What do you think?
Rate this book
The Selected Letters
Long unavailable, The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams is now reissued as a New Directions Paperbook. Spanning fifty-four years, this collection record the creative growth of one of the twentieth century's most influential and versatile writers.
346 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1957
1 person is currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
William Carlos Williams
417 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 of 1 review
August 19, 2019
Reading The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams was a genuine pleasure. It reconfirmed for me what I have always felt - that Williams is a marvellous prose writer and someone who really had a unique mind.
Unlike his contemporaries, Pound and Eliot, Williams decided to hang around in the USA and not go to Europe to live, although he did travel there on occasion, and in fact wrote a novel about his year in France called A Journey to Pagany (a book of his I have yet to read).
His views on modernism, imagism and more specifically the 'American English idiom' are fascinating. While admiring older forms of poetry, Williams constantly reminds us that they are also out-of-date and that poets need to be constantly in the process of discovering a language which is synced to their locality, their region and their times like in the following excerpt, "The English of Shakespeare is medieval in the structure of its poetic periods. It is magnificent but outmoded. Were we to submit to the implications of its structure, we should, in our way of thinking, be pushed back to the 16th Century."
Rather than trusting to our ancient mentors and masters and the styles of writing they adopted, Williams refreshingly reminds us that our resources for writing, and writing poetry in particular, are closer to hand, "the first thing you learn when you begin to learn anything about this earth is that you are eternally barred save for the report of your senses from knowing anything about it."
In other words, the words and the answers are lying there somewhere within our own minds as he also says in the following, "But the only thing which will finally interest it [our mind] must be its own intrinsic nature."
What I love especially about WCW is the whimsical and unpredictable side of him, his way of looking at our planet and our world through a fascinating and singular lens - "the mind's a queer fish. It wants to live; when the air is denied it, it comes to the surface gasping for air, and when it is denied that, it turns on its side on the sand and soon expires."
Williams also often writes about other famous writers and poets in his letters to others. Poets he often mentions include Whitman, Pound, Eliot, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Marianne Moore (with whom he was very close), H.D. and more.
He admired Whitman but thought that Whitman just opened the door to what became modern American poetry and language later on, a call that Williams was glad to rally to and continue in his name - "Whitman with his so-called free verse was wrong: there can be no absolute freedom in verse. You must have a measure but a relatively expanded measure to exclude what has to be excluded and to include what has to be included."
Another interesting aspect of these letters is seeing Will Carlos give advice to other writers his own age or younger - "do you know what I mean by 'it doesn't fall into the machine'? I mean that you do not become involved, too intimately involved, in your subject but hold it away from you as an artist should always do."
The main rewards of this book for me were 1) seeing a brilliant mind at play on the page; 2) understanding more of Williams' philosophies on poesy, modern verse, and writing in general; and 3) his relationship to other writers such as Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Louis Zukofksy and most importantly Ezra Pound. It was funny how he both greatly admires Pound as a master of poetry and a generous person who helped many others get published but at the same time calls him an insufferable fool for believing all the fascistic Mussolini nonsense, which culminated in Pound's incarceration in Italy at the end of WWII.
The only real disappointments for me about this book were 1) the letters do not continue right up until his death in 1963 but finish around 1957; and 2) there were no letters to Ginsberg or Lew Welch included. Some of Ginsberg's letters (parts of his letters) were included in Part IV of Paterson so I assumed that they would definitely be included here. Also Williams was extremely excited about Lew Welch's thesis on Gertrude Stein (a writer they both admired) and they enjoyed a close correspondence in the last few years of Williams' life, also not featured here.
But these are fairly minor gripes. Overall, the writing is excellent and fascinating - there is never a dull moment really! Williams also has a great sense of humour both about others and himself that comes through here and some of his turns of phrase or expressions were entirely original so this book of letters was as enjoyable as picking up a great novel.
Highly recommended if you are interested in this period of American letters or if you are interested in early 20th Century modernist American poetry, in particular.
Unlike his contemporaries, Pound and Eliot, Williams decided to hang around in the USA and not go to Europe to live, although he did travel there on occasion, and in fact wrote a novel about his year in France called A Journey to Pagany (a book of his I have yet to read).
His views on modernism, imagism and more specifically the 'American English idiom' are fascinating. While admiring older forms of poetry, Williams constantly reminds us that they are also out-of-date and that poets need to be constantly in the process of discovering a language which is synced to their locality, their region and their times like in the following excerpt, "The English of Shakespeare is medieval in the structure of its poetic periods. It is magnificent but outmoded. Were we to submit to the implications of its structure, we should, in our way of thinking, be pushed back to the 16th Century."
Rather than trusting to our ancient mentors and masters and the styles of writing they adopted, Williams refreshingly reminds us that our resources for writing, and writing poetry in particular, are closer to hand, "the first thing you learn when you begin to learn anything about this earth is that you are eternally barred save for the report of your senses from knowing anything about it."
In other words, the words and the answers are lying there somewhere within our own minds as he also says in the following, "But the only thing which will finally interest it [our mind] must be its own intrinsic nature."
What I love especially about WCW is the whimsical and unpredictable side of him, his way of looking at our planet and our world through a fascinating and singular lens - "the mind's a queer fish. It wants to live; when the air is denied it, it comes to the surface gasping for air, and when it is denied that, it turns on its side on the sand and soon expires."
Williams also often writes about other famous writers and poets in his letters to others. Poets he often mentions include Whitman, Pound, Eliot, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Marianne Moore (with whom he was very close), H.D. and more.
He admired Whitman but thought that Whitman just opened the door to what became modern American poetry and language later on, a call that Williams was glad to rally to and continue in his name - "Whitman with his so-called free verse was wrong: there can be no absolute freedom in verse. You must have a measure but a relatively expanded measure to exclude what has to be excluded and to include what has to be included."
Another interesting aspect of these letters is seeing Will Carlos give advice to other writers his own age or younger - "do you know what I mean by 'it doesn't fall into the machine'? I mean that you do not become involved, too intimately involved, in your subject but hold it away from you as an artist should always do."
The main rewards of this book for me were 1) seeing a brilliant mind at play on the page; 2) understanding more of Williams' philosophies on poesy, modern verse, and writing in general; and 3) his relationship to other writers such as Marianne Moore, Wallace Stevens, Louis Zukofksy and most importantly Ezra Pound. It was funny how he both greatly admires Pound as a master of poetry and a generous person who helped many others get published but at the same time calls him an insufferable fool for believing all the fascistic Mussolini nonsense, which culminated in Pound's incarceration in Italy at the end of WWII.
The only real disappointments for me about this book were 1) the letters do not continue right up until his death in 1963 but finish around 1957; and 2) there were no letters to Ginsberg or Lew Welch included. Some of Ginsberg's letters (parts of his letters) were included in Part IV of Paterson so I assumed that they would definitely be included here. Also Williams was extremely excited about Lew Welch's thesis on Gertrude Stein (a writer they both admired) and they enjoyed a close correspondence in the last few years of Williams' life, also not featured here.
But these are fairly minor gripes. Overall, the writing is excellent and fascinating - there is never a dull moment really! Williams also has a great sense of humour both about others and himself that comes through here and some of his turns of phrase or expressions were entirely original so this book of letters was as enjoyable as picking up a great novel.
Highly recommended if you are interested in this period of American letters or if you are interested in early 20th Century modernist American poetry, in particular.
Displaying 1 of 1 review