William Carlos Williams

Art and Healing

“Only medicine, a job I enjoyed, would make it possible for me to live and write as I wanted to”

-William Carlos Williams

Outline:

• Early life

• The world around William Carlos Williams

• Early Works and Imagism

• The relationship between medicine and art

• Conclusions

Beginnings

• Born in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1883• Father was an Englishman from the West

Indies; Mother was of Spanish and French heritage, also from West Indies

• Studied abroad before enrolling in Horace Mann High School in NYC

• Attended Medical School of Pennsylvania, during which time he befriended Hilda Doolittle and Ezra Pound

An Everyday Life

• Graduated from medical school in 1906• Interned in New York City • Married Florence Herman (“Flossie”), and

had 2 sons, Paul and William• Published his first book of poetry in 1909• Worked in a very busy primary care

practice• Edited several magazines and began to

write fiction and plays

The Political Climate

• Russian Revolution

• Transportation Revolution

• World War I

• Prohibition

• Women’s Suffrage

The Artistic Climate

• Marked by man’s realization of his own fragmentation and an almost complete break from former styles

• Cubism: Picasso, DuChamp

• Ballet: Balanchine

• Music: Stravinsky

Georges Braque – “Woman With Guitar”

Marcelle DuChamp – “Fresh Window” (1920)

George Balanchine

Stravinsky

Works featured adventurous harmonies with a focus on dissonance

Imagism

• Rejected the effusive nature of Romantic and Victorian poetry

• Focused on directness of idea and economy of language

• Contemporary with and in harsh contrast to Georgian poetry

• Contemporaries: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot

Basic Tenets of Imagism

• To use the language of common speech • To create new rhythms – a new cadence means

a new idea• To allow absolute freedom in the choice of

subject• To present an image• To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never

blurred or indefinite• Concentration is the very essence of Poetry

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends upon

a red wheelbarrow

glazed with rainwater

beside the whitechickens

Williams eventually broke with the imagist movement because he felt that the brevity of the imagist poem caused it to lose “structural necessity”

Basic Premises of Williams’ Poetry

• “Modern man has no measure”• Insisted on the value of newness,

inefficacy of old forms• Sought a voice and style that was truly

American• Rejected the necessity of religion or

contrived mythologies• Believed in the contribution of the

individual to a continuum of humanity

“Medicine was the thing that gained me entrance to these secret gardens of self… I was permitted by my medical badge to follow the poor, defeated body into those gulfs and grottos”