The future doctor/poet came into this world in 1883, in Rutherford, New Jersey.  William Carlos Williams was his parents' first-born son (of two).  His ancestry was French, Duch, Jewish, and Spanish on his Puerto Rican mother's side, and English on his British father's side.  Both of Williams' parents were quite strict.  They expected only the best from their sons, although it may seem at times that Williams' father was a perfectionist.  However, they were culturally sophisticated and educated people, and, like most parents, they wanted their sons to succeed. 

 

Young Williams grew up in a home rich in art and literature, as his mother was a painter with a degree in art from Paris, France; and his father very interested in literature.  Williams Senior, William George Williams, introduced his son to literary treasures, such as Dante, Shakespeare, and the Bible.  According to some of William Carlos Willams' biographers, the aspiring poet have stated that his greatest literary influence as a child was shakespeare.  In fact, he has said that when he decided to become a writer, he "wanted to write just like Shakespeare."

 

However, even though Williams' father was a great fan of literature, he was not equally as enthusiastic about his own son making a living creating poetry.  William George Williams was a businessman, working with advertising.  He was concerned for his son's future.  Williams realized this, and some scholars and critics claim that he studied medicine (as opposed to literature) just to please his father.  Others  state that the choice to go into the field of medicine was William Carlos Williams' own.  Williams Junior has said that he chose to go into medicine because he didn't believe people would buy the kind of poetry he wanted to write...   

 

By choosing medicine, he would have a steady income, and he could write on his spare time and inbetween patients (which was exactly what he did).  The Choice to practice medicine was therefore also a choice to write poetry...  The medical career laid the foundation for his poetic career in more ways than one.  As noted by critics, his writing style mirrored his diagnostic style as a doctor -- clear, observant, and precise.

 

Williams had, from a relatively early age, been introduced to various activities.  As a child and teenager, Williams tried to pursue both music and sports, and according to Williams-Biographer Paul Mariani, williams expected to be able to succed in everythig he did, and when he did not succeed in something, he took it very hard.  For example, Mariani, the author of William Carlos Willams: A New World Naked, explains that when williams did not make the track team as a young boy, he became so depressed that he thought it was the end of his life. 

 

Williams' reaction to the track experience is a testimony to the high expectations Williams always had of himself -- he often took for granted that he would be the best at everything he embarked on. This reaction would also later seem to be a "template" of how Williams reacted to setbacks.  From an early age Williams took things very personally, and depression was a pit he would fall into from time to time throughout his life when he experienced life's hindrances.

 

However, this hypersensitivity to his surroundings was not all bad -- it added vulnerability and passion to his personality, two of the main ingrediences (in addition to talent, of course) of being an artist of any kind...  Williams was a deep thinker and he became part of what he wrote just as he became part of the lives of his patients.  In other words, he cared.  He cared about everything that went on in his community, and this open mind and heart made it possible for him to be blunt and honest in his writings. 

 

Williams Carlos Williams observed -- and he recorded his observations.  The poet took in everything around him.  He approached the art of writing poetry in the same manner as he examined his patients -- carefully and meticulously.  His poetry is almost "clinically" orchestrated. 

 

In his poems, Williams speaks of everything from just things as they are to complex emotional issues; to the ravages of war and destruction; to the capabilities of unspeakable cruelty by human beings, in an intense, but at the same time, "raw" and "bare" literary style.  Williams was never accused of being "wordy" in his poems -- his work seems to display careful weighing of every word.  Yet, at the same time, Williams' chosen words are always loaded with emotion, precision, clarity, and sometimes also with double meanings and hidden meanings.  Furthermore, he always seems to chose the right words in his poems -- just as he diagnoses a patient -- correctly...  William Carlos Williams literally had perfection on his fingertips in both of his prefessions... 

 

His great variety of subject matter and themes in his poems makes sense when we learn about his broad specter of knowledge and impulses and his many interests as a child and young man.  However, according to Mariani, the future literary giant did not express much interest in English in school (until he was in high school -- then that changed...).  However, Williams' poetry displays a mastery of the English language with a precision and consistency that has greatly influenced the development of poetry in this country...

 

Willams' introduction to an international "landscape" as a youngster also seems to have influenced both his life choices as an adult and his literary works.  In 1898, Williams, his mother, and younger brother moved for one year to Europe while his father had to stay in Argentina on business.  Williams' exposure to the European way of life seems to have made him more open minded to foreign cultures, human differences, and the phenomenon of change than he would have been had he lived continously in one place.  Williams' view of the world seems to be one of the acceptance of differences, dynamics, and change...  It seems that to Williams, things were the way they were, while, at the same time, they were not always what they seemed  (there lies a very important difference). 

 

As a high school freshman, Willams was mostly interested in math and science.  These were subjects he had a natural talent for, and because of his academic excellence in those fields, he was able to graduate from high school a year early and start studying medicine at the University of Pennsylvania right away.  However, high school was also the place where Willams also became seriously interested in literature, and it was during this time he wrote his first poem. 

 

The year 1902 is known to have held special importance to Willams Carlos Williams.  It was the year he began studying medicine at Penn.  In addition, two contrasting events took place that year -- the witnessing of a tragedy, and the forming of a life-long friendship.  These two latter events would greatly influence and shape the young poet for the rest of his life. 

 

The unfortunate event in 1902 was the town of Paterson, New Jersey, being destroyed by fire.  Paterson was one of the neighboring towns to Williams' own home town of Rutherford.  Literary scholars say that Willams became so emotionally affected by that fire that he never was able to let go of the memories.  

 

However, the young man did not succomb to negative emotions.  Instead, later in his life, he would turn painful memories into beauty and passion.  In the mid 1940's, Williams would begin transforming recollections of a community torn appart by fire into one of the most important literary accomplishments of his career -- the five-book long poem, entitled "Paterson." In this work Williams' unique technique of combining verse and prose would enter the literary arena and earn its place in the history of poetry...

 

The uplifting and positive event in Williams' life in 1902 was his meeting  a fellow student, young Ezra Pound.  The teenage boys became best friends right away, and they remained friends for over 60 years, until Williams' death in 1963.  According to scholars, Williams has stated that becoming friends with Pound was the most important event in his life -- a life-changing moment.  The doctor and poet is supposed to have said that his life before and after meeting Pound "was like B.C. and A.D." 

 

Before meeting Pound, the poets Wiilams was strongly influenced by (in addition to Shakespeare) were John Keats and Walt Whitman.  However, that changed as Pound introduced him to imagist poetry and helped steer him in the direction his poetry eventually went.  Williams has stated himself that he began to abandon what he referred to as the "conventions of Keats and Whitman..."

 

The friendship between Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams was very intense (two equally strong personalities writing, criticizing, and discussing poetry -- often each other's poetry!), and for six decades, their friendship was also put to the test -- more than once... 

 

However, when we look at Williams' poem, "To My Friend Ezra Pound," we see a poem that speaks of friendship as solid as any rock in nature...   Both men were able to tolerate literary criticism from one another -- that was probably the pillar of their friendship... 

 

According to Mariani, when Wiilams Carlos Williams graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, he had earned two degrees -- an M.D. degree in Medicine, and a D.D.S. degree in Dentistry (in the latter field, oral surgery was what he specialized in).  However, Williams' greatest love and concern were children, and he decided to become a pediatrician.  After having worked for a while as an intern at a children's hospital called "Child's Hospital Infant Assylum," Williams traveled to Leipzig, Germany and specialized in pediatric medicine.

 

Williams the poet just as Williams the doctor, was always very ambitious -- he expected nothing but the best of himself, a trait he seems to have inherited from his father.  It seems that to Williams, there had never been an alternative to perfectionism whenver his father was involved in his life.  According to Mariani, when Williams' third book of poems was published in 1918, Williams Senoir discovered three typing mistakes in the Spanish section of his son's book, and he became furious... 

 

Many literary scholars seem to agree that young Williams was often driven to please his father.  His own letters to his mother while he was a college student at Penn reveal such thoughts.  He writes that he only wanted to do what his parents wanted him to do, such as not drinking and not running around with girls (which he not always was able to live up to).  William Carlos Williams was known as a "Ladies Man," a label he seemed to "earn" throughout his life (regardless of how married he was for fifty years...). 

 

When he returned from studying medicine in Germany, Williams found "The One" -- a woman named Florence Herman, from the local community he grew up in.  The couple married and started a family shortly after, in Rutherford, New Jersey.  

 

Back in his old hometwon, now with a family of his own, Williams opened his own private practice -- a doctor's office that soon would be the backdrop for many of his poems.  Although Williams' intense passion for the creation of poetry, he let nothing come between his duty to his patients.  "I am a doctor first," Williams has said... 

 

The energetic family man never wasted a minute.  In interviews later in his life he has said that five, ten minutes between patients were valuable time for him to write.  He always had his typewriter handy, and he was known for typing extremely fast.  However, the minute a patient showed up, he immediately put away his writings -- patients always came first.  What might seem as tremendous self discipline, to be able to interrupt one's creative work, was to Williams just part of his drive -- his passion for both of his professions.  Williams was as passionate about being a doctor as about being a poet.  Furthermore, it seems that he did not stop being creative just because he put away his typewriter when he was with patients. 

 

His patients were not only sick people he had to heal -- they were also the characters he wrote about in his poems.  According to his biographers, Williams often got ideas for poems while examining patients, and on breaks between patients he jotted down notes for poems on anything he could find -- prescription pads were often used as idea-journals.  

 

Williams was an active participant in his community.  His duties as a physichian included everything from seeing patients in the hospital, examining them in his office, make housecalls, deliver babies, and at times also assisting dying children and their families.  William Carlos Williams saw it all -- the beginning of a life and the end of a life -- sometimes even within the same day...  He had plenty to write about...

 

His writings were about the people in his community -- poor people as well as those who belonged to the upper middle class -- they were all people -- his characters and his patients.  Even while he treated his patients, his mind was never still  -- his imagination never slowed down...  The poet has stated both in interviews and in letters that even though he was tired after a long days work as a doctor, he wrote every night, often starting at 11pm, after he had seen his last patinet for the night.  Williams described the urge to write as torment -- that he had been tormented a whole day while tending to patients while ideas for poetry had bombarded his mind...

 

The artist had made his mind up to remain in Rutherford for the rest of his life.  He opposed the trend many other poets at the time displayed -- the trend of wanting to be as international as possible.  Williams is considered as a "small-town-American," and he wanted to be as American as he possibly could.  He was against anything foreign -- he even opposed poetic verse in which the rythm could be reminded of the tone of British English.  He wanted to write in a way that sounded American when it was read out loud... Some of his poems reflect this poetic choice -- these poems look to the reader as sophisticated word-games.

 

The precision of the language in Williams' poetry was neither coincidential nor accidential -- it was very concious and planned.  Just as he was precise in diagnosing a patient with an illness, he was precise when putting lines together as poems.

 

Although it seems as though Williams had planned his life down to the tiniest detail, the way his life actually unfolded as the years progressed, did not always go according to plan...  For example, during the 1920's Williams had been buying stocks in order to get rich fast so that he could retire early and spend the rest of his life writing poetry and prose....  However, that plan crashed in 1929 with the stock market...

 

Instead of having easy, carefree years ahead of him as he had planned, the 1930's became exceptionally hard, because not only did he have to work hard to feed his family, he also had to provide free medical service as many of his patients were no longer able to pay.  The work that was created during this time and afterwards often took on an ironic, "double" tone -- with innocent titles taken from nature, but with themes about the hardships of humankind...

 

The poet's life-struggles did not end with the Great Depression of the 1930's.  With the United States involved in the Second World War came new worries for William Carlos Williams -- his two sons -- they were old enough to be drafted.  However, as it turned out, none of them had to serve in the War, but Williams' worries were still there.  We can see from his poems during those years that they were neither as light or "innocent" as much of his work prior to that time. Some were still ironic, but many were straight-forward descriptions of war and destruction and about the power of evil in human beings, written with such sharpness and hidden emotions that only could have been written by someone who were a doctor as well as an artist... 

 

His poems became less concerned with describing the existence of things as they are and more concerned with addressing the issues of war and destruction.  However, Williams stated very clearly in intervies that his purpose was not to make social commentary...  He was just observing -- writing about the conditions of life as they were...

 

Something else that seemed to bother Williams and affect the direction of his literary work was his openly admitted jealousy of fellow poet T. S. Eliot.  Even though Williams was selling books himself, he apparently felt he did not sell as many or sell them as fast as Eliot.  It is written in several of his biographies that he has said he felt that Eliot had ruined 30 years of his life.  He blamed Eliot's success for his own work not selling at the speed as Williams would have liked.  What is ironic about this is that the poem by Eliot Williams seem to be the most jealous at, was the poet called "Waste Land" -- a poem that had been heavily edidted (and also given the name) by Williams' dearest friend, Ezra Pound.  In other words, Pound had helped Eliot shape his poem into what it became.  Still, Wiliams resented Eliot...

 

Many of his poems seem to be either a direct response or reaction to the work of his perceived competitor -- poems which are basically dealing with themes such as disappointment, loss, and the overall coping with devastation...

 

It seems as though Williams' conflict with Eliot was just that -- Williams inner, personal struggle with the fact that someone else was succeeding as well.  According to literary experts, it did not seem that Eliot was as obsessed with Williams as Williams was with Eliot.  Eliot, just as many of Williams' contemporaries (including Williams himself) was very critical of other poets and believed his own style and his own subject matters were the only right way to express poetry or any literature...

 

Another theory could be that Williams' admitted resentment for Eliot's success may not have anything to do with Eliot at all.  Instead it may be Williams' a deep disappointment in himself for believing he has not lived up to his father's expectation of becoming absolutely perfect...  Williams' steady strides toward perfection, seem at the same time to equall steady strides away from tolerating himself and where he was in his career.

 

Williams' life seems to be a little contradicotry at times.  For instance, the fact that a poet who became known for describing things as they were, for being brutally honest about what he saw when he saw it and having the ability to capture that with words, did not seem to accept the fact that someone else were talented also...

 

During the McCarthyism of the 1950's, Williams was accused of being a communist sympathizer, something scholars seem to disagree on.  Critics have argued such tendencies in some of Williams' work, but there has been nothing that Williams has done that would justify such a label...  It was the accusation of being a supporter of communism that made him lose the appointment he had been granted at the Library of Congress.  The government retracted the offer because of written materials by others calling Williams a communist...

 

As the poet's work matured and his age reached a more advanced number, he began to attract a group of younger followers, and he became a mentor to many of the new generation of poets in the 1950's.  Williams seemed geneuinly concerned with the education of youth, and he took on the role as guest lecturer in literature at universities.

 

The poet's work changed as he aged.  In the later part of his life, his work seem to become more about human emotions, relationships, love, and regrets, than about objects or the horrors of war.  Gone was also the intense striving to resist European influences and the focus on the language  to the point where the language became the content.  Instead, exuisitly fine language was used to create "calmer," and in a way more "realistic" poem -- although, Williams work continued in the modernist tradition.   The older Williams was still concerned with precision -- to describe things as they were, but "things" had become feelings -- the conditions of life.

 

It was during this time that he wrote his famous love poem to his wife, "Asphodel,  That Greeny Flower," in which he, indirectly and between the lines, asks Florence's forgiveness to years of infidelitiy on his part...  The poem seems to be wrapped in a framework of regret (but not the same straight-forwardness as his earlier poems contained)as well as of hope for better times ahead.  However, this was the poem that began to earn Williams the long sought-after fame he had yearned for.  Many critics agree that this poem is some of the best there is of love poems. 

 

His poetry began to take on a more personal voice -- his work became a reflection of his own experiences and state of mind as he struggled through the last decade of his life.  It was during his last 12 years that his recognition as a poet grew and he began to be sidelined with Pound and Eliot.  His later works also received a wider audience, and some of his work was even published by the mainsream publishing company, Random House, as opposed to exclusively being published by the the publishing company of more experimental literature, New Directions.

 

During the latter part of his life, his health failed repeatedly, but he never gave up writing.  After forty years as a physician he was forced to retire from the profession because of a series of strokes he had suffered.  He was no longer able to care for the sick -- he had become the patient (as well as the character in his poems -- this seems to shine through especially in the later books of "Paterson."  There was nothing that would stop him from writing -- not even a stroke that paralyzed his right hand and arm for the rest of his life.  He then taught himself how to write and type with his left hand instead...

 

Of all of Williams' work, "Paterson" was the poem that he seemed not being able to let go of.  Williams emphasized that in Paterson, the doctor becomes the city.  Paterson is the town, but it is also the name of the poem's main character.  Williams wanted to write a sixth book about Paterson, which he started on in 1961.  However, the book was never completed as Williams Carlos Williams died on March 4, 1963.  The pages he had completed were collected and used as an epilogue to the fifth and last Paterson-book.  In spite of Williams' personal attachment to the poem "Paterson," it was a collection of works that was published the year prior to his death that he earned a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for -- "The Pictures of Brueghel."  Williams himself had already passed, but with the Pulitzer prize, his work emerged...and remained in the "spotlight."   He had made it...