William+Carlos+Williams

While Williams Carlos Williams may not be as widely known as his contemporaries Ezra Pound or T.S. Eliot, Williams was a poetic innovator of the 20th century whose techniques are still influencing poetry today.

=Biography=

William Carlos Williams was born in 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey to an English father and a Puerto Rican mother. His parents were enthusiastic about art and literature, causing such mediums to be a cornerstone of the family. In fact, Williams' grandmother was a lover of the theatre, and Williams' own mother painted regularly. Though his father pushed such literature as Shakespeare and Dante on him, Williams at first chose a different direction: Math. It wasn't until later in his high school education that Williams really fell in love with language. He decided to become a writer while attending Horace Mann High School in New York City, but still attained his MD from the University of Pennsylvania. It's been said that Williams was terrified of disappointing his parents who demanded "rigid idealism" and "moral perfectionism".

Williams started his carreer as a doctor interning in the shadier "Hell's Kitchen" district of New York City, but returned to his home town and maintained his private medical practice there for 40 years while also being a successful author. Williams made a conscious decision to be a doctor first and a poet second because he wanted the financial and political security that his medical practice afforded him, and he found inspiration in the towns people. It is said that he scribbled his poems down in between patients and on prescription pads. In the late 1940's, during World War II, Williams became enticed by the cutting-edge American experimental liberal arts education taking place at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, so much so that he joined their Board of Directors. He became a great influence and mentor to such poets as Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation. Though Williams' health began to fail him after a heart attack in 1948, he carried on with his travels and lectures with comitment and determination. It wasn't until a partialy paralyzing stroke in 1958, followed by a cancer operation in 1959, that he finally slowed down. It was reported that he could barely do much for himself and that his faithful wife, Flossie, would spend hours every day reading to him. His health continued to deteriorate until he died in his sleep March 4, 1963. Later, in 1963, Williams was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for //Pictures in Brueghel//. = = =Poetic Style=

Williams' style has been described as honest and joyful, and that he managed to fuse the complex nuances of his expansive personality in his writing. Williams wanted to write in a way that was different than the romanticized poetic styles of the time, so he sought to write poetry that enveloped the true American life and the people living there. In his early years of writing Williams great influences came from his two favorite poets: John Keats and Walt Whitman. Williams admired the way Keats used rhyme and meter, as well as the free verse of Whitman's poems. Williams himself said that "[John] Keats was my God". He identified with Whitman, for he too wanted to expose, through poetry, what it meant to be American.

During Williams' first year at the University of Pennsylvania, he met and befriended Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, and painter Charles Demuth. Ezra Pound became a huge influence on Williams who himself has stated, "before meeting Pound is like B.C. and A.D." Together, the three artists headed what would be known as the Imagism movement. They experimented with new writing styles, breaking the traditional rules, and used what was around them for their work. Poets of the imagist movement wrote in free verse and sought to give clarity to objects by using exact words and images.

In 1909, Williams first book, //Poems//, was published, showing all the conventions of poetry. Yet, his next two books, //Tempers// (1913) and //Al Que Quiere// (1917), portrayed the imagist style that was beginning to emerge at the end of World War I, and Williams made advancements in what he felt was true American poetry. Then, in 1922, T.S. Eliot's //The Waste Land// was published, and it became what many consider to be groundbreaking work in modern poetry. Williams' own work, //Kora in Hell//, just two years earlier had received poor reviews and harsh criticism even from his friends. Ezra Pound had called //Kora in Hell// "incoherent" and "un-American". Williams was hurt and disappointed that Pound, along with many of his other contemporaries, had reverted to Eliot's "conforming to the excellencies of classroom English" [W.C. Williams] while he was trying to break out and create something new. He acknowledged that Eliot was as good of a poet as Keats, but was unable to accept his unoriginality. However, Williams took Eliot's success as a challenge to succeed himself and channeled it into inspiration for his next book of poems, //Spring and All,// published in 1923. Williams' //Spring and All// created a new American poetic style, as well as implementing imagism. He didn't publish another book of poetry for ten years after //Spring and All.// Some speculate it was because he couldn't out-do himself, while others think it was perhaps because Williams success with his own work paled in comparison to Eliot's success.

Williams focused his poetry to a handful of specific points:
 * Value of the object of attention in the poem
 * The poem as an object
 * @Metonymy (as opposed to metaphor)
 * Ambiguity and indeterminacy
 * @Fragmentation (and Collage)
 * The concept of the imagination

=Analysis and Interpretation of Works=

[|The Red Wheelbarrow] From //Spring and All//, "The Red Wheelbarrow" is regarded as a true imagist and objectivist poem. The descriptions focus completely on the object, which is the red wheelbarrow. As well, Williams use of line breaks, known as enjambment, is extremely important to the poem. For example, each line depends on the next line, or in this case the next word, to build meaning. "a red wheel" can stand on its own, but then the reader is drawn to the next line, "barrow," and the words connect and become one. As well, the lines themselves resemble a wheelbarrow, making the poem more concrete in meaning. ‍‍‍‍‍ ‍‍‍‍ In this excerpt from "I ", also from //Spring and All,// the indeterminacy that Williams used is clearly displayed:

They enter the new world naked, cold, uncertain of all save that they enter. All about them the cold, familiar wind--

Now the grass, tomorrow the stiff curl of wildcarrot leaf

One by one objects are defined-- It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf

But now the stark dignity of entrance--Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken

There has been disagreement over what the pronouns "They/them" are referring to. Many believe "they" to be referring to the general population, while others deciphered the text in a different way: "They" as referring to plants, or perhaps babies. Because of indeterminacy, all of these interpretations are held simultaneously to be possible and accurate readings of the poem.

=
"The Great Figure", from //Sour Grapes// (1921), is similar to "The Red Wheelbarrow" in it's imagist and objectivist qualities, but here Williams' also utilizes @Onomatopoeia to reinforce the sense of the motion and sounds associated with the object of the fire truck. In 1928 this poem inspired Williams' friend @Charles Demuth to create the painting seen here, //The Figure 5 in Gold//.======

Among the rain and lights I saw the figure 5 in gold on a red fire truck moving tense unheeded to gong clangs siren howls and wheels rumbling through the dark city

=Major Works=

//Kora in Hell// (1920) //Spring and All// (1923) //Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems// (1962) The five-volume epic //Paterson// (1963, 1992) //Imaginations// (1970)

= media type="youtube" key="OqpNWylzRDs" height="315" width="420" = ===William Carlos Williams reading his poem //[|To Elsie] //=== = = =External Links=

[|More works by Williams] [|Black Mountain College]

= References =

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