WILLIAMS, William Carlos

Nationality: American. Born: Rutherford, New Jersey, 17 September 1883. Education: Elementary school in Rutherford, 1889-96; Chateau de Lancy, near Geneva, Switzerland, and Lycée Condorcet, Paris, 1897-99; Horace Mann High School, New York, 1899-1902; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1902-06, M.D. 1906; intern at hospitals in New York City, 1906-08; postgraduate work in pediatrics, University of Leipzig, 1908-09. Family: Married Florence Herman in 1912; two sons. Career: Practiced medicine in Rutherford, 1910 until he retired in the mid-1950s; editor, Others, 1919; editor, with Robert McAlmon, Contact, 1920-23; editor, Contact: An American Quarterly, 1931-33; appointed consultant in poetry, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., 1952, but did not serve. Awards: Loines award, 1948; National Book award, 1950; Bollingen prize, 1952; Academy of American Poets fellowship, 1956; Brandeis University Creative Arts award, 1958; American Academy gold medal, 1963; Pulitzer prize, 1963. LL.D.: State University of New York, Buffalo, 1956; Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, New Jersey, 1959; Litt.D.: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1948; Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, 1948; University of Pennsylvania, 1952. Member: American Academy. Died: 4 March 1963.

Publications

Collections

The Williams Reader, edited by M. L. Rosenthal. 1966.

Selected Poems, edited by Charles Tomlinson. 1976.

Collected Poems, edited by A. Walton Litz and ChristopherMacGowan. 2 vols., 1987-88.

Short Stories

A Novelette and Other Prose 1921-1931. 1932.

The Knife of the Times and Other Stories. 1932.

Life along the Passaic River. 1938.

Make Light of It: Collected Stories. 1950.

The Farmers' Daughters: The Collected Stories. 1961.

Novels

A Voyage to Pagany. 1928.

Trilogy:

White Mule. 1937.

In the Money. 1940.

The Build-Up. 1952.

Poetry

Poems. 1909.

The Tempers. 1913.

Al Que Quiere! 1917.

Kora in Hell: Improvisations. 1920.

Sour Grapes. 1921.

Spring and All. 1923.

Go Go. 1923.

The Cod Head. 1932.

Collected Poems, 1921-1931. 1934.

An Early Martyr and Other Poems. 1935.

Adam & Eve & the City. 1936.

The Complete Collected Poems 1906-1938. 1938.

The Broken Span. 1941.

The Wedge. 1944.

Paterson, Book One. 1946; Book Two, 1948; Book Three, 1949;Book Four, 1951; Book Five, 1958; Books I-V, 1963.

The Clouds. 1948.

The Pink Church. 1949.

Selected Poems. 1949.

The Collected Later Poems. 1950; revised edition, 1963.

The Collected Earlier Poems. 1951.

The Desert Music and Other Poems. 1954.

Journey to Love. 1955.

Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems. 1962.

Penguin Modern Poets 9, with Denise Levertov and KennethRexroth. 1967.

Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems. 1994. Early Poems. 1997.

Plays

Betry Putnam (produced 1910).

A Dream of Love (produced 1949). 1948.

Many Loves (produced 1958). In Many Loves and Other Plays, 1961.

Many Loves and Other Plays: The Collected Plays (includes A Dream of Love; Tituba's Children; The First President, music by Theodore Harris; The Cure). 1961.

Other

The Great American Novel. 1923.

In the American Grain. 1925.

The Autobiography. 1951.

Williams' Poetry Talked About, with Eli Siegel. 1952; revised edition, edited by Martha Baird and Ellen Reiss, as The Williams-Siegel Documentary, 1970, 1974.

Selected Essays. 1954.

John Marin, with others. 1956.

Selected Letters, edited by John C. Thirlwall. 1957.

I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet, edited by Edith Heal. 1958.

Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother. 1959.

Imaginations: Collected Early Prose, edited by Webster Schott. 1970.

A Beginning on the Short Story (lecture). 1974.

The Embodiment of Knowledge, edited by Ron Loewinsohn. 1974.

Interviews with Williams: Speaking Straight Ahead, edited by Linda W. Wagner. 1976.

A Recognizable Image: Williams on Art and Artists, edited by Bram Dijkstra. 1978.

Something to Say: Williams on Younger Poets, edited by James E.B. Breslin. 1985.

Williams and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, edited by HughWitemeyer. 1990.

William Carlos Williams: Two Letters to René Taupin. 1993.

The Last Word: Letters between Marcia Nardi and William Carlos Williams. 1994.

Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. 1996.

William Carlos Williams and Charles Tomlinson: A Transatlantic Connection. 1998.

Translator, Last Nights of Paris, by Philippe Soupault. 1929.

Translator, with others, Jean sans terre/Landless John, by YvanGoll. 1944.

Translator, with Raquel Hélène Williams, The Dog and the Fever, by Francisco de Quevedo. 1954.

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Bibliography:

A Bibliography of Williams by Emily Wallace Mitchell, 1968; Williams: A Reference Guide by Linda W. Wagner, 1978.

Critical Studies:

Williams by Vivienne Koch, 1950; Williams: A Critical Study by John Malcolm Brinnin, 1963; The Poems of Williams, 1964, and The Prose of Williams, 1970, both by Linda W. Wagner; The Poetic World of Williams by Alan Ostrom, 1966; Williams: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by J. Hillis Miller, 1966; An Approach to Paterson by Walter Scott Peterson, 1967; The Music of Survival by Sherman Paul, 1968; Williams' Paterson: Language and Landscape by Joel Connarroe, 1970; Williams: An American Artist by James E.B. Breslin, 1970; Williams: The American Background by Mike Weaver, 1971; A Companion to Williams's Paterson by Benjamin Sankey, 1971; Williams: The Later Poems by Jerome Mazzaro, 1973; The Inverted Bell: Modernism and the Counterpoetics of Williams by Joseph N. Riddel, 1974; Williams by Kenneth Burke and Emily H. Wallace, 1974; Williams: The Knack of Survival in America by Robert Coles, 1975; Williams: Poet from Jersey by Reed Whittemore, 1975; Williams: The Poet and His Critics, 1975, and Williams: A New World Naked, 1981, both by Paul L. Mariani; The Early Poetry of Williams by Rod Townley, 1976; Williams and the American Scene 1920-1940 by Dickran Tashjian, 1978; Williams's Paterson: A Critical Reappraisal by Margaret Glynne Lloyd, 1980; Williams: The Critical Heritage edited by Charles Doyle, 1980, and Williams and the American Poem by Doyle, 1982; Williams and the Painters 1909-1923 by William Marling, 1982; Williams: Man and Poet by Carroll F. Terrell, 1983; Williams: A Poet in the American Theatre by David A. Fedo, 1983; Ezra Pound and Williams edited by Daniel Hoffman, 1983; Williams and Romantic Idealism by Carl Rapp, 1984; The Visual Text of Williams by Henry M. Sayre, 1984; American Beauty: Williams and the Modernist Whitman by Stephen Tapscott, 1984; The Transparent Lyric: Reading and Meaning in the Poetry of Stevens and Williams by David Walker, 1984; Williams and the Meanings of Measure by Stephen Cushman, 1985; A Poetry of Presence: The Writing of Williams by Bernard Duffey, 1986; Williams and the Maternal Muse by Kerry Driscoll, 1987; Virgin and Whore: The Image of Women in the Poetry of Williams by Audrey T. Rodgers, 1987; The Early Politics and Poetics of Williams by David Frail, 1987; The Early Prose of Williams, 1917-1925 by Geoffrey H. Movius, 1987; Williams: The Art, and Literary Tradition by Peter Schmidt, 1988; Williams and Autobiography: The Woods of His Nature by Ann W. Fisher-Wirth, 1989; Williams: A Study of the Short Fiction by Robert F. Gish, 1989; Modernism, Medicine, and William Carlos Williams by T. Hugh Crawford, 1993; In Search of a New Form: William Carlos Williams by K. Soundravalli, 1993; William Carlos Williams and the Diagnostics of Culture by Brian A. Bremen, 1993; Ideas in Things: The Poems of William Carlos Williams by Donald W. Markos, 1994; The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams by Julio Marzán, 1994; The Writings of William Carlos Williams: Publicity for the Self by Daniel Morris, 1995; Orientalism and Modernism: The Legacy of China in Pound and Williams by Zhaoming Oian, 1995; Guide to the Poetry of William Carlos Williams by Kelli A. Larson, 1995; Critical Essays on William Carlos Williams edited by Steven Gould Axelrod and Helen Deese, 1995; The Lost Works of William Carlos Williams: The Volumes of Collected Poetry as Lyrical Sequences by Robert J. Cirasa, 1995; Remembering William Carlos Williams by James Laughlin, 1995; Approaching Authority: Transpersonal Gestures in the Poetry of Yeats, Eliot, and Williams by Anthony Flinn, 1997; The American Avant-Garde Tradition: William Carlos Williams, Postmodern Poetry, and the Politics of Cultural Memory by John Lowney, 1997.

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William Carlos Williams is best known as a modern American poet. His achievement as a novelist and writer of short fiction have too been recognized. He was also a doctor who specialized in pediatric medicine. As a physician his education and his vocation reflected his abilities as a scientist, his outlook of life growing out of the assumptions of the scientific method. He remained dedicated to the medical profession throughout his life.

His short stories, in particular, evidence the ways in which he reconciled the concerns of medicine, its motive toward healing, its empathy for the sick—its wonderment in the presence of the mysteries of life and death. His passion to write drove him to scribble down ideas for poems and stories between appointments with patients. A clinical notation was likely to be either preceded or followed by an artistic insight, a line of poetry, a character profile—science and art blending. In more than one instance his patients became the characters of his stories, as individuals or as composites.

His compassion for humanity and its predicaments led him into the politics of class and of economics and ethnicity. Generally his sympathies came down on the side of the lower classes, the proletariat. As a physician and an artist he was himself a member of the privileged, upper-middle class. He was for a time drawn quite strongly to Europe and the ostensibly higher levels of culture and especially the Anglo-European impulses and traditions. But his devotion to things American, American cities, American art, American people, the egalitarian and democratic premises of government, the melting-pot of diverse immigrants combined to provide his subject in his stories, his poems, and in his masterpiece of revisionist history, In the American Grain.

Williams's short stories bespeak all of these scientific, aesthetic, sociological, and political concerns and his democratic, albeit bohemian, leftist leanings. His style and his facility with metaphor combine with the austerity and objectivity of scientific description to form a special kind of imagistic, objectivist, and minimalist prose.

His subjects, broadly, take on the categories of "doctor" stories and stories of the urban poor and the disadvantaged. His allegiance to American speech, to what he touted as the "American Idiom," celebrates the cadences and the vitality of the speech, of utterances such as are found emanating "out of the mouths of Polish mothers." His popularity in the 1960s as an anti-Puritan free thinker, free lover, and spontaneous writer is somewhat diminished today, among feminist readers in particular, in that his tone and personae seem paternalistic and condescending. His precise attitude toward women—as a man and as an author—remains fascinating in an era of gender analysis and "political correctness." He loved women, to be sure; just how well he loved them as narrator, physician, and person remains rather problematic. Many of his stories, however, are used in courses in medical ethics in the training of physicians.

Williams's collected stories include The Knife of the Times and Other Stories, Life along the Passaic River, Make Light of It, and The Farmers' Daughters. Several of his stories, such as "The Use of Force," "Jean Beicke," and "The Girl with a Pimply Face," are frequently anthologized. All of his published stories, some 50, are rewarding at both casual and more critical levels. "The Knife of the Times," "The Colored Girls of Passenack—Old and New," and "Old Doc Rivers" are especially worthy.

"Knife" deals with a long-repressed expression of lesbian love by Ethel for her friend Maura. Maura reciprocates, and the "knife" of repression and social conformity cuts through to new awareness and sensuality. "Colored Girls" represents Williams's one autobiographical recording of his enduring attraction to black women, and he writes about the five or so who gave physical form to his youthful and adult yearnings. "Doc Rivers" offers a case study of the sins and abuses (sex, drugs, violence) of a prominent physician—from the heights of acclaim to the skids of defamation. "Jean Beicke" is an account of the love and care extended by a physician and nurses to a deformed infant. Jean dies; the vivid description of the autopsy performed on her underscores the deep pathos of the neglect and abandonment that was her inheritance—of the poor like her. Particularly in this story, Williams's softer, more directly stated elegiac regard for humanity comes through. In "Pimply Face" a physician, called to attend the baby of an impoverished family, is taken with the adolescent sister, her blemished face, her life. His prescription goes beyond acne to advice about returning to school.

Williams believed that the short story allowed him a medium for "nailing down a single conviction." His stories, individually and collectively, reveal just how deeply he commiserated with and celebrated humankind. He knew his patients and his characters virtually inside and out—anatomically and psychologically—and he declared them "rare presences" all.

—Robert Franklin Gish

See the essay on "The Use of Force."