My first thought upon seeing Apollinaire’s “It’s Raining” was that it looked like children’s poetry. It reminded me of the Shel Silverstein poems that were all the rage in elementary and middle school. However, after reading and absorbing it, I decided that there’s probably a bit more to this poem than the ones I read as a tween.

That being said, I’m still not altogether sure what this poem means. It certainly is interesting.  The vertical positioning of the words on the page force the reader to fully absorb the words, rather than just skimming the page. Reading all the way down one column and then jumping up to the next column makes for a very choppy reading experience. Perhaps Apollinaire used this choppy formatting to make a statement about life during World War I. Disillusionment and disconnect are key characteristics of modernity, and the crooked lines of letters that make up this poem seem to exemplify that.

If I’m interpreting this poem correctly, each letter is supposed to be a raindrop. This seems a bit ironic to me. Traditionally, rain is associated with life and renewal, not the death, disdain, regret, and fetters that this poem describes. But, perhaps this too is indicative of life during World War I. Because the War turned life upside down for the men and women of Europe, Apollinaire may have felt that it was appropriate to turn a traditional symbol of life, rain, on its head as well.