William Carlos Williams was a poet and physician born in 1883 in New Jersey. He studied medicine while befriending poets Ezra Pound and Hilda Doolittle. Williams graduated medical school in 1906 and had a busy primary care practice while publishing poetry and editing magazines. As a doctor, Williams saw how medicine allowed him insight into people's lives and influenced his poetry focused on directness and economy of language. He was part of the Imagist movement that rejected Romantic styles but later felt its brevity caused structural issues. Williams believed in creating truly American forms that were new and rejected religion, seeking the individual's contribution to humanity.

1. William Carlos Williams
Art and Healing

2. “Only medicine, a job I enjoyed, would make
it possible for me to live and write as I
wanted to”
-William Carlos Williams

3. Outline:
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Early life
The world around William Carlos Williams
Early Works and Imagism
The relationship between medicine and art
Conclusions

4. Beginnings
• Born in Rutherford, New Jersey in 1883
• Father was an Englishman from the West
Indies; Mother was of Spanish and French
heritage, also from West Indies
• Studied abroad before enrolling in Horace
Mann High School in NYC
• Attended Medical School of Pennsylvania,
during which time he befriended Hilda
Doolittle and Ezra Pound

6. An Everyday Life
• Graduated from medical school in 1906
• Interned in New York City
• Married Florence Herman (“Flossie”), and
had 2 sons, Paul and William
• Published his first book of poetry in 1909
• Worked in a very busy primary care
practice
• Edited several magazines and began to
write fiction and plays

7. The Political Climate
• Russian Revolution
• Transportation
Revolution
• World War I
• Prohibition
• Women’s Suffrage

8. The Artistic Climate
• Marked by man’s realization of his own
fragmentation and an almost complete
break from former styles
• Cubism: Picasso, DuChamp
• Ballet: Balanchine
• Music: Stravinsky

9. Georges Braque – “Woman With
Guitar”

10. Marcelle DuChamp – “Fresh
Window” (1920)

11. George Balanchine

12. Stravinsky
Works featured
adventurous
harmonies with a
focus on
dissonance

13. Imagism
• Rejected the effusive nature of Romantic
and Victorian poetry
• Focused on directness of idea and
economy of language
• Contemporary with and in harsh contrast
to Georgian poetry
• Contemporaries: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot

14. Basic Tenets of Imagism
• To use the language of common speech
• To create new rhythms – a new cadence means
a new idea
• To allow absolute freedom in the choice of
subject
• To present an image
• To produce poetry that is hard and clear, never
blurred or indefinite
• Concentration is the very essence of Poetry

15. The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens

16. Williams eventually broke with the imagist
movement because he felt that the brevity
of the imagist poem caused it to lose
“structural necessity”

17. Basic Premises of Williams’ Poetry
• “Modern man has no measure”
• Insisted on the value of newness,
inefficacy of old forms
• Sought a voice and style that was truly
American
• Rejected the necessity of religion or
contrived mythologies
• Believed in the contribution of the
individual to a continuum of humanity

18. “Medicine was the thing
that gained me
entrance to these
secret gardens of
self… I was permitted
by my medical badge
to follow the poor,
defeated body into
those gulfs and
grottos”