William Carlos Williams
"Say it, no ideas but in things"
Chronology
compiled by Megan Martin, Millikin University, 1999
1883 Born on September 17 in Rutherford, New Jersey
1897-1899 Attended school in Switzerland and France
1902 Graduated Horace Mann High School
1902-1906 Attended the Medical School of the University of Pennsylvania
Meets and befriends Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle, and Charles Demuth
1909 Poems printed.
1910 Begins medical practice in Rutherford.
1912 Marries Florence Herman
1914-1919 Poems published in Ezra Pound's Des Imagistes anthology. Encounters
poets of the Others movement, including Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens.
1917 Publishes Al Que Quiere.
1920 Kora in Hell: Improvisations published.
1920-1923 Edits Contact with Robert McAlmon. Publishes Sour Grapes; Spring and all; The Great American Novel; and Go Go.
1924 Travels Europe with wife.
1925 Publishes In the American Grain.
1926 Dial Award for excellence in writing.
1928 Publishes A Voyage to Pagany, based on his1924 trip.
1929 Publishes a translation of Philippe Soupault's Last Nights of Paris.
1931 Guarantor's Prize from Poetry
1932 Publishes The Cod Head; A Novelette and Other Prose; and The Knife
of
the Times and Other Stories.
1934 Publishes Collected Poems 1921-1931.
1937-1938 Publishes White Mule; Life Among the Passaic River; and The Complete Collected Poems.
1940-1945 Publishes In the Money (Part II of White Mule); The Broken Span; Trial Horse No. 1 (retitled Many Loves); and The Wedge.
1946 Publishes Paterson, Book One.
1947 Lectures at the University of Washington (returns in 1950)
1948-1949 Publishes Paterson, Book Two; A Dream of Love; The Clouds; The Pink Church; Selected Poems; and Paterson, Book Three. Made a Fellow of the Library of Congress. Suffers from a heart attack.
1950 National Book Award for Selected Poems and Paterson, Book Three. Publishes Make Light of It: Collected Stories, and The Collected Later Poems.
1951 Publishes The Collected Earlier Poems; Paterson, Book Four; and Autobiography. Suffers first stroke (of several) and retires from medical practice.
1952 Publishes The Build-Up, the last of the White Mule trilogy. Appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress.
1953 Bolligen Award for excellence in contemporary verse.
1954 Publishes The Desert Music and Other Poems; Selected Essays; and a translation in collaboration with his mother of Don Francisco de Quevedo's A Dog and the Fever.
1955 Embarks on a reading tour of colleges across the country.
1955-1962 Publishes Journey to Love; The Selected Letters; Paterson, Book Five; I Wanted to Write a Poem; Yes, Mrs. Williams: A Personal Record of My Mother; The Farmers' Daughters; Many Loves and Other Plays; and Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems.
1963 Dies on March 4. Awarded Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel posthumously in May.
Writing Style
Simplistic verse forms
Matter of Factness of subject matter and description
Detested the idea of free verse
Poetry presented scenes of ordinary life without comment
" 'No ideas but in things'… meaning the poet's job is to deal with the concrete particulars of life and let ideas take care of themselves." (Norton)
Disliked all the –isms of writing.
Saw modern American life as "ugly and superficial" (Norton)
However, saw that this ability to criticize society
as an American tradition.
Secondary Sources:
Wagner, Linda Welshimer,ed. Interviews with William Carlos Williams. New York: New Directions, 1976.
Mazzaro, Jerome. Profile of William Carlos Williams. Columbus: Charles
E. Merrill Publishing Company, 1971.
Internet Resources: