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William Carlos William’s writing portrays characters that overcome hardships,  he supported the American Dream and expressed it through his ability to write about how the rich and poor classes images and views differed.

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William Carlos Williams was known for writing poems about American speech and his thoughts on the culture. “William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), American writer and pediatrician, developed in his poetry a lucid, vital style that reproduced the characteristic rhythms of American speech”. This quote shows that Williams was very invested in both being a pediatrician and doing poetry. Being a pediatrician allowed him to learn about different people and how their lives have affected where they are in life today.

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Hide and Seek With William Carlos Williams

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Hide and Seek With William Carlos Williams

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Poetry wasn’t  known/accepted yet but, Williams was able to take his gift of writing and turn into into a successful career. “understood that in America the environment for poetry was hostile or indifferent”. I chose this quote because it states that he knew poetry was what he was best at and even though there were gonna be challenges he still stuck with it.

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Murmured William Carlos Williams furtively yet firmly in his Autobiography (195) "The poem is a capsule where we wrap up our punishable secrets" Although he wrote his own life, Williams also kept his secrets.

"He was enamored of secrets," says Herb Leibowitz, who as Williams' biographer ought to know "Not wishing to be pinned down to any final position, he wiggled off the hook. Or, to switch metaphors, he played hide-and-seek with his readers.... It's part of the pleasure of biography that you think you can figure out somebody who is enigmatic even to himself."

Leibowitz is the Mel and Lois Tukman Fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers of the New York Public Library, After 12 years of seeking for Williams, the biographer is willing to share a few of his glimpses.

He allows of the poet, who was also a full-time doctor, "His was not a self-examined life. For one thing, he didn't have the time for pursuing self-knowledge. If he had to choose between self-analysis and writing a poem, he'd write a poem-fortunately for us." And though Williams was "a very genial figure," this can pose a biographical challenge. "I don't think he thought of himself as a saint. But sometimes people take such a positive view of him that you feel you are a spoilsport," the biographer complains. "He has more rage and conflict and ambition than many have been willing to concede." Insists Lebowitz, "This is not going to be a work of hagiography." About Williams' bestknown poem he remarks, "I'd have no objection if The Red Wheelbarrow was placed in a museum of farm implements."

Hagiography or not, it is to be the first full-length biography by this biographer, and the first of Williams since Paul Mariani's in 1981. Leibowitz, editor for three decades of Parnassus, a leading journal of poetry criticism, is also the author of Fabricating Lives: Explorations in Autobiography (Knopf, 1989), "a book which somebody described as eight biographies of autobiographers," including Benjamin Franklin, Gertrude Stein, and-William Carlos Williams.

Why return to Williams as a fascination? "A lot of the issues that tormented him as a young man also tortured me. One of them was the question of intimacy Sometimes his Puritan conscience held sway, sometimes his pagan impulses won out I knew that conflict in my psyche and on my pulses." Though Williams was long married, Leibowitz regards the poet as a resident of "a sort of sexual jail that he, every once in a while, felt he had to escape from. He was not a Don Giovanni type; he was a philanderer with guilt. He did not want to break up the marriage."

A dalliance distracting Williams in 1919 was chronicled by biographer Mariani: "He'd heard strange things about this woman, stories of how she dressed in purple-andyellow clothes with a coal scuttle on her head or a tam-o'-shanter complete with feathers and ice-cream spoons, or black vest and kilts, with brass tea balls suspended from her nipples." The same legendary Baroness Elsa yon Freytag-Loringhoven also occupies chapter 28 of Williams' Autobiography, where he describes her as "a woman who had been perhaps beautiful" and who "advised me that what I needed to make me great was to contract syphilis from her and so free my mind for serious art" Eventually, or so Williams wrote, he literally had to fight her off after she "hit me." He admitted, "I was really crazy about the woman."

The extent of his erotic wandering is open to speculation. "But when it came to his marriage with poetry, Williams was faithful," Leibowitz maintains. "He could not remain faithful to a particular style, so he had promiscuous liaisons with Objectivism or other temptresses. He hated what he called the'malignant rigidities,' so in his poetry, as in his life, he kept the exit door ajar" As the biographer sees it, "He relished going against the grain He understood that in America the environment for poetry was hostile or indifferent, but he never lost his belief that our cultural soil was arable, that he could plant and harvest a new kind of poetry."

Adds Leibowitz, "Some biographers start off adoring their subject, and end up hating him. I haven't experienced a moment of disenchantment with Williams. I wish I had had the chance to meet him and interview him But I don't know how much he would have liked me!"

Molly McQuade, a regular Booklist contributor, is the author of By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry (Graywolf, 2000).

Source: McQuade, Molly. "Hide and Seek With William Carlos Williams." in Booklist, vol. 100, no. 19-20, June 1, 2004 p. 1693(1).

McQuade, Molly. "Hide and Seek With William Carlos Williams." in Booklist, vol. 100, no. 19-20, June 1, 2004,p. 1693(1). Student Resource Center. Thomson Gale, 2007.

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Hide and Seek With William Carlos Williams

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Murmured William Carlos Williams furtively yet firmly in his Autobiography (195) "The poem is a capsule where we wrap up our punishable secrets" Although he wrote his own life, Williams also kept his secrets. "He was enamored of secrets," says Herb Leibowitz, who as Williams' biographer ought to know "Not wishing to be pinned down to any final position, he wiggled off the hook.

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Williams was an inspiration all across America due to his meaningful poems. “this series of poems was inspired by William Carlos Williams's famous poem of the same title regarding a theft of plums” This quote basically shows that Williams was someone who had a talent in poetry and used it to help and inspire people.

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About Gale OneFile: High School Edition Search magazines, journals, newspapers, and reference on a range of topics. Best for middle- and high-school students. Don't know how to login? Depending on this location's preferences, the log-in process could include your library card number, a student or user ID, or another provided password.