William Carlos Williams (17 September 1883 – 4 March 1963)
Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician. He was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, a community near the city of Paterson. His father was an English immigrant, and his mother was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He attended public school in Rutherford until 1896, then was sent to study at Château de Lancy near Geneva, Switzerland, the Lycée Condorcet in Paris, France, for two years and Horace Mann School in New York City. Then, in 1902, he entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. During his time at Penn, Williams befriended Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (best known as H.D.) and the painter Charles Demuth. These friendships supported his growing passion for poetry. He received his MD in 1906. Surprisingly, most of his patients knew little if anything of his writings; instead they viewed him as a doctor who helped deliver more than 2,000 of their children into the world. Today, Rutherford is home to a theatre, "The Williams Center," named after the poet. Williams married Florence Herman (1891-1976) in 1912. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends - writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. Williams died at the age of 79. Two days later, a British publisher finally announced that he was going to print his poems – one of fate’s ironies, since Williams had always protested against the English influence on American poetry. During his lifetime, he had not received as much recognition from Britain as he had from the United States. He was buried in Hillside Cemetery in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.
Poem: Love Song (To a Butterfly)
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