1883-1963, one of the most important modern American poets
A practicing physician, Williams was an acute observer of American life. In his mature verse he developed a lucid, vital style reflecting idiomatic speech and faithful to ordinary things seen and heard. His books of poetry include:
As well as a number of Classic Short Stories.
His book In the American Grain earned him a listing on the Modern Library's 100 Best Books: Nonfiction.
In his lifetime he was friends with Walter Arensberg and Robert Creeley who he corresponded with.
Some of his poems:
See New York Dada, Walter Arensberg, Marcel Duchamp, avant-garde, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress and North American Poetry
Source: McMichael, George, "Anthology of American Literature", Macmillan Publishing, NY, 1974 Last Updated 04.15.04
Now if you really really want to know what makes William Carlos Williams tick go read his poetry. There is a lot of it here on E2 and I have explicated a wide variety of his prose and poetry. If you want to know how his poetry affects me, read Pastoral and I have measured out my life with a pumpkin patch.
Born in Rutherford, NJ on September 17, 1883, he began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Leipzig. After 1910 he practiced medicine in Rutherford and neighboring Paterson. At the same time he carried on his literary work, and his reputation, first as a poet and later as a writer of prose, became world renown.
One can easily see some evidence of his idea in his poem:
William Carlos Williams (Sour Grapes1913)
His earliest works included Poems (1909) and The Tempers (1913). His mature work, frequently experimental and radical in form and technique, displayed to a great degree an influence by the Imagist movement and its rejection of unconstrained and contrived sentimentality. As a result his work became oriented towards the use of everyday speech and by withholding the emotionality of words he concentrated in concrete and sensory experiences often sensual in relation to nature, hinting at the forbidden and taboo.
He said, I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it. and described his goal in the The Fool's Song:
The Works of William Carlos Williams
Bram, Robert Philips, Norma H. Dicky, "William Carlos Williams," Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia , 1988
Literary Kicks: http://www.charm.net/~brooklyn/People/WilliamCarlosWilliams.html Accessed Oct 19 2001.
The Poets' Corner: http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/wcw-sg2.html#16 Accessed Oct 19 2001.
William Carlos Williams : http://www.poets.org/poets/poets.cfm?prmID=120 Accessed Oct 19 2001.
At His Best, At His Worst
William Pratt's anthology The Imagist Poem contains poems with a multifarious assortment of themes, subjects, and styles. All of them are grouped under the umbrella of Imagism, a twentieth century poetic movement that sought to revolutionize poetry. While all emerged from the same movement, they differ greatly from each other in quality. An excellent example of the Imagist poems' varying degrees of merit comes from William Carlos Williams' "The Red Wheelbarrow" and "The Locust Tree in Flower."
In "The Red Wheelbarrow," Williams creates a detailed image, consisting of the common objects rain water, chickens, and the titular red wheelbarrow. I enjoy how he effectively feeds the reader small pieces of information, beginning with the attention-grabbing "so much depends / upon." I felt compelled to continue reading; it was as if I was about to learn a valuable lesson from a sort of aphorism. His word choice is simple and elegant, especially the description of the "glazed" wheelbarrow and the stark contrast between the tool's red finish and the chickens' white feathers. While Williams uses elliptical expression to suggest that some information is omitted, namely, what "depends upon" the scene, he manages to comment on the transient nature of life. Not only do I admire the poem for the skill that went into its creation, but I also find the poet's philosophy engaging and apt. I interpreted the poem's "meaning" as follows: a fundamental characteristic of human nature is to place a great deal of importance on the finite; the wheelbarrow, "glazed with rain / water," and the chickens are both transient things, and a lot of what we care about depends upon things of this sort. Never have I enjoyed such valuable insight delivered with concrete, simple language. It awes me that Williams can both lyrically paint a vivid portrait and poignantly convey a universal truth in a mere sixteen words.
"The Locust Tree in Flower," however, reveals a Williams that is, simply, sub-"Wheelbarrow." Here he uses one-word lines, mainly adjectives, to describe the blooming of the tree mentioned in the title. While I find the adjectives fresh and enjoy the juxtaposition of dissimilar traits ("old" and "bright," for example), his pairing of two prepositions in the opening stanza ruins the poem for me. "Among / of," the poem begins, which, I feel, serves only to deliberately confuse the reader, something that seems pretentious in a thirteen-word description of a tree. Also, I feel that his word placement and stanza breaks are basically arbitrary. Rather than effectively describing the locust's flowering, Williams, protected by the freedom of Imagism, appears to have jotted down a few words and pulled them from his hat. I found "Locust" neither skillful nor meaningful, and I feel that all good poems exhibit one of these qualities.
Both poems are characteristically Imagist; Williams directly and tersely approaches his subjects in both "Wheelbarrow" and "Locust." However, I feel the two poems differ in their effectiveness. After being enthralled by the former and appalled by the latter, I have come to realize the difficulty in consistently creating superior art. But in Williams' defense, to merely recreate and mimic oneself is not the mark of an artist. Williams' voice is dynamic and unpredictable, and for this I applaud him.
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