William Carlos Williams, né le 17 septembre 1883 et mort le 4 mars 1963, est un poète et romancier américain, grand représentant du modernisme et de l'imagisme. Il était aussi pédiatre et médecin généraliste, des métiers qui ont probablement influencé le choix des sujets de sa poésie. Sa biographe Linda Wagner-Martin note d’ailleurs qu’« il travailla aussi durement à devenir écrivain qu’il le faisait dans son métier de médecin ».
“Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold”
"This Is Just to Say"
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)
Contexte: I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack”
William Carlos Williams livre Journey to Love
'of what is found there.'
Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
Source: Asphodel, That Greeny Flower and Other Love Poems: That Greeny Flower
“It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits”
William Carlos Williams livre Spring and All
Source: Spring and All
“so much depends
upon a red wheel
barrow glazed with rain
water beside the white
chickens”
William Carlos Williams livre Spring and All
"The Red Wheelbarrow"
Source: Spring and All (1923)
“But the sea
which no one tends
is also a garden”
William Carlos Williams livre Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
Source: Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems
Source: The Collected Poems, Vol. 2: 1939-1962
William Carlos Williams livre Journey to Love
Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
William Carlos Williams livre The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams (1951) [W. W. Norton & Co., 1967, ISBN 978-0811202268]
General sources
“Among
of
green stiff
old
bright broken
branch
come white
sweet
May again”
William Carlos Williams livre An Early Martyr and Other Poems
"The Locust Tree in Flower"
An Early Martyr and Other Poems (1935)
“So different, this man
And this woman:
A stream flowing
In a field.”
Poetry Chicago, 1916)
Marriage (1916)
Detail & Prosody for the Poem Patterson given to James Laughlin (1939), now at Houghton Library
General sources
William Carlos Williams livre Sour Grapes
"The Great Figure"
Sour Grapes (1921)
"Impromptu: The Suckers"
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)
