Biography:
William Carlos Williams was born in New Jersey on September 17, 1883. His mother was a Puerto Rican immigrant and his father was of English descent. Primarily, he took classes in Rutherford, the city of his birth, but attended a Parisian boarding school in his high school years. When he returned home, he attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied to become a doctor, which would become his main profession. During his college years, Williams also decided to become an author and began to write daily. In 1909, Williams had his first work published -- a compilation of poems entitled Poems.
Ten years after he was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania, Williams proposed to the elder sister of Florence Herman. He was rejected by the sister, but ended up marrying Florence instead. The next year, through the help of his friend and fellow poet Ezra Pound, Williams was able to publish his second book of compiled poems called The Tempers. Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot had a major influence on Williams and both came his close friends, eventually encouraging to work on other literary works besides poetry. Throughout the rest of his life, Williams would continue to branch out and write novels, essays, and even plays.
Because he was primarily a doctor, Williams was able to experience the world through the view of his sick patients better than the other poets who were writing at the time. This influenced his writing greatly, and as a direct result of his different vantage point, his writing was much more American than his friends'. Trying to incorporate his own view of the world and his own writing style, Williams released his third book of poetry in 1920 under the title of Kora in Hell. This book, which unlike the other two that received praise, was torn apart by critics, being called un-American and that it was nonsensical. As a result of this, Williams became very defensive and protective towards his work, because he personally believed that he was making good progress in creating a unique, original American poetry style.
In 1922, Williams' close friend T. S. Eliot wrote a poem entitled The Waste Land, which received high amounts of praise. Williams disliked the poem, believing that it was counter productive to his own attempts to create a unique writing style and called it too British for the Americas. Later, Williams published his fourth book, Sring and All, in an attempt to describe the world like Eliot, but in a different way. It was generally praised for showing the world the America that Williams saw in everday life. For the next ten years Willaims would become dormant, not releasing a new work in that time.
Famous Works:
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Williams was considered an Imagist, meaning he used word choice to create a vivid picture of what he wanted to show. As he was also a doctor he was able to experience real pain, suffering, and the world as it truly was, something few other poets could claim to know. This infulenced Williams' poetry, as it allowed him to write about real life in a way no other poet ever had. This poem employs his Imagism and his real life experiences.
Summer Song
Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer's smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?
Time Period:
No comments:
Post a Comment