William Carlos Williams è uno dei grandi classici della poesia statunitense del Novecento, da molti considerato il più americano tra i poeti americani. Di professione medico ostetrico, formatosi artisticamente a inizio secolo nel fecondo clima delle avanguardie newyorchesi, Williams si avvicinò alle esperienze moderniste che andavano sviluppandosi su entrambe le sponde dell’Atlantico, in cerca di una specificità culturale che fosse tutta statunitense. Per la sua importanza nel panorama letterario della poesia americana fu Poet Laureate nel 1950 e vinse, tra gli altri, il primo National Book Award for Poetry nel 1950 e il premio Pulitzer nel 1963.
Author
William 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.
