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{{short description|American poet (1883–1963)}}
{{Redirect|Carlos Williams|the Liberian footballer|Carlos Williams (footballer)}}
{{Infobox writer
| name        = William Carlos Williams
| image       = William Carlos Williams by Man Ray.jpg
| caption     = Portrait by [[Man Ray]], 1924
| birth_date  = {{Birth date|mf=yes|1883|9|17}}
| birth_place = [[Rutherford, New Jersey]], U.S.
| death_date  = {{Death date and age|mf=yes|1963|3|4|1883|9|17}}
| death_place = Rutherford, New Jersey, U.S.
| occupation  = {{cslist|Writer|physician}}
| education   = [[University of Pennsylvania]] ([[Doctor of Medicine|MD]])
| movement    = {{cslist|[[Modernist poetry|Modernism]]|[[Imagism]]}}
| notableworks= {{cslist|''[[Spring and All]]''|"[[This Is Just to Say]]"|"[[The Red Wheelbarrow]]"|''[[Paterson (poem)|Paterson]]''|''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]''}}
| spouse      = {{marriage|Florence Herman|1912}}
}}
'''William Carlos Williams''' (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet and physician closely associated with [[Modernist poetry|modernism]] and [[imagism]]. His ''[[Spring and All]]'' (1923) was written in the wake of  [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]'' (1922). In his five-volume poem ''[[Paterson (poem)|Paterson]]'' (1946–1958), he took [[Paterson, New Jersey]] as "my 'case' to work up. It called for a poetry such as I did not know, it was my duty to discover or make such a context on the 'thought.'" Some of his best known poems, "[[This Is Just to Say]]" and "[[The Red Wheelbarrow]]", are reflections on the everyday. Other poems reflect the influence of the visual arts. He, in turn, influenced the visual arts; his poem "The Great Figure" inspired the painting ''[[I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold]]'' by [[Charles Demuth]].<ref>{{cite web| title=Charles Demuth I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold| website=[[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]| date=1928| url=https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/488315}}</ref> Williams was awarded a posthumous [[Pulitzer Prize for Poetry]] for ''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]'' (1962).

Williams practiced both [[pediatrics]] and general medicine. He was affiliated with Passaic General Hospital, where he served as the hospital's chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. The hospital, which is now known as [[St. Mary's General Hospital (Passaic, New Jersey)|St. Mary's General Hospital]], paid tribute to Williams with a memorial plaque that states "We walk the wards that Williams walked".<ref>{{cite web|title=William Carlos Williams Fund For Maternal-Child Health Established At St. Mary's Hospital, Passaic|website=Rutherfordlibrary.typepad.com|url=http://rutherfordlibrary.typepad.com/williamcarloswilliams/st-marys-hospital-wcw-fund/}}</ref>

[[Randall Jarrell]] wrote that Williams "feels, not just says, that the differences between men are less important than their similarities—that he and you and I, together, are the Little Men." Marc Hofstadter wrote that Williams "sought to express his democracy through his way of speaking. His point was to speak on an equal level with the reader and to use the language and thought materials of America in expressing his point of view." Per Hugh Fox, Williams saw "the ''real'' [original emphasis] function of the imagination as breaking through the alienation of the near at hand and reviving its wonder."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Fox|first=Hugh|date=1974|title=The Genuine Avant-Garde: William Carlos Williams's Credo|journal=Southwest Review|volume=59|issue=3|pages=285–289}}</ref>

==Life and career==
Williams was born in [[Rutherford, New Jersey]], in 1883. His father, William George Williams, was born in England but raised from "a very young age" in the [[Dominican Republic]] and "was most comfortable speaking in Spanish, which was the primary language spoken in the Williams's New Jersey household";<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sanchez |first1=Lisa |date=2019 |title=Modernism and Boricua Literature: A Reconsideration of Arturo Schomburg and William Carlos Williams |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3054603 |journal=American Literary History |volume=13 |issue=Summer 2001 |pages=242–264 |jstor=3054603 |access-date=March 7, 2024}}</ref> his mother, Raquel Hélène Hoheb, from [[Mayagüez, Puerto Rico]], was of French extraction.<ref>{{citation|author=Colón, David|title=Here's to You, Meestair Robangson: The Inter-American William Carlos Williams|journal=Label Me Latina/o|volume=5|pages=9|date=Spring 2015|language=en|url=http://labelmelatin.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/David-A.-Col%C3%B3n-The-Inter-American-WCW.pdf}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Herlihy-Mera |first1=Jeffrey |date=2019 |title=Latinx Multilingualism and American Modernism: Concealed Transcultural Depths in William Carlos Williams's English |url=https://www.academia.edu/44149834 |journal=Voces del Caribe |volume=11 |issue=Fall 2019 |pages=1059–1095 |access-date=September 29, 2020}}</ref> Williams's maternal grandmother was named Emily Dickinson, though she was no relation to [[Emily Dickinson|the poet of that name]].<ref name=":Poetry Foundation">{{cite web| title=William Carlos Williams| website=[[Poetry Foundation]]| url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-carlos-williams}}</ref>

Scholars note that the Caribbean culture of the family home had an important influence on Williams. Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera observes, "English was not his primary means of communication until he was a teenager. At home his mother and father—who were raised in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, respectively—spoke Spanish with each other and to young William Carlos."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Herlihy-Mera |first1=Jeffrey |date=2019 |title=Latinx Multilingualism and American Modernism: Concealed Transcultural Depths in William Carlos Williams's English |url=https://www.academia.edu/44149834 |journal=Voces del Caribe |volume=11 |issue=Fall 2019 |pages=1060 |access-date=September 29, 2020}}</ref> While he wrote in English, "the poet's first language" was Spanish and his "consciousness and social orientation" were shaped by Caribbean customs; his life influenced "to a very important degree by a plural cultural foundation."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Herlihy-Mera |first1=Jeffrey |date=2019 |title=Latinx Multilingualism and American Modernism: Concealed Transcultural Depths in William Carlos Williams's English |url=https://www.academia.edu/44149834 |journal=Voces del Caribe |volume=11 |issue=Fall 2019 |pages=1061 |access-date=September 29, 2020}}</ref>

[[John Keats]] and [[Walt Whitman]] were important early influences on Williams.<ref name=":Poetry Foundation"/> Williams received his primary and secondary education in Rutherford until 1897 when he was sent for two years to a school near Geneva and to the [[Lycée Condorcet]] in Paris. He attended the [[Horace Mann School]] upon his return to New York City and, having passed a special examination, was admitted in 1902 to the [[Perelman School of Medicine|medical school of the University of Pennsylvania]], from which he graduated in 1906.<ref name="illinois">{{cite web|last=Wagner-Martin|first=Linda|title=Williams' Life and Career|url=http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/bio.htm|work=Modern American Poetry|publisher=University of Illinois|access-date=17 December 2013|archive-date=14 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190314115201/http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/bio.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last=Davis|first=Heather|title=William Carlos Williams|url=http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/node/4009|publisher=Penn Current|access-date=2011-10-27|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121112050914/http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/node/4009|archive-date=2012-11-12|url-status=dead}}</ref> Upon leaving Penn, Williams did internships at both [[French Hospital (Manhattan, New York)|French Hospital]] and Child's Hospital in New York, then went to [[Leipzig]] for advanced study of pediatrics.<ref name="illinois" /> He published his first book, ''Poems'', in 1909.

Williams married Florence ("Flossie") Herman (1891–1976) in 1912 after he returned from Germany.<ref name="illinois" /> They moved into a house on 9 Ridge Road in Rutherford, New Jersey, where they resided for many years.<ref name="Williams, William Carlos 1948">Williams, William Carlos. ''The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams''. New Directions Paperbooks, 1948.</ref>  Shortly afterward, his second book of poems, ''The Tempers'', was published by a London press through the help of his friend [[Ezra Pound]], whom he had met while studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Around 1914, Williams and his wife had their first son, William E. Williams, followed by their second son, Paul H. Williams, in 1917.<ref>{{cite web|title=William C. Williams|url=https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M4P5-Z6D|work=U.S. Census 1920|publisher=U.S. Census Bureau|access-date=17 December 2013}}</ref> William E. also became a physician.<ref>{{cite news|title=Mrs. William Carlos Williams|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1976/05/20/75600398.pdf|access-date=17 December 2013|newspaper=The New York Times|date=20 May 1976}}</ref>

Although his primary occupation was as a family doctor, Williams had a successful literary career as a poet. His work has a great affinity with painting, in which he had a lifelong interest. In addition to poetry (his main literary focus), he occasionally wrote short stories, plays, novels, essays, and translations. He practiced medicine by day and wrote at night. Early in his career, he briefly became involved in the [[Imagism|Imagist]] movement through his friendships with Pound and [[H.D.]] (whom he had befriended during his medical studies at Penn), but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from theirs and his style changed to express his commitment to a modernist expression of his immediate environment. He was influenced by the "inarticulate poems" of his patients.<ref name=":Poetry Foundation"/>

In 1920, Williams was sharply criticized by many of his peers (including H.D., Pound and [[Wallace Stevens]]) when he published one of his more experimental books ''Kora in Hell: Improvisations''. Pound called the work "incoherent" and H.D. thought the book was "flippant".<ref>{{cite web|last=Burt |first=Stephen |url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-carlos-williams |title=Poetry Foundation bio on Williams |publisher=Poetryfoundation.org |access-date=2012-10-14}}</ref> The [[Dada]] artist and poet [[Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven|Baroness Elsa]] criticized Williams's sexual and artistic politics in her experimental prose poem review titled "Thee I call 'Hamlet of Wedding Ring'", published in ''[[The Little Review]]'' in March 1921.<ref>[[Irene Gammel|Gammel, Irene]], ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity.'' Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002, 272.</ref> Williams had an affair with the Baroness, and published three poems in ''Contact,'' describing the forty-year-old as "an old lady" with "broken teeth [and] syphilis".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jones|first=Amelia|title=Irrational modernism : a neurasthenic history of New York Dada|publisher=MIT Press|year=2004|isbn=978-0-262-27638-2|location=Cambridge, Mass.|pages=7–10|oclc=57141752}}</ref>

In 1923, Williams published ''[[Spring and All]]'', one of his seminal books of poetry, which contained the classics "By the road to the contagious hospital", "[[The Red Wheelbarrow]]" and "To Elsie". However, in 1922, the publication of [[T. S. Eliot]]'s ''[[The Waste Land]]'' had become a literary sensation that overshadowed Williams's very different brand of poetic [[modernism]]. In his ''Autobiography'', Williams later wrote of "the great catastrophe to our letters—the appearance of T. S. Eliot's ''The Waste Land.''"<ref name="Williams, William Carlos 1948"/> He said, 
<blockquote>I felt at once that ''The Waste Land'' had set me back twenty years and I'm sure it did. Critically, Eliot returned us to the classroom just at the moment when I felt we were on a point to escape to matters much closer to the essence of a new art form itself—rooted in the locality which should give it fruit.</blockquote> Although he respected the work of Eliot, Williams became openly critical of Eliot's highly intellectual style with its frequent use of foreign languages and allusions to classical and European literature.<ref>Williams, William Carlos. ''Selected Essays''. New York: Random House, 1954.</ref>  Instead, Williams preferred colloquial American English.<ref>Williams, William Carlos. ''In the American Grain''. New York: New Directions, 1999.</ref>

During the 1930s, Williams began working on an opera. Titled ''The First President'', it was focused on [[George Washington]] and his influence on the history of the United States of America and was intended to "galvanize us into a realization of what we are today."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cappucci|first=Paul R.|date=2013|title=A Libretto in Search of Music: The Strain of Collaborative Creation in William Carlos Williams's The First President|jstor=10.2979/jmodelite.36.2.80|journal=Journal of Modern Literature|volume=36|issue=2|pages=80–104|doi=10.2979/jmodelite.36.2.80|s2cid=162014617}}</ref> As a lifelong radical democrat, Williams often collaborated with left-wing and anti-fascist circles and magazines, particularly during the [[Great Depression]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Cohen |first=Milton A. |date=2009 |title=Stumbling into Crossfire: William Carlos Williams, "Partisan Review", and the Left in the 1930s |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25511809 |journal=Journal of Modern Literature |volume=32 |issue=2 |pages=143–158 |jstor=25511809 |issn=0022-281X}}</ref>

{{Quote box
 |width=300px
 |align=left
 |quoted=true
 |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=center
 |quote=<poem>—Say it, no ideas but in things—
nothing but the blank faces of the houses
and cylindrical trees
bent, forked by preconception and accident—
split, furrowed, creased, mottled, stained—
secret—into the body of the light!</poem>
 |source=''from'' ''Paterson: Book I''
}}

In ''[[Paterson (poem)|Paterson]]'' (published between 1946 and 1958), an account of the history, people, and essence of [[Paterson, New Jersey]], Williams wrote his own modern epic poem, focusing on "the local" on a wider scale than he had previously attempted. He also examined the role of the poet in American society and famously summarized his poetic method in the phrase "No ideas but in things" (found in his poem "A Sort of a Song" and repeated again and again in ''Paterson'').

In his later years, Williams mentored and influenced many younger poets. He had a significant influence on many of the American literary movements of the 1950s, including the [[Beat movement]], the [[San Francisco Renaissance]], the [[Black Mountain poets|Black Mountain school]], and the [[New York School (art)|New York School]].<ref>X. J. Kennedy & Dana Gioai, ''An Introduction to Poetry'', New York: Addison Wesley Longman Inc, 1998. {{ISBN|0-321-01556-8}}</ref>

One of Williams's more dynamic relationships as a mentor was with fellow New Jersey poet [[Allen Ginsberg]]. Williams included several of Ginsberg's letters in ''Paterson'', stating that one of them helped inspire the fifth section of that work. Williams also wrote the introduction to Ginsberg's first book, ''[[Howl and Other Poems]]'' in 1956.

Williams suffered a heart attack in 1948, and after 1949, a series of strokes. Severe depression after one such stroke caused him to be confined to Hillside Hospital, New York, for four months in 1953. He died on March 4, 1963, at age 79 at his home in Rutherford.<ref>{{Cite news|first= Phil|last= Casey|title=Poet Williams Dies of Stroke. Works in 40 Volumes Likened to Chekhov. |url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/154181472.html?FMT=ABS |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130201094554/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/154181472.html?FMT=ABS |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 1, 2013 | newspaper=Washington Post |date=1963-03-05 |access-date=2008-08-07 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|title=William Carlos Williams Dies. Physician Long a Leading Poet. Won Many Literary Honors Over Half a Century. Was 79 Years Old. Combined Two Professions. Won Literary Awards. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1963/03/05/archives/william-carlos-williams-dies-physician-long-a-leading-poet-won-many.html | work=The New York Times |date=1963-03-05 |access-date=2008-04-11 }}</ref> He was buried in Hillside Cemetery in [[Lyndhurst, New Jersey]].<ref name=nyt1>{{Cite news| title=Sometimes in the Grave Is a Fine and Public Place |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEFD71230F93BA15750C0A9629C8B63 | work=The New York Times |date=2004-03-28 | access-date=2007-08-21 | first=Robert | last=Strauss}}</ref>

==Poetry==
[[File:Library Walk 7.JPG|thumb|A selection of William Carlos Williams poetry on a plaque in New York City]]
The poet and critic [[Randall Jarrell]] stated of Williams's poetry, <blockquote>William Carlos Williams is as magically observant and mimetic as a good novelist. He reproduces the details of what he sees with surprising freshness, clarity, and economy; and he sees just as extraordinarily, sometimes, the forms of this earth, the spirit moving behind the letters. His quick transparent lines have the nervous and contracted strength, move as jerkily and intently as a bird.<ref>Jarrell, Randall. "Fifty Years of American Poetry." ''No Other Book: Selected Essays''. New York: HarperCollins, 1999.</ref></blockquote> [[R. P. Blackmur]] said of Williams's poetry, "the Imagism of 1912, self-transcended."<ref>Pratt, William. ''The Imagist Poem, Modern Poetry in Miniature'' (Story Line Press, 1963, expanded 2001). {{ISBN|1-58654-009-2}}</ref> A contemporary, [[Harriet Monroe]], stated "to assert his freedoms he must play the devil, showing himself rioting in purple and turquoise pools of excess."<ref>Review of 'Others Again ' ed. By [[Alfred Kreymborg]] Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 1915</ref>

Williams's major collections are ''Spring and All'' (1923), ''[[The Desert Music and Other Poems]]'' (1954), ''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]'' (1962), and ''Paterson'' (1963, repr. 1992). His most anthologized poem is "[[The Red Wheelbarrow]]", an example of the Imagist movement's style and principles (see also "[[This Is Just to Say]]"). However, Williams, like his peer and friend Ezra Pound, had rejected the Imagist movement by the time this poem was published as part of ''Spring and All'' in 1923.

Williams is strongly associated with the American modernist movement in literature and saw his poetic project as a distinctly American one; he sought to renew language through the fresh, raw idiom that grew out of United States cultural and social heterogeneity, at the same time freeing it from what he saw as the worn-out language of British and European culture. “No one believes that poetry can exist in his own life,” Williams said.  “The purpose of an artist, whatever it is, is to take the life, whatever he sees, and to raise it up to an elevated position where it has dignity.”<ref>{{cite web|title=This is Just to Say – A Poem and its Parodies |url= https://www.theattic.space/home-page-blogs/2019/7/19/a-poem-and-its-parodies-this-is-just-to-say |website=The Attic|date= 20 July 2019 |access-date=31 July 2019}}</ref>

In 1920, Williams turned his attentions to ''Contact'', a periodical launched by Williams and fellow writer [[Robert McAlmon]]: "The two editors sought American cultural renewal in the local condition in clear opposition to the internationalists—Pound, ''The Little Review'', and the Baroness."<ref>Gammel, ''Baroness Elsa'', 264–65.</ref> [[Yvor Winters]], the poet/critic, judged that Williams's verse bears a certain resemblance to the best [[Lyric poetry|lyric]] poets of the 13th century.<ref>''Primitivism and Decadence: A Study of American Experimental Poetry''. New York: Arrow Editions, 1937.</ref>

Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh and uniquely American form of poetry whose subject matter centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. He came up with the concept of the "variable foot" which Williams never clearly defined, although the concept vaguely referred to Williams's method of determining line breaks. ''[[The Paris Review]]'' called it "a metrical device to resolve the conflict between form and freedom in verse."<ref>Interview with Stanley Koehler, ''Paris Review'', Vol. 6, 1962.</ref>

One of Williams's aims, in experimenting with his "variable foot", was to show the American (opposed to European) rhythm that he claimed was present in everyday American language. Stylistically, Williams also worked with variations on a line-break pattern that he labeled "[[triadic-line poetry]]" in which he broke a long line into three free-verse segments. A well-known example of the "triadic line [break]" can be found in Williams's love-poem "[[Asphodel, That Greeny Flower]]."<ref>''Encyclopedia of American Poetry: The Twentieth Century'', {{ISBN|978-1-57958-240-1}}</ref>

In a review of Herbert Leibowitz's biography of Williams, book critic Christopher Benfey wrote: <blockquote>Early and late, Williams held the conviction that poetry was, in his friend Kenneth Burke's phrase, "equipment for living, a necessary guide amid the bewilderments of life." The American ground was wild and new, a place where a blooming foreigner needed all the help he could get. Poems were as essential to a full life as physical health or the love of men and women.<ref>{{cite magazine | last = Benfey | first = Christopher | title = The Blooming Foreigner | url = http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/97770/william-carlos-williams-america-whitman | magazine = The New Republic | date = 2011-12-15 | access-date=2011-12-07}}</ref></blockquote>

==Williams and the painters==
[[File:NY Met demuth figure 5 gold.JPG|thumb|''I saw the figure 5 in gold.''<br>
[[Charles Demuth]], 1928.<br>
<br>
''The Great Figure''<br>
<br>
Among the rain<br>
and lights<br>
I saw the figure 5<br>
in gold<br>
on a red<br>
firetruck<br>
moving<br>
tense<br>
unheeded<br>
to gong clangs<br>
siren howls<br>
and wheels rumbling<br>
through the dark city.<br>
<br>
 <small>William Carlos Williams 1920.</small>]]

Williams's mother had trained as a painter in Paris and passed on her enthusiasm to her son, who also painted in his early years.<ref>Bram Dijkstra, ''Cubism, Stieglitz, and the Early Poetry of William Carlos Williams'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=ISOqrP9BWYoC&dq=William+Carlos+Williams++%22Juan+Gris%22&pg=PA3 pp.6–7]</ref> A painting by him now hangs in Yale University's [[Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library|Beinecke Library]]<ref>Emily Kopley, [http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/blogs/poetry-beinecke-library/2007/12/19/art-wrong-reason-paintings-poets "Art for the Wrong Reason"], originally in ''The New Journal'', December 2004</ref> and as late as 1962 he was still remembering in an interview that "I'd like to have been a painter, and it would have given me at least as great a satisfaction as being a poet."<ref>Interviewed by Stanley Koehler, [http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4486/the-art-of-poetry-no-6-william-carlos-williams ''Paris Review'' 32, 1964]</ref> For most of his life Williams wrote art criticism and introductions to exhibitions by his friends.

In 1915, Williams began to associate with the New York group of artists and writers known as [[Others (art group)|"The Others."]]<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7349 |title=Poetry Archive bio on Williams |access-date=2012-10-14 }}{{Dead link|date=October 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot }}</ref> Founded by the poet [[Alfred Kreymborg]] and the artist [[Man Ray]], they included [[Walter Conrad Arensberg]], [[Wallace Stevens]], [[Mina Loy]], [[Marianne Moore]], [[Orrick Glenday Johns]] and [[Marcel Duchamp]]. Interlocking with them were the US artists who met at Arensburg's studio, including [[Marsden Hartley]], [[Joseph Stella]], [[Charles Demuth]] and [[Charles Sheeler]], with whom Williams developed close friendships.

Although he championed the new way of seeing and representation pioneered by the European [[avant-garde]], Williams and his artistic friends wished to get away from what they saw as a purely derivative style. As one result, he started [[Contact (magazine)|''Contact'']] magazine with Hartley in 1920 in order to create an outlet for works showcasing the belief that creative work should derive from the artist's direct experience and sense of place and reject traditional notions of how this should be done.<ref>Casella, Donna. "William Carlos Williams's Contact Magazine: A Rebellion against the Arty Art Worshipers", ''Ball State University Forum'' 28.3 (1987): 60–75.</ref>

[[Precisionism]] emerged in response to such thinking. In her study of the influence of painting on Williams, Ruth Grogan devoted several paragraphs to the dependency of some of his poems on the paintings of Charles Sheeler in this style, singling out in particular the description of a power house in Williams's "Classic Scene".<ref>Ruth Grogan, "The influence of painting on William Carlos Williams" (1969), in The Penguin Critical Anthology devoted to Williams, pp.290–3</ref> But the close relationship with Charles Demuth was more overt. Williams's poem "The Pot of Flowers" (1923) references Demuth's painting "Tuberoses" (1922), which he owned. On his side, Demuth created his "I saw the figure 5 in gold" (1928) as a homage to Williams's poem "The Great Figure" (1921). Williams's collection ''Spring and All'' (1923) was dedicated to the artist and, after his early death, he dedicated the long poem "The Crimson Cyclamen." (1936) to Demuth's memory.

Later collaborations with artists include the two poem/ two drawing volume that he shared with [[William Zorach]] in 1937<ref>[http://www.franklin.library.upenn.edu/record.html?id=FRANKLIN_3520342 Penn Libraries]</ref> and his poem "Jersey Lyric", written in response to Henry Niese's 1960 painting of the same title:<ref>Ilse Munro, "Concerning Craft: Henry Niese and William Carlos Williams", [http://littlepatuxentreview.org/2011/10/17/concerning-craft-henry-niese-and-william-carlos-williams Little Patuxen Review], October 2011</ref> 
{{poemquote|View of winter trees
before
one tree

in the foreground
where
by fresh-fallen

snow
lie 6 woodchunks ready
for the fire}}

Throughout his career, Williams thought of his approach to poetry as a painterly deployment of words, saying explicitly in an interview, "I've attempted to fuse the poetry and painting, to make it the same thing….A design in the poem and a design in the picture should make them more or less the same thing."<ref>Walter Sutton, "A Visit with William Carlos Williams", ''Minnesota Review'' 1 (April 1961)</ref> However, in the case of his references to much earlier painters, culminating in ''Pictures from Brueghel'' (1962), his approach was more commentarial. Of this late phase of his work it has been claimed that "Williams saw these artists solving, in their own ways, the same problems that concerned him,"<ref>[[Bonnie Costello]], "William Carlos Williams in the world of the painters", [http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR04.6/costello.html ''Boston Review''], June/July 1979</ref> but his engagement with them was at a distance.

==Legacy, awards and honors==
[[File:WCWilliamsWallpoem.jpg|thumb|200px|''This Is Just to Say'' <br />(wall poem in The Hague)]]
The U.S. [[National Book Award]] was reestablished in 1950 with awards by the book industry to authors of books published in 1949 in three categories. Williams won the first [[National Book Award for Poetry]], recognizing both the third volume of ''Paterson'' and ''Selected Poems''.<ref name=nba1950>
[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1950 "National Book Awards – 1950"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-02-25.</ref>

In 1952, Williams was named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, but was barred from serving out his term due to unfounded accusations of Williams's membership in a communist organization. Williams retained legal counsel to refute the charges but was never allowed to respond to his critics and never received an apology from the Library of Congress.<ref>"The Library and its Laureates: The Examples of Auslander, Williams, Dickey & Kumin"  by [[Dan Vera]], ''Beltway Poetry Quarterly'', Volume 10.4, Fall 2009 http://washingtonart.com/beltway/fourlaureates.html</ref><ref>''William Carlos Williams: Poet from Jersey'', by [[Reed Whittemore]], pages 309–314, Houghton Mifflin, 1975, {{ISBN|978-0395207352}}</ref> The next year, however, he received the [[Bollingen Prize]] along with [[Archibald MacLeish]].

In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize]] for ''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]'' (1962) and the gold medal for Poetry of the [[National Institute of Arts and Letters]]. The Poetry Society of America presents the [[William Carlos Williams Award]] annually for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.

[[William Carlos Williams House|Williams's house]] in Rutherford was added to the [[National Register of Historic Places]] in 1973.<ref>{{cite web |title=The Rutherford Historic Preservation Commission Presents its fourth Historic Commemorative – "William Carlos Williams House" |url=http://www.rutherford-nj.com/pr2005/display_event.asp?ID=77 |website=rutherford-nj.com |access-date=16 March 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060318004340/http://www.rutherford-nj.com/pr2005/display_event.asp?ID=77 |archive-date=March 18, 2006 |location=Rutherford, NJ |language=en |date=December 15, 2005}}</ref> He was inducted into the [[New Jersey Hall of Fame]] in 2009.<ref>{{cite news|last=Santi|first=Angela Delli|title=N.J. to Bon Jovi: You Give Us a Good Name|url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nj-to-bon-jovi-you-give-us-a-good-name/|access-date=2012-10-14|newspaper=CBS News|date=2010-06-01}}</ref>

==Bibliography==

===Poetry collections===
{{columns-list|colwidth=35em|
* ''[[Poems (William Carlos Williams)|Poems]]'' (1909)
* ''The Tempers'' (1913)
* ''[[Al Que Quiere!]]'' (1917)
* ''[[Sour Grapes (book)|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 of William Carlos Williams, 1906–1938'' (1938)
* ''The Broken Span'' (1941)
* ''[[The Wedge (poetry)|The Wedge]]'' (1944)
* ''[[Paterson (poem)|Paterson]]'' Book I (1946); Book II (1948); Book III (1949); Book IV (1951); Book V (1958)
* ''Clouds, Aigeltinger, Russia'' (1948)
* ''The Collected Later Poems'' (1950; rev. ed.1963)
* ''Collected Earlier Poems'' (1951; rev. ed., 1966)
* ''[[The Desert Music and Other Poems]]'' (1954)
* ''[[Journey to Love (William Carlos Williams)|Journey to Love]]'' (1955)
* ''[[Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems]]'' (1962)
* ''Paterson'' (Books I–V in one volume), (1963)
*  '' The Red Wheelbarrow '' (1923)
}}

===Books, prose===
{{columns-list|colwidth=35em|
* ''Kora in Hell: Improvisations'' (1920) – Prose-poem improvisations.
* ''The Great American Novel'' (1923) – A novel.
* ''Spring and All'' (1923) – A hybrid of prose and verse.
* ''In the American Grain'' (1925), 1967, repr. New Directions 2004 – Prose on historical figures and events.
* ''A Voyage to Pagany'' (1928) – An autobiographical travelogue in the form of a novel.
* ''Novelette and Other Prose'' (1932)
* ''[[The Knife of the Times and Other Stories]]'' (1932)
* ''White Mule'' (1937) – A novel.
* ''[[Life Along the Passaic River]]'' (1938) – Short stories.
* ''In the Money'' (1940) – Sequel to ''White Mule''.
* ''[[Make Light of It: Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams]]'' (1950)
* ''[[The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams|Autobiography]]'' (1951) W. W. Norton & Co. (1 February 1967)
* ''The Build-Up'' (1952) – Completes the "Stecher trilogy" begun with ''White Mule''.
* ''Selected Essays'' (1954)
* ''The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams'' (1957)
* ''I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet'' (1958)
* ''Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother'' (1959)
* ''[[The Farmers' Daughters: The Collected Short Stories of William Carlos Williams]]'' (1961)
* ''[[Imaginations (William Carlos Williams book)|Imaginations]]'' (1970) – A collection of five previously published early works.
* ''The Embodiment of Knowledge'' (1974) – Philosophical and critical notes and essays.
* ''Interviews With William Carlos Williams: "Speaking Straight Ahead"'' (1976)
* ''A Recognizable Image: William Carlos Williams on Art and Artists'' (1978)
* ''[[The Doctor Stories]]: Compiled by [[Robert Coles (psychiatrist)|Robert Coles]]'' (1984)
* ''Pound/Williams: Selected Letters of [[Ezra Pound]] and William Carlos Williams'' (1996)
* ''The Collected Stories of William Carlos Williams'' (1996)
* ''The Letters of [[Denise Levertov]] and William Carlos Williams'' (1998)
* ''William Carlos Williams and [[Charles Tomlinson]]: A Transatlantic Connection'' (1998)
* ''The Humane Particulars: The Collected Letters of William Carlos Williams and [[Kenneth Burke]]'' (2004)
}}

===Drama===
* ''The First President'' (opera, 1936)
* ''A Dream of Love'' (1949)
* ''Tituba’s Children'' (1950)
* ''Many Loves'' (1959)
* ''The Cure'' (1960)
The above are collected in ''Many Loves and Other Plays: The Collected Plays of William Carlos Williams'' (1962)<ref>{{cite web |title=Many Loves And Other Plays |url=https://www.ndbooks.com/book/many-loves-and-other-plays/ |website=[[New Directions Publishing|New Directions]] |publisher=[[New Directions Publishing]] |access-date=13 December 2024}}</ref>

===Translations===
* ''Last Nights of Paris'' (1929) – A novel translated from the French of [[Philippe Soupault]].
* ''By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916–1959'' (2011) – Poetry of Spanish and Latin American authors. 
* ''The Dog and the Fever'' (2018) – A novella translated, in collaboration with Raquel Hélène Williams, from the Spanish of [[Pedro Espinosa]].

==See also==
{{Portal|Puerto Rico|Literature|Poetry}}
* [[List of Puerto Rican writers]]
* [[William Carlos Williams Center for the Performing Arts]]
* [[Epic poetry]]
* [[Latino poetry]]
* [[Puerto Rican literature#Poetry|Puerto Rican poetry]]

==References==
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book |author=Bremen, Brian A. |title=William Carlos Williams and the diagnostics of culture |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=1993 <!--|isbn=-->}}
*Gammel, Irene. “The Poetic Feud of William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, and the Baroness”. ''Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada, and Everyday Modernity''. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. 262-285
*Leibowitz, Herbert. ''“Something Urgent I Have to Say to You”: The Life and Works of William Carlos Williams''. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011; 496 pages.
*Mariani, Paul, ''William Carlos Williams:  A New World Naked''. San Antonio, Trinity University Press, 1981; 874 pages.

==External links==
{{external links|date=May 2024}}
{{commons category|William Carlos Williams}}
{{Wikiquote}}
{{wikisource|works=or}}

===Profiles===
* [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/william-carlos-williams Profile at PoetryFoundation.org]
* [http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=7349 Profile at the Poetry Archive with poems written and audio]{{Dead link|date=October 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot }}
* [http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/williams.htm Profile at] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160312111535/http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/williams/williams.htm |date=2016-03-12 }} Modern American Poetry Society
* [https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/william-carlos-williams William Carlos Williams: Profile and Poems at Poets.org]
* {{cite journal| url=http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4486/the-art-of-poetry-no-6-william-carlos-williams| title=William Carlos Williams, The Art of Poetry No. 6| author= Stanley Koehler| journal=The Paris Review| date=Summer–Fall 1964 | volume=Summer-Fall 1964| issue=32}}
* [http://nbapoetryblog.squarespace.com/journal/2011/2/14/1950.html National Book Foundation Poetry Blog] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200222172547/http://nbapoetryblog.squarespace.com/journal/2011/2/14/1950.html |date=2020-02-22 }}
* [https://bookbrainz.org/author/d4ac86b9-fc3f-4d64-a221-be97a97a8282 William Carlos Williams] at [[BookBrainz]]

===Archive and works===
* {{StandardEbooks|Standard Ebooks URL=https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-carlos-williams}}
* {{Gutenberg author | id=8885 }}
* {{FadedPage|id=Williams, William Carlos|name=William Carlos Williams|author=yes}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=William Carlos Williams |sopt=tight}}
* {{Librivox author |id=3018}}
* [http://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.williamswc William Carlos Williams Papers] Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
* [http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php Listen to William Carlos Williams read his poems]
* [http://www.lib.udel.edu/ud/spec/findaids/willi_wc.htm Archive] at the University of Delaware Library Special Collections Department.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090416224826/http://library.buffalo.edu/pl/collections/williamcarloswilliams.php Archive] at SUNY Buffalo Libraries.
* [http://english.ttu.edu/WCWR ''The William Carlos Williams Review''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090317213207/http://english.ttu.edu/WCWR/ |date=2009-03-17 }}. Journal.
* [https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadID=00517 William Carlos Williams Collection] at the [[Harry Ransom Center]], University of Texas at Austin. 
* [http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/d/ead/upenn_rbml_MsColl396 William Carlos Williams Research Collection], Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.
* [https://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/resources/2016 William Carlos Williams Manuscripts and Correspondence] at Dartmouth College Library
* [[hdl:1903.1/1516|Authors and Poets collection]] at [[University of Maryland Libraries]]

{{William Carlos Williams|state=expanded}}
{{LOC Poets Laureate}}
{{PulitzerPrize PoetryAuthors 1951–1975}}
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, William Carlos}}
[[Category:1883 births]]
[[Category:1963 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century American male writers]]
[[Category:20th-century American poets]]
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