John Hayden Wood

Mrs. Pritchard
English II
6 April 2016
William Carlos Williams: The Medical Poet
William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1883. He is considered
to be one of the most insightful and revolutionary poets of his era with his contrasting style of
writing poetry and the topics he chose to write about and his style of writing revolved around the
immediate environment of the world around him. Along with being a very significant poet in the
early twentieth century, Williams was a very distinguished physician in the fields of pediatrics
and medicine. He used his medical background and his past experiences to mold his literature
into a new form, writing about concrete topics and real life situations. Williams was a
revolutionary, using his cultural background to affect the languages and audience he wrote to,
using a different occupation to influence his writing, being a part of a new unorthodox poetry
movement, and writing some of the most well known poems today.
William Carlos Williams was born into a family that was divided culturally where his
father was English and his mother was Puerto Rican. This multicultural background caused
Williams first language to be Spanish. Williams wrote many of his stories and poems in Spanish
and would often translate his Spanish poems into English for different audiences. This was a new
idea during the early 1900s, which made Williams a very well distinguished poet.
Williams decided to go to Dental School at the Penn in 1902, to pursue his original
interests in dental medicine. He then transferred to the Medicine School at Penn, where in
Philadelphia, he met fellow poet Ezra Pound, also a Penn student. Williams meeting of this

brilliant poet skyrocketed his interests in writing poetry, and he began to write poems in his free
time.
William Carlos Williams graduated from Penn in 1906 and became an intern at a hospital
in New York where many of the physicians were from Puerto Rico. The patients happened to be
immigrants who spoke little English, which was perfect for Williams because he was fluent in an
assortment of tongues. He then moved to Germany to practice medicine. In 1910, he moved back
to the United States and established his own medical practice in New Jersey, where he was from.
Although Williams enjoyed being a doctor, his love for poetry overcame that and became much
more important to him. Pounds influence on Williams allowed him find his true calling, poetry.
Therefore, his medical life influenced his poetry and made them more direct and real-life. This
background in medicine and experiencing sickness and peoples despair over their health gave
Williams poetry a sense of life and death.
The first book published by Williams was called Poems in 1909. It was a volume of 26
poems lasting 35 pages. Poems was self published because he was just trying to get off to a good,
honest start in his career. His good friend Ezra Pound published his second book, named The
Tempers in 1913, while the third book written by Williams was labelled Al due quiere! was
published in 1917. With the writings of these three poetry books, Williams became a decently
known poet and he began to be a major factor in the world of poetry. Williams straightforward
method of writing became very evident in his group of books known as Paterson. He wrote five
books in this series from 1946 to 1958. Paterson was based on the depression and high levels of
poverty that was going on during the time in America. This is one of his most famous works
because he was able to use his concrete way of telling stories into his poetry for the first time. He
was very blunt in Paterson, making it a dark and depressing group of poetry books. He also

wrote about different kinds of racial classes and the tensions that were going on during the time
period. He sometimes wrote about the racial stereotypes that are associated with each different
race. Some readers have often thought that this group of poems written by Williams is racist and
there has been much controversy over the topic. He also wrote other real-life stories ranging
from ones about medicine to poems about homosexuality. He also wrote about different
lifestyles, some having to do with drug and alcohol abuse. In some of his works he wrote about
the contrasts between different social classes. Williams often used his strong medical background
to influence his writing with real-world problems and happenings. His exposure to the medical
field and all that comes with it gave him a sense of mortality and the honest side of life. This
factor very much influenced his poetry.
Williams straightforward approach to writing poetry led him to be a part of a group of
poets belonging to the Imagist movement. The Imagist movement was created by Ezra Pound,
who believed that there shouldnt have to be a very strict form of writing poems. He began
transforming his writing into more a prose style, which caught on with the rest of the poetry
community. Williams, along with Doolittle and T.S. Eliot, was a prominent figure in the creation
and popularity of this literature movement. This movement aimed to speak to everyday people
and have them be able to understand what the poem was trying to say. Williams took this idea of
Imagism and incorporated it into all of his works thereafter. He started to write about normal
things in peoples lives and local happenings that all people experience. This made his works
very popular among a large number of people throughout the country. Being a part of this new
movement of poetry allowed Williams to write about the things that he was already writing about
due to his seriousness based off of his medical lifestyle. T.S. Eliot believed that Imagism was
correct in that the poetry should not be about the authors feelings that he or she masks behind a

confusing lot of words, but should be about the poem itself. Imagism has been criticized because
it is a concrete was of writing and doesnt leave much thought for the reader to try to find out the
hidden meaning of the writing. Imagists are criticized by their lack of expression and personality.
Williams, despite these criticisms, continued to write in a concrete way, which appealed to many
more people who maybe didnt live as luxurious as the scholars that poetry was originally written
for.
William Carlos Williams wrote many poems that are much influenced by the Imagist
movement and his preference to write about real-life situations. Some of these poems that depict
these traits are Love, The Great Figure, Complete Destruction, and Hic Jacet". The poem
Love talks about love and how it has to be formed between two people. He also writes about
how love can come along easily, but also be destroyed just as fast. This poem incorporates
Williams concrete style because he talks about a very real topic of love and doesnt
necessarily talk about all of the good that comes along with it. The Great Figure is a poem that
is set in a loud and boisterous city at night and all of the sights and sounds that go along with it.
This poem exemplifies his style of writing because there is no mystery in it, everything is very
straightforward and clear. Complete Destruction is a dark poem that resembles death and
sadness by talking about the burial of a dead cat in a cold, harsh day. The last poem, Hic Jacet",
talks about a coroners (a person who finds out the cause of death for people) happy children.
Williams uses a harsh contrast between the coroner and his merry children to show his real-world
writing style. Williams wrote many poems about real world situations, no matter the harshness of
the subject. This went along well with his adoption of the Imagist style of writing, and made him
a very well known poet.

William Carlos Williams was innovative in the world of poetry. His medical background
influenced his poetry greatly, as well as his cultural background and his Spanish speaking roots.
His medical background caused his poetry to be very harsh and straightforward, not leaving the
reader much thought as to what is the true meaning of the work. His introduction to the Imagist
movement of poetry catapulted his career and gave him a new basis to build his writing from that
went along with his background in the medical field. William Carlos Williams was a very
prominent figure in the world of poetry because of his direct and concrete, sometimes harsh,
form of writing which was very much influenced by his career as a physician in his early and
later life.

Works Cited
Williams, William Carlos. "Complete Destruction - Poem by William Carlos
Williams." PoemHunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/complete-destruction/>.
- - -. "The Great Figure." Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Mar. 2016.
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/182065>.
- - -. Hic Jacet - Poem by William Carlos Williams. PoemHunter.com. N.p., n.d.
Web. 8 Mar. 2016. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/hic-jacet/>.
- - -. "Love - Poem by William Carlos Williams." PoemHunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web.
10 Mar. 2016. <http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/love-2952/>.