William Carlos Williams

1. William Carlos Williams “The Red Wheelbarrow” “The Great Figure” “This is Just to Say”

2. William Carlos Williams • 1883-1963 • Born in Rutherford, New Jersey • Practiced medicine as a pediatrician and obstetrician for most of his adult life • Attended the U. of Pennsylvania • Met Ezra Pound • Pound’s theories on imagism had a strong influence on Williams and his poetry • However, Williams eventually created his own style – objectivism (defined as “the local” – a strict focus on the reality of individual life and its surroundings • Looked for a return to the barest and simplest essentials in poetry • He opposed contemporaries such as T.S. Eliot, and even Pound to a certain extent (due to their frequent use of allusions to art, history, religion, and foreign cultures)

3. William Carlos Williams • In addition to poetry, Williams also produced novels, plays, essays, and several autobiographical memoirs. • Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1963 • His masterpiece = Paterson, an epic poem that appeared in five different volumes over a 12-year span. • A poet wanders the neighborhoods of Paterson, NJ, an industrial town near Williams’s home, and mediates on the variegated experiences of urban life. • Williams deliberately wrote in a spare, detached style about commonplace subjects, the very opposite of what many 19th century American writers had thought of as poetic style. • Wrote of such sights and events such as animals at a zoo, schoolgirls walking down a street, a note he left to his wife, a piece of paper blowing down a street, a fire engine in a city, crowds at movies, turkey nests, mushrooms at the bottom or tree trunks, mist rising from a duck pond, a ballgame, and even a refrigerator. • Critics argued that his topics were “American.”