William Carlos Williams' poems are like pictures, full of visual images that youngsters will quickly grasp and enjoy. Thirty-two of his finest verses, accompanied by gorgeous paintings that capture Williams' evocative references to nature and everyday life, grace this new title in the much-celebrated Poetry for Young People series. Renowned scholar and professor Christopher MacGowan, who has edited several volumes of Williams' work, provides a fascinating biography of this poet-doctor as well as invaluable annotations that explain unfamiliar vocabulary. Exquisite paintings, by the distinguished artist Robert Crockett, make every page a treat to look at and truly illuminate the poems. Among the poems included here are "Dawn," with its lovely evocation of bird song and flight; "Primrose," a celebration of summer's joys; "10/30," a witty verse that imitates the sounds of freight trains passing by the station near his home; and an excerpt from his famed book-length poem, "Paterson." Professor Christopher MacGowan is co-editor of Volume I of The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, and editor of Volume II and other books of Williams' poetry. He is also the author of articles on Sherwood Anderson, Denise Levertov, and Vladimir Nabokov. Professor MacGowan is the Chair of the English department at The College of William and Mary. Robert Crockett has illustrated numerous books, magazine articles, and advertising pieces. Among his many awards are 11 gold and silver medals from the San Francisco Society of Illustrators (of which he was past president). His paintings regularly show in the New York Society of Illustrators Annual Exhibit.
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.
