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William Carlos Williams
(1883-1963)

Active: 1909-1963 in USA, North America

By Virginia Kouidis (Auburn University)

Indexing Data:

  • Active In: USA, North America
  • Born In: USA, North America
  • Activity: Poet, Prose Writer, Novelist, Essayist, Literary Critic, Playwright, Story Writer, Autobiographer, Diarist, Letter Writer, Physician

Life, Works and Times

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William Carlos Williams defined his life and writing against the expatriation of other American modernists. He was especially bitter about the defections of his friends Ezra Pound and H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), as well as T. S. Eliot, whom he singled out as his literary antagonist. Williams admired Eliot’s talent but believed that the pessimism and virtuosity of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915) and The Waste Land (1922) subverted and redirected the revolution in American poetry begun by Walt Whitman. Eliot and Pound individually redefined literary tradition so that th

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First published 02 July 2004

Citation: Kouidis, Virginia. "William Carlos Williams". The Literary Encyclopedia. 2 July 2004.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4739, accessed 9 February 2010.]

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