The Poet from Patterson

William Carlos Williams

1883-1963

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams

lived most of his life in New Jersey.

His father was English. His mother was Puerto

Rican. He studied medicine at

the University of Pennsylvania.

He became a family doctor.

Williams’ Kind of Poetry Williams was an

imagist. Imagists thought

a poem should make an exact visual image with simple, clear words.

Williams’ Kind of Poetry Imagists want to find

the precise word. Imagists’ poems

don’t rhyme. Imagists want

absolute freedom in choosing subjects for their poems.

This is Just to Say I have eaten

the plumsthat were inthe icebox

and which you were probablysavingfor breakfast

Forgive methey were deliciousso sweetand so cold

How does Williams break lines?

Poets have three ways to break poetic lines:

1. By phrase

2. By image

3. By punctuation

How does Blake break the lines?

Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.

By William Blake 1757-1827

How does Emerson break lines?

Beyond Winter

Over the winter glaciers

I see the summer glow,

And through the wild-piled snowdrift

The warm rosebuds below.

by Ralph Waldo Emerson

1803-1882

Breaking poetic lines A Wolf

A wolf I considered myself but the owls are hooting and the night I fear

Osage Indian

The Locust Tree in Flower Among

of green

stiffoldbright

brokenbranchcome

whitesweet May

again

Between Walls the back wings

of the

hospital where nothing

will grow lie cinders

in which shine the broken

pieces of a green bottle

PerfectionO lovely apple!

Beautifully and completely

rotten,

Hardly a contour marred—

Perhaps a little

shrivelled at the top but that

aside perfect

In every detail! O lovely

Apple! what a

deep and suffusing brown

mantles that

unspoiled surface! No one

has moved you

since I placed you on the porch

rail a month ago

To ripen

No one. No one!

The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon

a red wheel barrow

glazed with rain water

beside the white chickens