Williams, William Carlos

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{{epname|Williams, William Carlos}}
 
{{epname|Williams, William Carlos}}
 
[[Category:Public]]
 
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[[Image: Wcwilliams.jpg|right|frame|William Carlos Williams]]
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[[Image:William Carlos Williams passport photograph 1921 (cropped).jpg|right|thumb|William Carlos Williams]]
  
 
'''Dr. William Carlos Williams''' (sometimes known as '''WCW''') (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an [[United States|American]] poet, author, and playwright who was also noted for working as a practicing physician his entire life. In his early writings, Williams associated himself closely with the then-emergent movement of American [[modernism]], taking part in that era's upsurge of highly experimental and daring poetry and fiction. He was particularly influential in the [[Imagism|imagist]] movement in poetry. His name is often linked with [[Ezra Pound]] and [[T.S. Eliot]] as among the most influential modernist American poets.  
 
'''Dr. William Carlos Williams''' (sometimes known as '''WCW''') (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an [[United States|American]] poet, author, and playwright who was also noted for working as a practicing physician his entire life. In his early writings, Williams associated himself closely with the then-emergent movement of American [[modernism]], taking part in that era's upsurge of highly experimental and daring poetry and fiction. He was particularly influential in the [[Imagism|imagist]] movement in poetry. His name is often linked with [[Ezra Pound]] and [[T.S. Eliot]] as among the most influential modernist American poets.  
  
Later in life, however, Williams moved away from the excessively abstract, often bleak poetry of his contemporaries, whom he derided as having become "too European." Williams' late poetry celebrated the beauty and meaning of the commonplace in what Williams' close friend and fellow poet [[Marianne Moore]] called "plain English that cats and dogs can understand." It was in this mode, writing poems that highlighted the beauty within the rhythms of American speech, that Williams cemented his reputation, and achieved what [[John Berryman]] called his "strange late greatness."  
+
Later in life, however, Williams moved away from the excessively abstract, often bleak poetry of his contemporaries, whom he derided as having become "too European." Williams' late poetry celebrated the beauty and meaning of the commonplace in what Williams' close friend and fellow poet [[Marianne Moore]] called "plain English that cats and dogs can understand."  
 +
 
 +
Williams greatest poems, recalling Whitman and [[Ralph Waldo Emerson|Emerson]], reflect of the union of man and nature and achieved what [[John Berryman]] called his "strange late greatness." His influence spread during the twenties and thirties, and won greater recognition in later decades as younger poets, including  the [[Beats]], were impressed by the accessibility and immediacy of his verse.
 +
{{toc}}
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Randall Jarrell, in his introduction to Williams' ''Selected Poems'' (1949) noted "their generosity and sympathy, their moral and human attractiveness." Williams clear and sensuous imagery, making the ordinary appear extraordinary, evokes a lucid, poetic vision of modern American life. In 1963 he was awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize]] in poetry for ''Pictures from Brueghel'' (1962).
  
 
==Life==
 
==Life==
 
 
Williams was born in Rutherford, [[New Jersey]], a town near the city of Paterson. His father was an [[English]] [[immigrant]], and his mother was born in [[Puerto Rico]]. He attended public school in Rutherford until 1897, then was sent to study at [[Château de Lancy]] near Geneva, [[Switzerland]], the Lycée Condorcet in [[Paris, France|Paris]], [[France]] for two years, and [[Horace Mann High School]] in [[New York City]]. Then, in 1902, he entered the [[University of Pennsylvania Medical School]]. During his time at Penn, Williams befriended [[Ezra Pound]], [[Hilda Doolittle]] (H.D.), and the painter [[Charles Demuth]]. These friendships supported his growing passion for poetry.  
 
Williams was born in Rutherford, [[New Jersey]], a town near the city of Paterson. His father was an [[English]] [[immigrant]], and his mother was born in [[Puerto Rico]]. He attended public school in Rutherford until 1897, then was sent to study at [[Château de Lancy]] near Geneva, [[Switzerland]], the Lycée Condorcet in [[Paris, France|Paris]], [[France]] for two years, and [[Horace Mann High School]] in [[New York City]]. Then, in 1902, he entered the [[University of Pennsylvania Medical School]]. During his time at Penn, Williams befriended [[Ezra Pound]], [[Hilda Doolittle]] (H.D.), and the painter [[Charles Demuth]]. These friendships supported his growing passion for poetry.  
  
 
He received his M.D. in 1906 and spent the next four years in internships in New York City and in travel and postgraduate studies abroad (e.g., at the University of [[Leipzig]] where he studied [[pediatrics]]). He returned to Rutherford in 1910 and began his medical practice, which lasted until 1951. Ironically, most of his patients knew little if anything of his writings and instead they viewed him as an old-fashioned doctor who helped deliver over 2,000 newborns.
 
He received his M.D. in 1906 and spent the next four years in internships in New York City and in travel and postgraduate studies abroad (e.g., at the University of [[Leipzig]] where he studied [[pediatrics]]). He returned to Rutherford in 1910 and began his medical practice, which lasted until 1951. Ironically, most of his patients knew little if anything of his writings and instead they viewed him as an old-fashioned doctor who helped deliver over 2,000 newborns.
  
In 1912, he married Florence (Flossie, "the floss of his life") Herman, who had been his co-valedictorian at Horace Mann. The newlyweds moved into a house in Rutherford and shortly afterward his first book of serious poems, ''[[The Tempers]]*,'' was published. The couple spent most of the rest of their lives in Rutherford, although they did travel occasionally. On a trip to Europe in 1924, the Williamses spent time with fellow writers such as [[Ezra Pound]] and [[James Joyce]].  
+
In 1912, he married Florence (Flossie, "the floss of his life") Herman, who had been his co-valedictorian at Horace Mann. The newlyweds moved into a house in Rutherford and shortly afterward his first book of serious poems, ''[[The Tempers]],'' was published. The couple spent most of the rest of their lives in Rutherford, although they did travel occasionally. On a trip to Europe in 1924, the Williamses spent time with fellow writers such as [[Ezra Pound]] and [[James Joyce]].  
  
 
Williams returned home alone that year, while his wife and sons stayed in Europe so that the boys could have a year abroad as Williams and his brother had done in their youth. Much later in his career, Williams traveled around the United States to give poetry readings and lectures. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in [[New York City]] with friends—writers and artists like the [[avant-garde]] painters [[Marcel Duchamp]] and [[Francis Picabia]] and the poets [[Wallace Stevens]] and [[Marianne Moore]]. He became involved in the [[imagist]] movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and [[T.S. Eliot]].  
 
Williams returned home alone that year, while his wife and sons stayed in Europe so that the boys could have a year abroad as Williams and his brother had done in their youth. Much later in his career, Williams traveled around the United States to give poetry readings and lectures. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in [[New York City]] with friends—writers and artists like the [[avant-garde]] painters [[Marcel Duchamp]] and [[Francis Picabia]] and the poets [[Wallace Stevens]] and [[Marianne Moore]]. He became involved in the [[imagist]] movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and [[T.S. Eliot]].  
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==Poetry==
 
==Poetry==
Williams' most anthologized poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow", considered an example of the [[imagism|Imagist]] movement's style and principles:
+
Williams' most anthologized poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow," considered an example of the [[imagism|Imagist]] movement's style and principles:
  
 
:so much depends  
 
:so much depends  
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The poem's intense focus on a single image, and its terseness evocative of haiku is considered a model example of the [[imagism|imagist]] movement's style and principles, summarized by the imagist motto that Williams coined: "no ideas but in things."  
 
The poem's intense focus on a single image, and its terseness evocative of haiku is considered a model example of the [[imagism|imagist]] movement's style and principles, summarized by the imagist motto that Williams coined: "no ideas but in things."  
  
As a young man Williams stayed true to this motto and his early poems (most of which he compiled in half-prose, half-verse pamphlet manifestos and published himself) are similarly laconic and focused on things in the world rather than abstractions. However, as he grew older Williams distanced himself from the imagist ideas he had helped to establish with [[Ezra Pound]] and [[Hilda Doolittle]], whom he ultimately rejected as being "too European." This break came on the heels of a brief collaboration with Pound on [[T.S. Eliot]]’s epic poem ''[[The Waste Land]]*,'' which he derided as baroque and obscure. Eliot's poem, despite its genius, seemed to him years later a "great catastrophe to our letters," a work of  stylistic brilliance and the learning, yet profoundly pessimistic its description of modern culture as a "waste land."  
+
As a young man Williams stayed true to this motto and his early poems (most of which he compiled in half-prose, half-verse pamphlet manifestos and published himself) are similarly laconic and focused on things in the world rather than abstractions. However, as he grew older Williams distanced himself from the imagist ideas he had helped to establish with [[Ezra Pound]] and [[Hilda Doolittle]], whom he ultimately rejected as being "too European." This break came on the heels of a brief collaboration with Pound on [[T.S. Eliot]]’s epic poem ''[[The Waste Land]],'' which he derided as baroque and obscure. Eliot's poem, despite its genius, seemed to him years later a "great catastrophe to our letters," a work of  stylistic brilliance and the learning, yet profoundly pessimistic its description of modern culture as a "waste land."  
  
 
Imagism, to Williams, had focused so intently on images and things that it had lost its human audience. To combat this trend, Williams became a staunch advocate of American [[modernism]], a magnanimous philosophy exemplified best by the words of [[Walt Whitman]], the great American poet who profoundly influenced Williams:
 
Imagism, to Williams, had focused so intently on images and things that it had lost its human audience. To combat this trend, Williams became a staunch advocate of American [[modernism]], a magnanimous philosophy exemplified best by the words of [[Walt Whitman]], the great American poet who profoundly influenced Williams:
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:of all men.
 
:of all men.
  
== Legacy ==
 
Williams was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though he increasingly disagreed with the emphasis on European culture and traditions he discerned in the poetry of Pound and Eliot. Like Pound he had denigrated Walt Whitman, yet later came to accept comparisons to Whitman when critical opinion came to recognize the originality and distinctly American sensibility of the earlier poet. 
 
  
Williams greatest poems, recalling Whitman and [[Ralph Waldo Emerson|Emerson]], celebrate of the union of man, nature, and the commonplace events of everyday life. His influence spread during the twenties and thirties, and won greater recognition in later decades as younger poets, including  the [[Beats]], were impressed by the accessibility and immediacy of his verse.
 
 
Randall Jarrell, in his introduction to Williams' ''Selected Poems'' (1949) noted "their generosity and sympathy, their moral and human attractiveness." Williams clear and sensuous imagery, making the ordinary appear extraordinary, evokes a lucid, poetic vision of modern American life. In 1963 he was awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize]] in poetry for ''Pictures from Brueghel'' (1962).
 
  
 
==Bibliography==
 
==Bibliography==
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'''Poetry'''
 
'''Poetry'''
  
* ''[[Poems (William Carlos Williams)|Poems]]*'' (1909)
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* ''[[Poems (William Carlos Williams)|Poems]]'' (1909)
* ''[[The Tempers]]*'' (1913)
+
* ''[[The Tempers]]'' (1913)
* ''[[Al Que Quiere]]*'' (1917)
+
* ''[[Al Que Quiere]]'' (1917)
* ''[[Kora in Hell: Improvisations]]*'' (1920)  
+
* ''[[Kora in Hell: Improvisations]]'' (1920)  
* ''[[Sour Grapes]]*'' (1921)
+
* ''[[Sour Grapes]]'' (1921)
* ''[[Go Go]]*'' (1923)
+
* ''[[Go Go]]'' (1923)
* ''[[Spring and All]]*'' (1923)
+
* ''[[Spring and All]]'' (1923)
* ''[[The Cod Head]]*'' (1932)
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* ''[[The Cod Head]]'' (1932)
* ''[[Collected Poems, 1921–1931]]*'' (1934)
+
* ''[[Collected Poems, 1921–1931]]'' (1934)
* ''[[An Early Martyr and Other Poems]]*'' (1935)
+
* ''[[An Early Martyr and Other Poems]]'' (1935)
* ''[[Adam & Eve & The City]]*'' (1936)
+
* ''[[Adam & Eve & The City]]'' (1936)
* ''[[The Complete Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1906–1938]]*'' (1938)
+
* ''[[The Complete Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1906–1938]]'' (1938)
* ''[[The Broken Span]]*'' (1941)
+
* ''[[The Broken Span]]'' (1941)
* ''[[The Wedge (poem)|The Wedge]]*'' (1944)
+
* ''[[The Wedge (poem)|The Wedge]]'' (1944)
* ''[[Paterson]]*'' (Book I, 1946; Book II, 1948; Book III, 1949; Book IV, 1951; Book V, 1958)  
+
* ''[[Paterson]]'' (Book I, 1946; Book II, 1948; Book III, 1949; Book IV, 1951; Book V, 1958)  
* ''[[Clouds, Aigeltinger, Russia]]*'' (1948)
+
* ''[[Clouds, Aigeltinger, Russia]]'' (1948)
* ''[[The Collected Later Poems]]*'' (1950)
+
* ''[[The Collected Later Poems]]'' (1950)
* ''[[Collected Earlier Poems]]*'' (1951)
+
* ''[[Collected Earlier Poems]]'' (1951)
* ''[[The Desert Music and Other Poems]]*'' (1954)
+
* ''[[The Desert Music and Other Poems]]'' (1954)
* ''[[Journey to Love]]*'' (1955)
+
* ''[[Journey to Love]]'' (1955)
* ''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]*'' (1962)
+
* ''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]'' (1962)
* ''[[Paterson (poem)|Paterson]]*'' (Books I–V in one volume, 1963)
+
* ''[[Paterson (poem)|Paterson]]'' (Books I–V in one volume, 1963)
* ''[[Imaginations]]*'' (1970)
+
* ''[[Imaginations]]'' (1970)
* ''[[Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909–1939]]*'' (1988)
+
* ''[[Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909–1939]]'' (1988)
* ''[[Collected Poems: Volume 2, 1939–1962]]*'' (1989)
+
* ''[[Collected Poems: Volume 2, 1939–1962]]'' (1989)
* ''[[Early Poems]]*'' (1997)
+
* ''[[Early Poems]]'' (1997)
  
 
'''Prose'''
 
'''Prose'''
  
* ''[[Kora in Hell]]*'' (1920)
+
* ''[[Kora in Hell]]'' (1920)
* ''[[The Great American Novel]]*'' (1923)
+
* ''[[The Great American Novel]]'' (1923)
* ''[[In the American Grain]]*'' (1925)
+
* ''[[In the American Grain]]'' (1925)
* ''[[A Voyage to Pagany]]*'' (1928)
+
* ''[[A Voyage to Pagany]]'' (1928)
* ''[[The Knife of the Times, and Other Stories]]*'' (1932)
+
* ''[[The Knife of the Times, and Other Stories]]'' (1932)
* ''[[Novelette and Other Prose]]*'' (1932)
+
* ''[[Novelette and Other Prose]]'' (1932)
* ''[[White Mule]]*'' (1937)
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* ''[[White Mule]]'' (1937)
* ''[[Life along the Passaic River]]*'' (1938)
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* ''[[Life along the Passaic River]]'' (1938)
* ''[[In the Money]]*'' (1940)
+
* ''[[In the Money]]'' (1940)
* ''[[Make Light of It: Collected Stories]]*'' (1950)
+
* ''[[Make Light of It: Collected Stories]]'' (1950)
* ''[[Autobiography]]*'' (1951)  
+
* ''[[Autobiography]]'' (1951)  
* ''[[The Build-Up]]*'' (1952)
+
* ''[[The Build-Up]]'' (1952)
* ''[[Selected Essays]]*'' (1954)
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* ''[[Selected Essays]]'' (1954)
* ''[[The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams]]*'' (1957)
+
* ''[[The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams]]'' (1957)
* ''[[I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet]]*'' (1958)
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* ''[[I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet]]'' (1958)
* ''[[Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother]]*'' (1959)
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* ''[[Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother]]'' (1959)
* ''[[The Farmers' Daughters: Collected Stories]]*'' (1961)
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* ''[[The Farmers' Daughters: Collected Stories]]'' (1961)
* ''[[Imaginations]]*'' (1970)
+
* ''[[Imaginations]]'' (1970)
* ''[[The Embodiment of Knowledge]]*'' (1974)
+
* ''[[The Embodiment of Knowledge]]'' (1974)
* ''[[Interviews With William Carlos Williams: "Speaking Straight Ahead"]]*'' (1976)  
+
* ''[[Interviews With William Carlos Williams: "Speaking Straight Ahead"]]'' (1976)  
* ''[[A Recognizable Image: William Carlos Williams on Art and Artists]]*'' (1978)
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* ''[[A Recognizable Image: William Carlos Williams on Art and Artists]]'' (1978)
* ''[[The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams]]*'' (1996)
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* ''[[The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams]]'' (1996)
* ''[[Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams]]*'' (1996)
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* ''[[Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams]]'' (1996)
* ''[[The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams]]*'' (1998)
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* ''[[The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams]]'' (1998)
* ''[[William Carlos Williams and Charles Tomlinson: A Transatlantic Connection]]*'' (1998)
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* ''[[William Carlos Williams and Charles Tomlinson: A Transatlantic Connection]]'' (1998)
  
 
'''Drama'''
 
'''Drama'''
  
* ''[[Many Loves and Other Plays: The Collected Plays of William Carlos Williams]]*'' (1961)
+
* ''[[Many Loves and Other Plays: The Collected Plays of William Carlos Williams]]'' (1961)
  
 
==External links==
 
==External links==
 
+
All links retrieved October 2, 2020.
 
*[http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/poem-wx.html#williams A collection of public domain poems]
 
*[http://www.theotherpages.org/poems/poem-wx.html#williams A collection of public domain poems]
*[http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/williams/ A small biography and a huge collection of poems]
 
 
*[http://www.en.utexas.edu/wcw/index2.html Homepage of ''The William Carlos Williams Review'']
 
*[http://www.en.utexas.edu/wcw/index2.html Homepage of ''The William Carlos Williams Review'']
*[http://www.en.utexas.edu/wcw/bibliography/content.html William Carlos Williams Bibliography]
 
*[http://www.millikin.edu/aci/crow/chronology/wcwilliamsbio.html Biography in a chronological style]
 
 
*[http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/willi_wc.htm University of Delaware Library Special Collections Department—The William Carlos Williams Collection]
 
*[http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/willi_wc.htm University of Delaware Library Special Collections Department—The William Carlos Williams Collection]
*[http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/video/williams.html A video clip of ''The Great Figure'']
+
*[http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/119 William Carlos Williams: Poets.org]
*[http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?45442B7C000C070709 WCW exhibit at the Academy of Poets]
 
*[http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?45442B7C000C07060170 WCW reads ''To Elsie'']
 
*[http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/lit-med/lit-med-db/webdocs/webauthors/williams90-au-.html Summaries and annotations of WCW's poems and books]
 
*[http://www.bostonreview.net/BR04.6/costello.html Essay: ''William Carlos Williams in a World of Painters'']
 
*[http://www.cosmoetica.com/TOP58-DES55.htm On William’s ''To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies'']
 
 
*[http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/williams.htm A biography and poems]
 
*[http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/williams.htm A biography and poems]
 
*[http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap7/wcw.html#study PAL: Perspectives in American Literature]
 
*[http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap7/wcw.html#study PAL: Perspectives in American Literature]
*[http://www.neonalley.com/carlos.html Selected Poems, Directory, and Bibliography]
 
 
*[http://www.cosmoetica.com/TOP58-DES55.htm A critical overview of Williams style: ''William Carlos William’s To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies'' by Dan Schneider, 6/14/03]  
 
*[http://www.cosmoetica.com/TOP58-DES55.htm A critical overview of Williams style: ''William Carlos William’s To a Friend Concerning Several Ladies'' by Dan Schneider, 6/14/03]  
*[http://www.theparisreview.com/media/4486_WILLIAMS_WC.pdf Interview (41 pages) with William Carlos Williams and his wife Florence.]
+
*[http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jconte/Williams.html Williams and the visual arts]. Pictures by modernist painters related to WCW’s work. It also features a self portrait of Williams; his not very well known side as a painter.
  
'''Photo Links'''
 
*[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/galrywcw.jpg Photo of William Carlos Williams]
 
*[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/wcwms.jpg Signed typescript of ''Between Walls'' Source: The Barrett Collection, Alderman Library.]
 
*[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/railton/enam312/cvrsaa.jpg Cover of the first edition of ''Spring and All'']
 
*[http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jconte/Armory_Show.html Page on Williams and the Armory Show. Source of the link to the picture of Williams and the ''Others''.]
 
*[http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jconte/Williams.html Williams and the visual arts. Pictures by modernist painters related to WCW’s work. It also features a self portrait of Williams; his not very well known side as a painter.]
 
*[http://www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/wcw.html Pictures of WCW (in toddler age, young and older), of WCW and Ezra Pound and of Florence, WCW’s wife.]
 
*[http://www.rooknet.com/beatpage/gallery/gallery_4.html Photos of modernists and imagists.]
 
*[http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/photos/APR/williamwilliams.html Three high resolution photos of William Carlos Williams.]
 
  
 
[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
 
[[Category:Art, music, literature, sports and leisure]]
  
 
{{credit1|William_Carlos_Williams|32265562}}
 
{{credit1|William_Carlos_Williams|32265562}}

Revision as of 20:23, 23 November 2022


William Carlos Williams

Dr. William Carlos Williams (sometimes known as WCW) (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963), was an American poet, author, and playwright who was also noted for working as a practicing physician his entire life. In his early writings, Williams associated himself closely with the then-emergent movement of American modernism, taking part in that era's upsurge of highly experimental and daring poetry and fiction. He was particularly influential in the imagist movement in poetry. His name is often linked with Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot as among the most influential modernist American poets.

Later in life, however, Williams moved away from the excessively abstract, often bleak poetry of his contemporaries, whom he derided as having become "too European." Williams' late poetry celebrated the beauty and meaning of the commonplace in what Williams' close friend and fellow poet Marianne Moore called "plain English that cats and dogs can understand."

Williams greatest poems, recalling Whitman and Emerson, reflect of the union of man and nature and achieved what John Berryman called his "strange late greatness." His influence spread during the twenties and thirties, and won greater recognition in later decades as younger poets, including the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility and immediacy of his verse.

Randall Jarrell, in his introduction to Williams' Selected Poems (1949) noted "their generosity and sympathy, their moral and human attractiveness." Williams clear and sensuous imagery, making the ordinary appear extraordinary, evokes a lucid, poetic vision of modern American life. In 1963 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Pictures from Brueghel (1962).

Life

Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, a town near the city of Paterson. His father was an English immigrant, and his mother was born in Puerto Rico. He attended public school in Rutherford until 1897, then was sent to study at Château de Lancy near Geneva, Switzerland, the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, France for two years, and Horace Mann High School in New York City. Then, in 1902, he entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. During his time at Penn, Williams befriended Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.), and the painter Charles Demuth. These friendships supported his growing passion for poetry.

He received his M.D. in 1906 and spent the next four years in internships in New York City and in travel and postgraduate studies abroad (e.g., at the University of Leipzig where he studied pediatrics). He returned to Rutherford in 1910 and began his medical practice, which lasted until 1951. Ironically, most of his patients knew little if anything of his writings and instead they viewed him as an old-fashioned doctor who helped deliver over 2,000 newborns.

In 1912, he married Florence (Flossie, "the floss of his life") Herman, who had been his co-valedictorian at Horace Mann. The newlyweds moved into a house in Rutherford and shortly afterward his first book of serious poems, The Tempers, was published. The couple spent most of the rest of their lives in Rutherford, although they did travel occasionally. On a trip to Europe in 1924, the Williamses spent time with fellow writers such as Ezra Pound and James Joyce.

Williams returned home alone that year, while his wife and sons stayed in Europe so that the boys could have a year abroad as Williams and his brother had done in their youth. Much later in his career, Williams traveled around the United States to give poetry readings and lectures. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

Politically, Williams aligned himself with liberal Democratic and left wing issues. In 1949, he published a booklet/poem The Pink Church that was about the human body, but was misunderstood as being pro-communist. This supposed pro-communism led to his losing a consultantship with the Library of Congress in 1952–1953, a fact that led him to treatment for clinical depression. Williams had a heart attack in 1948, after which his health began to decline. Starting in 1951, a series of strokes followed. Williams died on March 4, 1963, at the age of 79.

Poetry

Williams' most anthologized poem is "The Red Wheelbarrow," considered an example of the Imagist movement's style and principles:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

The poem's intense focus on a single image, and its terseness evocative of haiku is considered a model example of the imagist movement's style and principles, summarized by the imagist motto that Williams coined: "no ideas but in things."

As a young man Williams stayed true to this motto and his early poems (most of which he compiled in half-prose, half-verse pamphlet manifestos and published himself) are similarly laconic and focused on things in the world rather than abstractions. However, as he grew older Williams distanced himself from the imagist ideas he had helped to establish with Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle, whom he ultimately rejected as being "too European." This break came on the heels of a brief collaboration with Pound on T.S. Eliot’s epic poem The Waste Land, which he derided as baroque and obscure. Eliot's poem, despite its genius, seemed to him years later a "great catastrophe to our letters," a work of stylistic brilliance and the learning, yet profoundly pessimistic its description of modern culture as a "waste land."

Imagism, to Williams, had focused so intently on images and things that it had lost its human audience. To combat this trend, Williams became a staunch advocate of American modernism, a magnanimous philosophy exemplified best by the words of Walt Whitman, the great American poet who profoundly influenced Williams:

Endless unfolding of words of ages!
And mine a word of the modern, the word En-Masse.

It is a common mistake to perceive Williams' turn towards Americanism as a curmudgeonly rejection of tradition and the past. In a series of interviews conducted at the end of his life, he admitted that John Keats, a most European of poets, had been one of his profoundest influences. Although imitators of Williams (like imitators of Whitman) would cast off the shackles of verse, Williams himself was deeply concerned with preserving poetic structure in the midst of a changing world. As he would write in one of his most heartbreaking poems, "meter itself" of modern times "has been lost / and we suffer for it."

Williams tried to invent an entirely fresh form, an American form of poetry whose subject matter was centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people—"poetry of the local"—but which at the same time could retain and renew the structure and machinery of the poetic form. To do this, he invented towards the end of his life the variable foot, a system of measuring poetic lines in time with the rhythms of American speech. To many Williams' explanations on this new system of meter make very little sense. (He insisted, for instance, that "The iamb is not the normal measure of American speech," even though many of his greatest lines, including "The iamb is not the normal measure of American speech" fall into iambic patterns.) However, despite the fact that his theories are somewhat unintelligible, Williams' "loose verses" (as he preferred to call poems written in variable feet) have an unmistakable speech-like quality.

Finding beauty in the commonplace was the goal of Williams' poetry throughout his life, and while as a young man he wrote about common things, as he matured he came to write uncommon thoughts with common words. The ordinary, the local, becomes reinvigorated through the light of the poetic imagination, a feat summarized beautifully in this brief passage from "Of Asphodel, That Greeny Flower":

And so, by chance,
how should it be otherwise?
from what came to me
in a subway train
I build a picture
of all men.


Bibliography

Poetry

  • Poems (1909)
  • The Tempers (1913)
  • Al Que Quiere (1917)
  • Kora in Hell: Improvisations (1920)
  • Sour Grapes (1921)
  • Go Go (1923)
  • Spring and All (1923)
  • The Cod Head (1932)
  • Collected Poems, 1921–1931 (1934)
  • An Early Martyr and Other Poems (1935)
  • Adam & Eve & The City (1936)
  • The Complete Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, 1906–1938 (1938)
  • The Broken Span (1941)
  • The Wedge (1944)
  • Paterson (Book I, 1946; Book II, 1948; Book III, 1949; Book IV, 1951; Book V, 1958)
  • Clouds, Aigeltinger, Russia (1948)
  • The Collected Later Poems (1950)
  • Collected Earlier Poems (1951)
  • The Desert Music and Other Poems (1954)
  • Journey to Love (1955)
  • Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962)
  • Paterson (Books I–V in one volume, 1963)
  • Imaginations (1970)
  • Collected Poems: Volume 1, 1909–1939 (1988)
  • Collected Poems: Volume 2, 1939–1962 (1989)
  • Early Poems (1997)

Prose

  • Kora in Hell (1920)
  • The Great American Novel (1923)
  • In the American Grain (1925)
  • A Voyage to Pagany (1928)
  • The Knife of the Times, and Other Stories (1932)
  • Novelette and Other Prose (1932)
  • White Mule (1937)
  • Life along the Passaic River (1938)
  • In the Money (1940)
  • Make Light of It: Collected Stories (1950)
  • Autobiography (1951)
  • The Build-Up (1952)
  • Selected Essays (1954)
  • The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957)
  • I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet (1958)
  • Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother (1959)
  • The Farmers' Daughters: Collected Stories (1961)
  • Imaginations (1970)
  • The Embodiment of Knowledge (1974)
  • Interviews With William Carlos Williams: "Speaking Straight Ahead" (1976)
  • A Recognizable Image: William Carlos Williams on Art and Artists (1978)
  • The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams (1996)
  • Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams (1996)
  • The Letters of Denise Levertov and William Carlos Williams (1998)
  • William Carlos Williams and Charles Tomlinson: A Transatlantic Connection (1998)

Drama

  • Many Loves and Other Plays: The Collected Plays of William Carlos Williams (1961)

External links

All links retrieved October 2, 2020.

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