Youth and Beauty
love
loss
free verse
haunting
I bought a dishmop-- having no daughter-- for they had twisted fine ribbons of shining copper about white twine and made a tousled head of it, fastened it upon a turned ash stick slender at the neck straight, tall-- when tied upright on the brass wallbracket to be a light for me and naked as a girl should seem to her father.
Youth and Beauty - fact Summary
Reflects Absence of a Daughter
The speaker buys a dishmop remade into a tousled head on a stick and mounts it like a child on a wallbracket, imagining it as a domestic light and presence. The poem frames this small object as a stand‑in for familial affection, made explicit by the line having no daughter
. Williams’s own life—he fathered sons but had no daughter—shapes this intimate, quietly ironic scene.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.