William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) was an American poet, essayist, novelist, and short-story writer. Considered one of the twentieth century’s most important and original American poets, he was admired for his deceptively simple style that incorporates colloquial American. Williams was also a pediatrician who practiced medicine in New Jersey for over 40 years.
Born in Rutherford, Connecticut, Williams studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. There he met both Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle, both of whom had a considerable impact on his developing interest in poetry. His works include Poems (1909,) Sour Grapes (1921,) Spring and All (1923,) Paterson (1946–1958,) and Pictures from Breughel (1963; Pulitzer Prize.) His poetry is characterized by avoidance of emotional content and the use of American vernacular.
A prolific writer of prose, short stories, and novels, Williams’In the American Grain (1925) analyzed the American character and culture through essays on historical figures. His is also noted for his novel-trilogy about a family—White Mule (1937,) In the Money (1940,) and The Build-Up (1952.)
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What “love” is I don’t know if it’s not the response of our deepest natures to one another.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Love
What can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Perseverance, Failures, Mistakes, Endurance, Resolve
But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn’t declaim or explain, it presents.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Poetry, Poets
I pick the hair from her eyes and watch her misery with compassion.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Compassion
Afraid lest he be caught up in a net of words, tripped up, bewildered and so defeated
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Authors & Writing
In summer, the song sings itself.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: One liners, Summer
It is at the edge of a petal that love waits.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Love
Empty pockets make empty heads.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Poverty
What power has love but forgiveness?
In other words
by its intervention
what has been done
can be undone.
What good is it otherwise?
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Forgiveness
Their story, yours and mine — it
—William Carlos Williams
Practical to the end,
it is the poem
of his existence
that triumphed
finally;…
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Individuality
The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost.
—William Carlos Williams
Topics: Work
Their time past, pulled down
cracked and flung to the fire
go up in a roar
All recognition lost, burnt clean
clean in the flame, the green
dispersed, a living red,
flame red, red as blood wakes
on the ash–
—William Carlos Williams
That which is possible is inevitable.
—William Carlos Williams
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