William Carlos Williams’s poem “To Waken an Old Lady” appears to assign itself a purpose in its own title. While the poem quickly identifies itself as concerned with the nature of old age, the “Old Lady” of the title doesn’t explicitly appear in the body of the text. In fact, the title introduces a certain amount of ambiguity into the poem: is the old lady asleep, that she needs to be wakened? Is “Waken” used more rhetorically in the title, referring to an awakening of awareness or vitality? Regardless, the poem’s title marks it as an occasional poem, a poem which exists to accomplish some purpose—namely, the waking up of an old lady, in whatever respect. The poem begins this work by setting out to define old age, declaring “Old age is” in its first line (Line 1). What follows promises to answer the question posed by this half definition.

Rather than providing either a straightforward or rhetorical answer, Williams follows the first line by defining old age in terms of imagery: it is “a flight of small / cheeping birds” (Lines 2-3). In the image’s first line, it is left ambiguous whether “flight” is a description of traveling in the air or fleeing some threat.