William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883, Rutherford, New Jersey – March 4, 1963, ibid.), often abbreviated to WCW, was an American physician and poet.
Williams’ life quickly became entirely centered – apart from his travels in Europe – in his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey, where he practiced medicine (M.D.) since 1910.
In addition to his writing, Williams was a long-time physician, practicing both pediatrics and general medicine. He was affiliated with Passaic General Hospital, where he began serving as chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. The hospital, now called St. Mary’s General Hospital, honored Williams with a plaque bearing the inscription, “We walk the paths Williams walked.”
In contrast to Pound, who was inspired by European models, William Williams, in his collection of essays “In the American Grain” (1925), called for a simple yet avant-garde poetry that should be oriented towards spoken language and everyday American life.
Williams writes in his autobiography, published in 1951[5]: “Ezra has always been very careful to bridge the gap between my educational deficiencies and his sovereign scholarship. Since he treats me in no way patronizingly in this regard, I allow it. It genuinely grieves me that my literary knowledge is so far inferior to his. I respect his discomfort and try my best to accommodate his well-intentioned efforts.”[6] If Williams was less well-versed in European literature than Pound, he endeavored to remedy this deficiency on his European tour, as he met with well-known European writers, intellectuals and painters, especially in Paris.
His early poems were still strongly influenced by European Dadaism and Surrealism. In 1923 he wrote his most famous poem to date, “This is Just to Say.”[10] Together with Pound and Eliot, he joined the Imagists, an Anglo-American literary movement, around 1912. His friendship with Pound later broke down due to artistic differences of opinion and Pound’s support for Italian fascism, but this did not prevent him from visiting Pound, who was interned in the USA (see autobiography).
As a result of his third stroke (the first was in 1951) in October 1955, he suffered paralysis, which slowed his work pace. Nevertheless, he taught himself to type on an electric typewriter with his non-paralyzed hand.
At the age of 79, poet-physician William Carlos Williams died in March 1963 in Rutherford, New Jersey, after another series of severe strokes.
Audio William Carlos Williams https://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php