Williams, William Carlos, 1883–1963, American poet and physician, b. Rutherford, N.J., educated in Geneva, Switzerland, Univ. of Pennsylvania (M.D., 1906), and Univ. of Leipzig, where he studied pediatrics. He is regarded as one of the most important and original American poets of the 20th cent. Williams began his medical practice in 1910 in Rutherford and was a physician for more than 40 years. His early poetry shows the influences of the various poetic trends of the time—from metaphorical imagism in Poems (1909) and The Tempers (1913) to free-verse expressionism in Al Que Quiere! (1917), Kora in Hell (1920), and Sour Grapes (1921). Williams observed American life closely, expressed anger at injustice, and recorded his impressions in a lucid, vital style. He developed a verse that is close to the idiom of speech, revealing a fidelity to ordinary things seen and heard. Later volumes of his poetry include Collected Poems (1934), Collected Later Poems (1950), Collected Earlier Poems (1951), Journey to Love (1955), Pictures from Brueghel, and Other Poems (1963; Pulitzer Prize), and a five-volume, impressionistic, philosophical poem, Paterson (1946–58), in which he uses the experience of life in an American city to voice his feelings on the duty of the poet. His essays include those in In the American Grain (1925), Selected Essays (1954), and Embodiment of Knowledge (1974). Among his other works are a collection of short stories, Make Light of It (1950); plays, including A Dream of Love (1948) and Many Loves (1950); and the novels A Voyage to Pagany (1928), a three-volume chronicle of an immigrant family in America, White Mule (1937), In the Money (1940), and The Build-Up (1952). His autobiography appeared in 1951 and his Selected Letters was published in 1957.

Bibliography

See biographies by R. Coles (1975) and P. Mariani (1981); studies by J. E. Breslin (1970), S. Tapscott (1984), S. Cushman (1985), and A. Fisher-Wirth (1989).

Williams, William Carlos

(born Sept. 17, 1883, Rutherford, N.J., U.S.—died March 4, 1963, Rutherford) U.S. poet. Trained as a pediatrician, Williams wrote poetry and practiced medicine in his hometown. He is noted for making the ordinary appear extraordinary through clear and discrete imagery, as in the fresh and direct impressions of the sensuous world expressed in “The Red Wheelbarrow,” from Spring and All (1923). Paterson (1946–58), a five-part long poem, evokes a complex vision of modern American life. In 1963 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Pictures from Brueghel (1962). His numerous prose works include essays, a trilogy of novels, short stories, drama, and autobiography.

Williams, William Carlos (1883–1963) poet, writer, physician; born in Rutherford, N.J. He studied in Switzerland and Paris (1897–99), the University of Pennsylvania's medical school (M.D. 1906), and did postgraduate work in pediatrics in Leipzig (1909–10). Returning to Rutherford, N.J., he would combine the writing of poetry with the practice of medicine (1910–51). He was associated with the Imagists early in his career, but preferred to call his approach "objectivism." He went on to create a revolutionary modernist approach to prose and poetry; his masterpiece is generally regarded to be the five-volume semiautobiographical epic poem, Paterson (1946–58). He was also a novelist, playwright, critic, and translator, and was appointed Consultant in Poetry, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (1952), although he declined to serve.