500 AP English Literature Questions to know by test day

CHAPTER 2. American Poetry

Passage 5. William Carlos Williams, “Contemporania”

The corner of a great rain

Steamy with the country

Has fallen upon my garden.

I go back and forth now

And the little leaves follow me                                   

Talking of the great rain,

Of branches broken,

And the farmer’s curses!

But I go back and forth

In this corner of a garden                                        

And the green shoots follow me

Praising the great rain.

We are not curst together,

The leaves and I,

Framing devices, flower devices                                

And other ways of peopling

The barren country.

Truly it was a very great rain

That makes the little leaves follow me.