GAJS.COM Web Catalogue William Carlos Williams

WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS. (1883-1963). American writer and poet, Pulitzer Prize Winner. Typed Letter Signed, “William Carlos Williams.” One full page, quarto. “9 Ridge Road, Rutherford, N.J.,” May 29, 1951. Very fine condition. To “Dear Uhlmann.” Williams writes:

“I feel so helpless to either praise or even say anything helpfully critical about your work: I do not know enough German to even understand it properly. I admire your wish to write verse, I admire the looseness of your line and I admire what you say generally of the poem as a focus where the alert minds of the nations can approach each other—but that is as far as I can go. It isn’t much. Certainly it is good to know that in Germany there is respect for freedom of approach to the problems that concern the artist. Without that the task is hopeless. And it is because those problems are serious and of the greatest importance, that our enemies seek to forbid us to consider them. It is a confession of fear that the artists of the nations will learn to respect and understand each other that the very forms of art are tyrannically restricted. That alone is enough to condemn those who want to force us into a rigid pattern. I have been ill for two months and am now just beginning to be able to write again. It was a cerebral hemorrhage which though only a slight one put me in the hospital for 3 weeks. That is the reason for the many mistakes of typing in this letter. Please excuse them. I am getting well fast enough and though my abilities as a typist have been dislocated it has not interfered with thinking. In fact I have just finished my autobiography which will be published in the fall. You must not think that I am a popular poet in my country. Even among the moderns I am not approved of by the greater part of the intellectual leaders. They, for the most part, still write in the accepted academic forms. I know them, they are even my intimate friends but they think I am crazy. They do not know as I know that the structure of the poem must be changed and not merely must it speak about new things. We have to have a new way of measuring which will include the whole world. More people listen to me than formerly, I have been given many honors in the last two years but the majority of university teachers dislike me heartily. Therefore, when I meet someone like you who has a desire to share of broad viewpoint touching the construction of the poem I want to encourage him (even though I cannot understand him completely). I am glad you wrote me, fundamentally we are brothers, as such and wishing you success in your writing, believe me, sincerely yours, William Carlos Williams.”

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883, and decided that he wanted to become both a writer and a doctor while still in high school. True to his word, he received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended another seminal Modernist poet Ezra Pound. Williams, who sustained his medical practice in New Jersey throughout his life, had already begun publishing in small magazines when he graduated, marking the start of a prolific career as not only a poet, but a novelist, essayist, and playwright as well. (Ironically, most of his blue collar patients remained unaware of his numerous works, and knew him only as a family physician who delivered over two thousand babies). Williams’ influence as a poet spread slowly during the 1920s and 1930s, but his work received increasing attention during the 1950s and 1960s as the younger generation of poets, including Allen Ginsberg, praised the accessibility of Williams’ language and his openness as a mentor. His talent, long noted by his fellow artists, was finally recognized publicly when he received the National Book Award in 1950 for Selected Poems and Paterson III. That same year he embarked on a reading tour along the west coast and began publishing with Random House, the first commercial publishing house besides the much smaller New Directions to handle his work. In addition to taking note of these honors, Williams also comments on the upcoming release of Paterson IV: Autobiography of William Carlos Williams, which, like much of his other work, drew upon his experiences as a doctor. Utilizing twentieth-century American themes and images, the purpose of Williams’ art “was not to point a moral or teach a lesson; rather, he wanted his readers to see through his eyes the beauty of the real. He was content to rest with the assumption that the reader could duplicate Williams' own sense of importance of red wheelbarrows and the green glass between hospital walls, and thereby dismiss the need for symbolism. As he said succinctly in Paterson, ‘no ideas but in things’”(ANB). Denouncing abstraction and symbolism, Williams stresses the importance of the physical, the “Flowers through the window / lavender and yellow / changed by white curtains” (“Nantucket”). Williams, who suffered the first of three increasingly debilitating strokes months before writing this letter, finally received the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1963, and is today one of the best known and most beloved poets of the twentieth century. His work, as he states in this letter, truly offered future generations “a new way of measuring which will include the whole world.” A remarkable, content rich letter written at the peak of William Carlos Williams’ prolific career as a writer.

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WILLIAMS, WILLIAM CARLOS. (1883-1963). American writer and poet, Pulitzer Prize Winner. Typed Letter Signed, “William Carlos Williams.” One full page, quarto. “9 Ridge Road, Rutherford, N.J.,” May 29, 1951. Very fine condition. To “Dear Uhlmann.” Williams writes: “I feel so helpless to either praise or even say anything helpfully critical about your work: I do not know enough German to even understand it properly. I admire your wish to write verse, I admire the looseness of your line and I admire what you say generally of the poem as a focus where the alert minds of the nations can approach each other—but that is as far as I can go. It isn’t much. Certainly it is good to know that in Germany there is respect for freedom of approach to the problems that concern the artist. Without that the task is hopeless. And it is because those problems are serious and of the greatest importance, that our enemies seek to forbid us to consider them. It is a confession of fear that the artists of the nations will learn to respect and understand each other that the very forms of art are tyrannically restricted. That alone is enough to condemn those who want to force us into a rigid pattern. I have been ill for two months and am now just beginning to be able to write again. It was a cerebral hemorrhage which though only a slight one put me in the hospital for 3 weeks. That is the reason for the many mistakes of typing in this letter. Please excuse them. I am getting well fast enough and though my abilities as a typist have been dislocated it has not interfered with thinking. In fact I have just finished my autobiography which will be published in the fall. You must not think that I am a popular poet in my country. Even among the moderns I am not approved of by the greater part of the intellectual leaders. They, for the most part, still write in the accepted academic forms. I know them, they are even my intimate friends but they think I am crazy. They do not know as I know that the structure of the poem must be changed and not merely must it speak about new things. We have to have a new way of measuring which will include the whole world. More people listen to me than formerly, I have been given many honors in the last two years but the majority of university teachers dislike me heartily. Therefore, when I meet someone like you who has a desire to share of broad viewpoint touching the construction of the poem I want to encourage him (even though I cannot understand him completely). I am glad you wrote me, fundamentally we are brothers, as such and wishing you success in your writing, believe me, sincerely yours, William Carlos Williams.” William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883, and decided that he wanted to become both a writer and a doctor while still in high school. True to his word, he received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended another seminal Modernist poet Ezra Pound. Williams, who sustained his medical practice in New Jersey throughout his life, had already begun publishing in small magazines when he graduated, marking the start of a prolific career as not only a poet, but a novelist, essayist, and playwright as well. (Ironically, most of his blue collar patients remained unaware of his numerous works, and knew him only as a family physician who delivered over two thousand babies). Williams’ influence as a poet spread slowly during the 1920s and 1930s, but his work received increasing attention during the 1950s and 1960s as the younger generation of poets, including Allen Ginsberg, praised the accessibility of Williams’ language and his openness as a mentor. His talent, long noted by his fellow artists, was finally recognized publicly when he received the National Book Award in 1950 for Selected Poems and Paterson III. That same year he embarked on a reading tour along the west coast and began publishing with Random House, the first commercial publishing house besides the much smaller New Directions to handle his work. In addition to taking note of these honors, Williams also comments on the upcoming release of Paterson IV: Autobiography of William Carlos Williams, which, like much of his other work, drew upon his experiences as a doctor. Utilizing twentieth-century American themes and images, the purpose of Williams’ art “was not to point a moral or teach a lesson; rather, he wanted his readers to see through his eyes the beauty of the real. He was content to rest with the assumption that the reader could duplicate Williams' own sense of importance of red wheelbarrows and the green glass between hospital walls, and thereby dismiss the need for symbolism. As he said succinctly in Paterson, ‘no ideas but in things’”(ANB). Denouncing abstraction and symbolism, Williams stresses the importance of the physical, the “Flowers through the window / lavender and yellow / changed by white curtains” (“Nantucket”). Williams, who suffered the first of three increasingly debilitating strokes months before writing this letter, finally received the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1963, and is today one of the best known and most beloved poets of the twentieth century. His work, as he states in this letter, truly offered future generations “a new way of measuring which will include the whole world.” A remarkable, content rich letter written at the peak of William Carlos Williams’ prolific career as a writer. 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