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‡



 Born Rutherford, New Jersey

U.S.A 1883 Ȃ 1963.

 Poet, novelist, short story

writer, playwright, translator ,
historian and Physician.

 Born to an English father and

Puerto Rican mother.

 At 14 Williams studies for 2

years in both Geneva and
Paris. Returning to the Horace
Mann School in New York.
‡




¬Williams and Pound enjoyed a strong

yet stormy lifelong relationship both as
friends and rivals.

¬Williams remained separate from

distinct literary movements.

¬The Imagist movement, largely led by

Pound, can be seen to have greatly
affected Williamsǯ writing and poetical
sentiment .

¬Williamsǯ work would also be a great

influence on later poetical movements
especially the Objectivists and the Beat
EZRA POUND
Generation.
‡

 

 In 1902 at the age of 19 Williams enters the
medical school of Pennsylvania University
and meets Ezra Pound and H.D.

 Williams first published DzPoemsdz 1909.

 Married Florence Herman 1912 and set up

medical practice in Rutherford where he
would stay until his death.

 In 1913 he published DzThe Tempersdz his first

book of serious poetry.

 For Williams, although dedicated, being a

doctor was a way of financing his goal of
becoming a poet.
‡

 

 Although he remained in Rutherford most of his life,
Williams spent much time in New York City with:
Wallace Stevens

Marianne Moore

Marcel Duchamp

Francis Picabia

 Williams also made a trip to Europe to spend time

with Ezra Pound and James Joyce.
ñ  
 Radical poetical theory and aesthetic
adopted by both British and American
modernists.

 T.E. Hulme wrote that the language of

poetry was

 Dz...a visual concrete one...Images in

verse are not mere decoration, but the
very essence of an intuitive language.dz

 Pound picked up upon Hulmeǯs

sentiments and in 1912 wrote of Dzthe T.E. Hulme
forgotten school of imagesdz thus,
starting the movement and becoming
its leader. -DzRomanticism and Classicismdz


ñ 
 Pound coined the term DzImagistedz in
an appendix to Y
 


 The movement was influenced by

Japanese poetry amongst others
and was primarily a reaction against
the form and diction of Georgian
verse.

 Imagism demanded absolute

precision in the presentation of an
image and a move towards a
controlled Ǯfree verseǯ

 The conventions of Imagist poems

were generally short, pointed
observations, between four and five
lines
×
 Free verse was an important element of the Imagists
and Williamsǯ later style.

Dz...poetry that lacks a regular meter, does not rhyme,

and uses irregular (and sometimes very short) line
lengths. Writers of free verse disregard traditional poetic
conventions of rhyme and meter, relying instead on
parallelism, repetition, and the ordinary cadences and
stresses of everyday discourse.dz

-Ú     Úpg 177.

P ñ  
DzAn image is that which presents an intellectual and emotional
complex in an instant of timedz
-Pounds essay, DzA Few Donǯts by an Imagistedz (1912)

1. Direct treatment of the Dzthingdz, whether subjective or

objective.

2. To use absolutely no word that did not contribute to the

presentation.

3. As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical

phrase, not in sequence of a metronome.

-Imagisme (1912) F.S. Flint (reportedly quoting Pound)

ñ   P

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;

Petals on a wet, black bough.
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P
 
DzMost current verse is dead from the
point of view of artdz

DzLife is above all things else at any

moment subversive of life as it was the
moment before...always new, irregular.dz

DzFor verse to be alive it must have

infused into it something of the same
order [life]...I am speaking of modern
versedz Harriet Monroe

-letter from Williams to Harriet Monroe

 ‡


P
 
 Williams was self-consciously modern.

 Williams felt that modernism was the quality of

life which disrupted whatever was in existence
before.

 This Dzlifedz is a quality and energy that Williams

wanted in his poetry.

 Williamsǯ work exhibits this modernist change

in sensibility.

 Williams also developed new and unique

assumptions upon poetry and human
existence. This was a new the beginning of a
new tradition evident in his poetry.
 •  

!
 Williamsǯ DzPoemsdz (1909) DzThe
Tempersdz (1913) DzTo Him Who Wants
It!dz (1917)

 • 
   (1920) -

Prose-poem improvisations polemic.

 Williams argues against the likes of

Eliot and Pound as expatriates
dividing modern American literature
into two camps: those who stayed at
home and those who left.

 • also signals Williams

profound affinity with America that is
evident in his poetry and his doctrine
of Dzlocalitydz
"

 DzWilliams saw oneǯs immediate environment, oneǯs
Dzlocality,dz as the only source of that universal
experience which, he thought, Dzgreatdz art expresses.
Such universal experience was communicable only
on the basis of an authentic perception of the
objects of the material world, which, he reasoned,
could only stem from an accurate representation of
the things we know, the things which we are
intimately familiar: the Dzsensual accidentsdz bred out
of Dzthe local conditions which confront usdz.

-Dijkstra, Bram, 1969.   ! " #  
$  

$  
 # 
$

%
¬ A serial poem of 27 untitled but
numbered poems.

¬ Interspersed with a prose

doctrine that represents the
theory behind the poems.

¬ !
 "% remains Williamsǯ

most well known work.

¬ !
 "%contains two of

Williamsǯ most well known
works, ǮThe Red Wheelbarrowǯ
and ǮSpring and Allǯ.
 Ú
‡
&'
 The second shortest modern
poem behind Dz 
 &'

 Williamsǯ most well known

poem.

 Undeniable link with Imagism

aesthetic .

 Imagism is a visual metaphor

and Williams is a visual poet Ȃ a
poet of the eye.
Ú
‡
&' 
 The poem exalts the
Dzmomentdz with a vision of
Dzlifedz So much depends
upon
 The poem is a visual object
that meets the eye. a red wheel
barrow
 the language on the page
requires the reader to Ǯseeǯ
the poem before hearing or glazed with rain
thinking about it. water

 The poem is in free verse beside the white

yet it is written in a highly chickens
constructed form.
Ú
‡
&'%
line text stresses syllables
 1. so ›
 depµ
 2 4
 2. up 1 2

2 3
 3. a µ
µµ
1 2
 4.  ow
2 3
 5.
 µ
with   1 2
 6.  ter

 7. be
µ the  µ 2 4
 8. ens 1 2

BOLD = MEDIUM STRESS BOLD & UNDERLINED = STRONG STRESS

 Ú
‡
&'
 Williams denies rhyme and meter yet creates a highly
structured and strict free verse style. (possibly more strict
than the styles he was trying to eschew)

 This everyday cadence is supposed to echoe the sentiment

of the ordinariness of the poems subject.

 The poem attempts to display an ad hoc or unplanned verse

structure that reflects the occasion and purpose of the
poem.

 The poem also deliberately disrupts normal reading by

Williamsǯ Ǯenjambmentǯ by carrying one line over to the
next. This forces the reader to slow down and think about
the poem.
Ú
‡
&'%
so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens
Ú
‡
&'
 Williams breaks the words up into their component parts: red Ȃ
wheel Ȃ barrow / rain Ȃ water as if the objects consisted of these
elements Ȃ redness, a barrow and a wheel yet he subverts this
in the next stanza, Dzthe white chickensdz which are not made up
of the whiteness and chickeness. Then the poem finishes.

 Therefore the poem creates a way of seeing by disrupting

syntax and then immediately destroys it.

 Therefore, a mode of perception is established and then

broken, this can be seen as a manifestation of Williamsǯ own
modernist poetical beliefs Ȃ

 DzLife is above all things else at any moment subversive of life as

it was the moment before...always new, irregular.dz
 Ú
‡
&'
 So what is it that depends on the red wheelbarrow? Williams just says
DzSo muchdz

 The word Dzglazeddz is used as part of an imagist aesthetic and implies a

light behind the poet and the reader, the sun that shines after rain?

 This allows the reader to see the world in itǯs component parts Ȃ the
world in its inanity, itǯs simplicity. For Williams this is the DzSo muchdz - the
whole world.

 Dz...all writing, if not all art, has been especially designed to keep up the
barrier between sense and the vaporous fringe which distracts the
attention from its agonised approaches to the moment. It has been
always a search for Dzthe beautiful illusion.dz Very well. I am not in search
of the Dzbeautiful illusiondz.
 -Spring and All (Rainey pg. 501.)
 ‡

 #( 
 ")
 Williams was the poet of the
everyday and he had a passion for the
details of existence presented
without moralising and with an
Imagistǯs brevity.

 This style of Williamsǯ attracted many

younger poets including those who
became the Objectivists and the Beat
Generation.

 The Objectivists were founded

inadvertently by Louis Zukofsky in
1931 and brought together under the
principles of:
 The poem as a formal aesthetic
object.
 That the poem should give a detailed
account of things as they actually
exist.
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 #  
 Williams had spent time in New York with
avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and
Francis Picabia.

 Williams was influenced by both Dadaist and

Surrealist principles in his work.

 Williams also found an affinity with the work

of post impressionist painter Paul Cezanne.

 DzI was tremendously involved in an

appreciation of Cezanne. He was a designer.
He put it down on canvas so that there would
be a meaning without saying anything at all.dz

 -Dijkstra, Bram, 1969.   ! " #  


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DzNo ideas but in thingsdz