What do you think?
Rate this book
Selected Essays
Throughout his life, Dr. Williams tirelessly defended and promoted the best in modern literature and art. He contributed widely to leading literary magazines, wrote prefaces and introductions, and lectured at many universities. This selection represents his finest work in criticism. Much of it concerns poetry and poets––T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Karl Shapiro, E. E. Cummings, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, Robert Lowell and many others. Williams also spoke out on painters and paintings as well as music and literature. There are essays on James Joyce, Shakespeare, Federico Garcia Lorca, the basis of faith in art, the American Revolution, H. L. Mencken's The American Language, Ford Madox Ford, American primitive painters, Antheil's music, and the work of Gertrude Stein.
- GenresEssays
356 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
3 people are currently reading
113 people want to read
About the author
William Carlos Williams
422 books827 followersWilliam Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.
Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.
In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.
Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.
Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.
In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.
Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 24, 2022
Richard Wilbur once noted that much like Cézanne, William Carlos Williams was a, "practicing master too deep in his own work to think like a critic."
I liked the piece on the American Revolution, one which escaped the Plutarchian In the American Grain and the delightful but pained and empathetic piece on Lorca. I didn't care much at all for the rest. I hate admitting how much of chore such proved.
I liked the piece on the American Revolution, one which escaped the Plutarchian In the American Grain and the delightful but pained and empathetic piece on Lorca. I didn't care much at all for the rest. I hate admitting how much of chore such proved.
April 20, 2009
Williams's prose is clacks and cliques -- he masters the feeling of words as objects here before he seems to achieve it in the poetry. He's also beat Woolf to apply as an organizational principle for the essay the "stream-of-consciousness" style, but he uses it to fresher effect, what with his barker energy and its ability to encapsulate his belief in connection, in the connection between author and reader being the reader's experience of seeing "a mind at work" as he passes line by line through the poem or essay.
He actually writes in American English which cats and dogs can understand -- I'm certain: I tested it.
He actually writes in American English which cats and dogs can understand -- I'm certain: I tested it.
September 14, 2013
William Carlos Williams is someone to forever listen to.
August 8, 2012
I read this for the 'Prologue to Kora In hell', which contains the famous statement that a stained glass window lying shattered on the floor was far more interesting than the same thing in situ and for his scathing remarks about T.S. Eliot.
It's odd that Bunting's more rational criticism of Eliot is dismissed as personal envy and WIlliams' sweeping burial of him is treated somehow as an intellectual disagreement worth explicating.
The style of these essays, as another reviewer says, is rambling and often incoherent, something that can rarely be said about Eliot, and unless one is interested in the opinions of WIlliam Carlos Williams because they belong to WCW, I suspect of little wider interest or value.
It's odd that Bunting's more rational criticism of Eliot is dismissed as personal envy and WIlliams' sweeping burial of him is treated somehow as an intellectual disagreement worth explicating.
The style of these essays, as another reviewer says, is rambling and often incoherent, something that can rarely be said about Eliot, and unless one is interested in the opinions of WIlliam Carlos Williams because they belong to WCW, I suspect of little wider interest or value.
January 11, 2010
Half illuminating and impassioned, half unfocused and rambling. The best essays are on the writers of the American Revolution (an extension of In the American Grain) and the art of the short story.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews