Williams, William Carlos (1883-1963), was an important American poet. Williams wrote about American themes in the language of common speech. His poetry sought to discover the essence of everyday objects and experiences. Williams composed in free verse, allowing the subject matter—and his feelings about it—to determine the form of his poems.
Williams was born on Sept. 17, 1883, in Rutherford, New Jersey. He received an M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1906. In 1910, he established a family practice in his hometown. He lived there the rest of his life, jotting down poems in the mornings and evenings about the people and events he observed.
Williams felt that poetry should see “the thing itself without forethought or afterthought but with great intensity of perception.” In such poems as “Spring and All” and “The Red Wheelbarrow,” he emphasized the overlooked beauty of the world around us. He also called attention to the power of language. He loved to play with language, revealing words as things in themselves.
Williams’s work is notable for its humanity. His poetry takes ordinary people seriously. In this quality, it differs from the abstract or intellectual poetry of his time. Williams expressed his concern for people in such poems as “Tract” and “To Elsie.”
Williams’s short poems are collected in the two-volume Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (1986-1988). In Paterson (1946-1958), his major long poem, his themes come together in an experimental epic about a typical American city. His other writings are collected in Selected Essays (1954), The Farmers’ Daughters: The Collected Stories (1961), and Many Loves and Other Plays (1961). His Autobiography was published in 1951. He died on March 4, 1963.
