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 ».
“There's a lot of bastards out there!”
Remark (c. 1957), as quoted in the introduction to the poem "Death News" by Allen Ginsberg: Visit to W.C.W. circa 1957, poets Kerouac Corso Orlovsky on sofa in living room inquired wise words, stricken Williams pointed thru window curtained on Main Street: "There's a lot of bastards out there!"
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"Impromptu: The Suckers"
Collected Poems 1921-1931 (1934)
On his work, in an interview in The New York Herald Tribune (18 January 1932)
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“The earth cracks and
is shriveled up;
the wind moans piteously;
the sky goes out
if you should fail.”
"Chicory and Daisies"
Al Que Quiere! (1917)
Annotation on "Chicory and Daisies" (1915) on John C. Thirlwell's copy of The Collected Earlier Poems (c. 1958)
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“Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?”
"Danse Russe"
Al Que Quiere! (1917)
From A Note on Poetry (circa 1936) quoted in Modern American Poetry (1950) by Louis Untermeyer
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"To Awaken an Old Lady", originally publised in The Dial (August 1920)
Sour Grapes (1921)
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems”
Journey to Love (1955), Asphodel, That Greeny Flower
To Harriet Monroe (14 October 1913), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 26
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Letter to his mother, written from the University of Pennsylvania (12 February 1904), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 5
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“the set pieces
of your faces stir me —
leading citizens —
but not
in the same way.”
"Apology"
Al Que Quiere! (1917)
“The pure products of America
go crazy”
"To Elsie"
Spring and All (1923)
As quoted in Free Verse. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 2nd ed (1975)
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Letter to James Laughlin (14 January 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219
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