The Poetry of William Carlos Williams

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

William Carlos Williams was an unconventional twentieth-century American poet.

Although he wrote poetry and prose, he was a practicing family doctor in Rutherford, New Jersey, for forty years.

As a member of the middle class, Williams wrote about suburban life and captured the language of the patients with whom he interacted. Although Williams's parents had wanted Williams to pursue a stable career in medicine, Williams was drawn to the creative energy of poetry as a teenager.

He was frustrated over the lack of recognition his poetry received throughout much of his life; however, he worked with influential poets in the early twentieth century, such as H.D. and Ezra Pound. He became a mentor to mid-twentieth-century poets, including Allen Ginsburg, until his death on March 4, 1963.

As you read this biography on William Carlos Williams, answer the following questions on a separate sheet of paper.

• How did Williams's parents influence Williams when he was a child?
• With what influential poet did Williams strike up a friendship?
• With what literary movement did Williams become affiliated, and what was the purpose of this movement?
• What subject often inspired the topics in Williams's poems?
• Why did Williams want the language of his poems to mirror modern American speech?
• Why did Williams take a ten-year hiatus from publishing poetry?
• What was the purpose of Williams's use of the variable foot in his poetry?
• Why did the mood of Williams's poetry change in the 1940s until he died in 1963?

When you have finished answering the questions, check them against the ones provided below.

• What are the benefits and drawbacks of having another career for a writer?

Move on to the Got It? section to read several of Williams's poems.