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William Carlos Williams [1883-1963] USA
Ranked #78 in the top 380 poets
Votes 80%: 1424 up, 346 down

Physician. Early in his career, he briefly became involved in the Imagist movement through his friendships with Pound, but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from theirs and his style changed to express his commitment to a modernist expression of his immediate environment.

Magically observant and mimetic as a good novelist. He reproduces the details of what he sees with surprising freshness, clarity, and economy; and he sees just as extraordinarily, sometimes, the forms of this earth, the spirit moving behind the letters. His quick transparent lines have the nervous and contracted strength, move as jerkily and intently as a bird.

Williams became openly critical of Eliot's highly intellectual style with its frequent use of foreign languages and allusions to classical and European literature. Instead, Williams preferred colloquial American English.

Sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of America's cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture. Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh and uniquely American form of poetry whose subject matter centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. He came up with the concept of the "variable foot". To show the American (opposed to European) rhythm that he claimed was present in everyday American language.

William Carlos Williams  was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. He began writing poetry while still a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams` writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams`s second collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright.He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams` writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams`s second collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions. Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh—and singularly American—poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His influence as a poet spread slowly during the twenties and thirties, overshadowed, he felt, by the immense popularity of Eliot`s "The Waste Land"; however, his work received increasing attention in the 1950s and 1960s as younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility of his language and his openness as a mentor. His major works include Kora in Hell (1920), Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), the five-volume epic Paterson (1963, 1992), and Imaginations (1970). Williams`s health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey in 1963.

Beat, Imagism, Modernism, Others, Sentimentalism, Vernacular

YearsCountryPoetInteraction
1914-1965
USA
Randall Jarrell
→ praised William Carlos Williams
1887-1972
USA
Marianne Moore
← praised by William Carlos Williams
1888-1965
USA/ENG
Thomas Stearns Eliot
← regarded too academic by William Carlos Williams
1899-1932
USA
Harold Hart Crane
← praised by William Carlos Williams
1907-1973
ENG/USA
W H Auden
← influenced by William Carlos Williams
1908-1963
USA
Theodore Roethke
← influenced by William Carlos Williams
1911-1972
USA
Kenneth Patchen
← praised by William Carlos Williams
1913-1966
USA
Delmore Schwartz
← praised by William Carlos Williams
1917-1977
USA
Robert Lowell
← influenced by William Carlos Williams
1923-1997
ENG/USA
Denise Levertov
← influenced by William Carlos Williams
1926-1997
USA
Allen Ginsberg
← influenced by William Carlos Williams


WorkLangRating
The Red Wheelbarrow
eng
95
This Is Just To Say
eng
73
Light Hearted Author
eng
14
Arrival
eng
13
A Sort Of A Song
eng
11
On Gay Wallpaper
eng
10
Spring And All
eng
10
Danse Russe
eng
6
Flowers By The Sea
eng
6
Young Sycamore
eng
6
Between Walls
eng
5
The Young Housewife
eng
5
from Book I, Paterson
eng
3
The Desolate Field
eng
3
The Thinker
eng
3
The Widow`s Lament In Springtime
eng
3
A Goodnight
eng
2
Backward
eng
2
Dedication For A Plot Of Ground
eng
2
Heel & Toe To The End
eng
2
Love Song
eng
2
Pastoral
eng
2
Poem
eng
2
Proletarian Poet
eng
2
Queen-Anne`s
eng
2
The Dance
eng
2
The Horse Show
eng
2
Approach Of Winter
eng
1
Après le Bain
eng
1
April
eng
1
Berket And The Stars
eng
1
Complaint
eng
1
Light Hearted William
eng
1
Nantucket
eng
1
Overture To A Dance Of Locomotives
eng
1
Postlude
eng
1
Smell!
eng
1
Sub Terra
eng
1
The Shadow
eng
1
The Term
eng
1
To A Poor Old Woman
eng
1
Tract
eng
1
Winter Trees
eng
1
A Celebration
eng
0
Apology
eng
0
Blizzard
eng
0
Blueflags
eng
0
Children`s Games
eng
0
Classic Scene
eng
0
Complete Destruction
eng
0
Daisy
eng
0
Dawn
eng
0
Election Day
eng
0
Epitaph
eng
0
First Praise
eng
0
from
eng
0
Great Mullen
eng
0
Haymaking
eng
0
Hic Jacet
eng
0
January
eng
0
January Morning
eng
0
Landscape With The Fall Of Icarus
eng
0
Libertad! Igualdad! Fraternidad!
eng
0
March
eng
0
Memory Of April
eng
0
Metric Figure
eng
0
Muier
eng
0
On A Proposed Trip South
eng
0
Peace On Earth
eng
0
Peasant Wedding
eng
0
Play
eng
0
Portrait Of A Lady
eng
0
Primrose
eng
0
Romance Moderne
eng
0
Sicilian Emigrant’s Song
eng
0
Slow Movement
eng
0
The Adoration Of The Kings
eng
0
The Approaching Hour
eng
0
The Artist
eng
0
The Birds
eng
0
The Cold Night
eng
0
The Corn Harvest
eng
0
The Crowd At The Ball Game
eng
0
The Dark Day
eng
0
The Disputants
eng
0
The Gentle Man
eng
0
The Great Figure
eng
0
The Hunter
eng
0
The Hunter In The Snow
eng
0
The Late Singer
eng
0
The Lonely Street
eng
0
The Mind’s Games
eng
0
The Nightingales
eng
0
The Parable Of The Blind
eng
0
The Poor
eng
0
The Spouts
eng
0
The Spring Storm
eng
0
The Thing
eng
0
The Tulip Bed
eng
0
The Uses Of Poetry
eng
0
The Wedding Dance In The Open Air
eng
0
Thursday
eng
0
To A Friend
eng
0
To A Friend Concerning Several Ladies
eng
0
To Elsie
eng
0
To Waken An Old Lady
eng
0
Transitional
eng
0
Waiting
eng
0
Willow Poem
eng
0
Young Woman At A Window
eng
0
Youth And Beauty
eng
0

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