What is the meaning of William Carlos William's poem Contemporania?

Answer 1

There is a pun in the title of the poem - it suggests that the subject matter is about things happening simultaneously but it also contains the sounds 'temper' and 'rainier' which may also suggest the 'temper' of the farmer's curses. the 'tempering' action of the rain upon the soil, and that the 'great rain' has been rainier than at other times.

A heavy rainstorm has fallen over a rural farming area, damaging young fruit trees, and the edge of the storm, it's 'corner' has passed over the speaker's garden causing some damage there too. The rainstorm is an unseasonable spring or summer storm - this is suggested by its steaminess and because its violence has caused the farmers to curse - less likely if the trees were leafless in winter rather than carrying young leaf or blossom the loss of which will effect the farmer's income for the autumn season.

As the speaker walks back and forth in his garden raking the little leaves he imagines them discussing excitedly the havoc the great rain has caused - the broken branches and the farmer's curses. Since the farmer is singular it may be that the speaker's land is a corner of the farm or a plot of land adjacent to it.

However, as the speaker also walks back and forth over the same terrain, he notes the young shoots of green grass, and he imagines these grateful for the rainfall that has allowed them to grow. So a 'great rain' may be regarded as a positive or a negative event depending on the perspective from which it is viewed. The great rain is cursed in the barren country but praised in the corner of a garden.

The speaker considers that the young growth can 'people' a barren country - this metaphor compares the blades of grass springing up with new or immigrant populations spreading to inhabit what had once been farmland. 'Flower devices' - buds, leaves, blossom on the one hand, and 'the green shoots' and 'I' on the other hand, do not deserve equally to be cursed. Despite the farmer's curses, the 'very great rain' has subdued the 'leaves' (earlier use of the land for food production') to the need to 'people' the barren country.

We might think of the proverb -It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good."