William Carlos Williams, a poet on a mission. A biograpphy and a critisism

'Among the poets of his own illustrious generation, William Carlos Williams was the man on the margin, the incorrigible maverick, the embattled messiah.' (Unger 402) Throughout his career, Williams has always been known as an experimenter, an innovator, and a revolutionary figure in American poetry. He is regarded as an important and influential poet because of his unique and unusually plain style. Living a life that was rather conventional, using a writing style that was essentially breaking the mold, and having a style that most critics were unsure about, Williams established a new genre to the poetic world.

THE SIMPLE THINGS IN LIFE

William Carlos Williams; born on September seventeenth, 1883, in Rutherford, New Jersey; was the first of two sons born to the middle class status of George and Raquel (Helene) Williams. Having an English father and a Puerto Rican mother, with ancestry from the French, Dutch, Spanish, and Jewish sides, Williams had an interesting mix of culture from birth (Bloom 4338).

English: Passport photograph of American poet and ...

English: The poet Riposte of the American poet Wil...

Poetry

As he grew older in his middle class household, his father provided him with a fertile background in the arts and literature, introducing him to Shakespeare, Dante, and the Bible (DISC 1). To further elevate his level of knowledge, Williams attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded a Doctorate in Medicine, and later visited the University of Leipzig, for post-graduate study (Bloom 4338). Williams fulfilled his parents' lofty standards by becoming a general practitioner with his degree from Pennsylvania. Their standards, unfortunately, did not match up with those of Williams himself. He did not wish to become a doctor, but found himself becoming infatuated with poetry. He often found himself torn between what he wanted to do, and what his parents wished for him to do. He was caught, because his love was...