William Carlos Williams
- Biography: In 1883, William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. He began
writing poetry while 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 MD from
the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound.
Pound became a great influence on his 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.
Biography Reference
Peace On Earth
The Archer is wake!
The Swan is flying!
Gold against blue
An Arrow
is lying.
There is hunting in heaven--
Sleep safe till
tomorrow.
The Bears are abroad!
The Eagle is screaming!
Gold
against blue
Their eyes are gleaming!
Sleep!
Sleep safe till
tomorrow.
The Sisters lie
With their arms intertwining;
Gold
against blue
Their hair is shining!
The Serpent writhes!
Orion is
listening!
Gold against blue
His sword is glistening!
Sleep!
There is hunting in heaven--
Sleep safe till tomorrow.
Spring Storm
The sky has given over
its bitterness.
Out of the dark change
all day long
rain falls and falls
as if it would never end.
Still the snow keeps
its hold on the ground.
But water, water
from a thousand runnels!
It collects swiftly,
dappled with black
cuts a way for itself
through green ice in the gutters.
Drop after drop it falls
from the withered grass-stems
of the overhanging embankment.
Winter Trees
All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.
Other poems by William Carlos Williams:
Apology
A Good Night
Blizzard