William Carlos Williams | |
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William Carlos Williams' passport photograph,1921
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Born |
Rutherford, New Jersey, United States |
September 17, 1883
Died | March 4, 1963 Rutherford, New Jersey, United States |
(aged 79)
Occupation | Writer, physician |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania |
Literary movement | Modernism, Imagism |
Notable works | "The Red Wheelbarrow"; Spring and All; Paterson |
Spouse | Mrs Florence Williams |
William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was a Puerto Rican-American poet closely associated with modernism and imagism. His work has a great affinity with painting, in which he had a lifelong interest.
In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pediatrics and general medicine. He was affiliated with what was then known as Passaic General Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey, where he served as the hospital's chief of pediatrics from 1924 until his death. The hospital, which is now known as St. Mary's General Hospital, paid tribute to Williams with a memorial plaque that states "we walk the wards that Williams walked".
Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. His grandmother, an Englishwoman deserted by her husband, had come to the United States with her son, remarried, and moved to Puerto Rico. Her son, Williams's father, married a Puerto Rican woman of French Basque and Dutch Jewish descent.
Williams received his primary and secondary education in Rutherford until 1897, when he was sent for two years to a school near Geneva and to the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. He attended the Horace Mann School upon his return to New York City and, having passed a special examination, was admitted in 1902 to the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1906. Upon leaving University of Pennsylvania, Williams did internships at both French Hospital and Child's Hospital in New York before going to Leipzig for advanced study of pediatrics. He published his first book, Poems, in 1909.
Williams married Florence Herman (1891–1976) in 1912, after he returned from Germany. They moved into a house in Rutherford, New Jersey, which was their home for many years. Shortly afterward, his second book of poems, The Tempers, was published by a London press through the help of his friend Ezra Pound, whom he met while studying at the University of Pennsylvania. Around 1914, Williams had his first son, William E. Williams, followed by his second son, Paul H. Williams, in 1917. His first son would grow up to follow Williams in becoming a doctor.