 4 to 7 syllables, and there is no regular metre. It is free verse shaped by the eye rather than the ear.

The line breaks often split a phrase. "the tumbler / turned down" and "And the / immaculate" both carry the reader over a break. Dashes do much of the punctuating, and the poem never reaches a full stop. Grammatically it is a string of noun phrases with a single finite verb.

Poetic devices

imagery line 2

lavender and yellow The only colours in the poem other than white. They belong to the flowers outside, which makes the white room that follows seem paler.

imagery (smell) line 4

Smell of cleanliness The poem shifts from sight to smell. Cleanliness is an abstract noun, so the line names a quality of the room rather than a particular scent.

colour contrast line 3

changed by white curtains White filters the colour of the flowers. The line starts the white that runs to the bed in the last line.

repetition line 7

a glass pitcher "glass" repeats from the "glass tray" of line 6. The repetition stresses the clear, clean surfaces of the room.

enjambment line 8

turned down, by which The line ends on "by which", a phrase that cannot stand alone. The reader is carried over the break and the stanza break to the key.

caesura line 9

a key is lying— And the The dash splits the line. It closes the key's phrase and opens the last item with a pause before the bed.

diction line 10

immaculate white bed "immaculate" means spotless. The word is stronger than "clean" and can also carry a sense of purity. It is the most emphatic word in the poem.

Words worth knowing

tumbler

A drinking glass with a flat bottom and no stem or handle.

immaculate

Perfectly clean and spotless. The word can also mean pure or without fault.

Context

"Nantucket" is by William Carlos Williams (1883–1963). It has been on americanpoems.com since 2003 and was a Poem of the Day on September 20, 2011. Readers have left seven comments on it, from 2004 to 2013.

What readers have said

• Kylie, who remembers Nantucket, says the poem captures exactly what it is like to be there in summer. Kylie, 2004
• Sarah Bucken takes the opposite view, complaining that the poem has nothing to do with Nantucket. Sarah Bucken, 2005
• Lorraime Gray says the images capture a mood, and that any seaside town would evoke the same summer moment. Lorraime Gray, 2011
• R Harold contrasts the sterile white bedroom with the colourful nature outside, reading the window glass as both a barrier and a way in for colour and light. R Harold, 2013