Carlos Williams Biography

Who is William Carlos Williams? If someone had asked me a month ago I would have had a puzzled look on my face, but now I can say with confidence that Williams Carlos Williams is a revolutionary figure in American poetry. William Carlos Williams was born on September 17, 1883 in Rutherford, N.J. Williams was the first of two sons, his father was of English background, and his mother was Puerto Rican along with French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish ancestry. Williams is later quoted saying a few words of his ancestry "Of mixed ancestry I felt from earliest childhood that America was the only home I could ever possibly call my own. I felt that it was expressed founded for me, personally, and that it must be my first business in life to possess it.” His love of America became a general theme in his poetry. Williams spent most of his younger years growing up in Rutherford, where his family surrounded him with an abundant background in art and literature.

Education was always an important factor in Williams’s life. Williams’s attended a public school in Rutherford, New Jersey until 1897, when he was sent to study at “Chateau de Lancy” near Geneva, Switzerland. Then he was sent off to study at “Lycee Condorcet” in Paris, France, for two years. Finally he made his way back to America to study at Horace Mann School in New York City where he graduated. His traveling at such a young age enhanced his poetry later on in life. Starting in 1902, Williams entered the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. This time at Penn was a critical point in Williams’s life; this is where he befriended Ezra Pound, Hilda Doolittle (H.D.) and the painter Charles Demuth. These friendships are one of his main support systems that awaken his passion for poetry...

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...unist. This supposed pro-communism led him being treated for clinical depression.

In the back of Williams’s life he always had a number of setbacks that ultimately led to his recognition of his depression. In his later years Williams underwent treatment for clinical depression in a psychiatric hospital during 1953. But before then his health played a part in his major change in mood shown through his works. During the late 1940s he suffered “the first of several heart attacks and strokes, which would plague him for the rest of his life.” Williams later complained of the effects of a particularly serious stroke in 1952 "That was the end. I was through with life." Surprisingly enough his devotion to poetry did not suffer in the slightest. "

An American form of poetry whose subject matter was centered on everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people