William Carlos Williams' almost obvious response to T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land," often called "By The Road," and then finally titled "Spring And All," can be seen as both a response to Eliot, and an adage to the prologues of the past (Frye). One can almost see the idea for "Spring And All" leaping out of Williams' head and onto paper immediately after reading Eliot's "The Waste Land" in The Dial. A battle of lyrical and poetic heavyweights, if you will, was about to take the stage. Williams' response was a much needed second angle on the pessimistic and thoroughly questioning picture that Eliot was trying to paint.
             It makes one wonder how many people truly took notice of this dialogue between literary artists in the early 20th century. Were there many that took notice of their revelations and proclamations to a war torn and ravaged world? This was most undoubtedly their aim. Even with Williams being a hopeless medical romantic, and with Eliot being a tortured soul, and a pessimist in most senses of the word, they were both working and picking at the same scab. It was this worldwide elitism and genetic sickness that was plaguing people, and both writers seemed to agree on that. Williams simply re-writes Eliot's work through the first thirteen lines of his "Spring and All," almost in a respectful manner, but then goes further with it, and takes it to an optimistic climax. This is something that Eliot was simply not capable of. In doing this Williams has the last word, and makes the more powerful point of the two. While Eliot's "The Waste Land" was highly regarded as a work that gave poetry back to the scholastic community, it was Williams' "Spring and All" that one upped Eliot in its message.
             To understand the imagery that Williams uses within "Spring And All," one has to realize his backgr...