An episode from 12/15/22: Tonight, I read eleven essential poems from the American poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963). In the same generation as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Williams is perhaps best known for never becoming an expatriate, and instead living most of his life as a family doctor in Rutherford, New Jersey.
His poems can be found in The Collected Poems Volume I: 1909-1939, The Collected Poems Volume II: 1939-1962, and Paterson. The biographies I read from are Paul Mariani’s William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked, and the essay on Williams’ life at The Poetry Foundation.
The poems I read are:
- Pastoral (1917)
- Danse Russe (1917)
- Waiting (1921)
- The Great Figure (1921)
- The Red Wheelbarrow (1923)
- Flowers by the Sea (first version) (1931)
- War, the Destroyer! (1942)
- Approach to a City (1946)
- To a Dog Injured in the Street (1954)
- Deep Religious Faith (1954)
- from Asphodel, That Greeny Flower (1955)
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Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.
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