Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 811.52 WIL V. I | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | 811.52 WIL V. II | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
So that readers could more fully understand the extent of Williams' radical simplicity, all of his published poetry, excluding Paterson, was reissued in two definite volumes, of which this is the first.
Author Notes
Poet, artist, and practicing physician of Rutherford, New Jersey, William Carlos Williams wrote poetry that was experimental in form, ranging from imagism to objectivism, with great originality of idiom and human vitality. Credited with changing and directing American poetry toward a new metric and language, he also wrote a large number of short stories and novels. Paterson (1946--58), about the New Jersey city of that name, was his epic and places him with Ezra Pound of the Cantos as one of the great shapers of the long poem in this century.
National recognition did not come early, but eventually Williams received many honors, including a vice-presidency of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1952); the Bollingen Prize (1953); the $5,000 fellowship of the Academy of American Poets; the Loines Award for poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1948); and the Brandeis Award (1957). Book II of Paterson received the first National Book Award for poetry in 1949. Williams was named consultant in poetry in English to the Library of Congress for 1952--53.
Williams's continuously inventive style anchored not only objectivism, the school to which he most properly belongs, but also a long line of subsequent poets as various as Robert Lowell, Frank O'Hara, and Allen Ginsberg. With Stevens, he forms one of the most important sources of a specifically American tradition of modernism.
In addition to his earlier honors, Williams received two important awards posthumously, the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1963) and the Gold Medal for Poetry from the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1963).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
This is the first of two volumes that will present all the published poetry (except for the 1909 Poems, which Williams wished never to be reprinted, and the book-length Paterson, 1963) by the third member of the triumvirate of classic American modernist poets the others being Eliot and Pound. Last of the three to gain general critical and public approbation, Williams may be the most influential both in his plain-speaking style and because of his enthusiastic advocacy of younger talent. Unlike his own edition of Collected Early Poems (1951), which observed the same cutoff date of 1939, Litz and MacGowan's gathering places the poems in strict chronology, usually by date of publication, the lone exception being a sequence written in 1930 but not entirely published until 1938. Libraries that have no reasonably complete Williams ought to get this book and its sibling, especially if such fine selections as Charles Tomlinson's Selected Poems (Booklist 81:1625 Ag 85) have whetted reader appetites for more. A note on the text, annotations, tables of contents for three earlier collections of the early poems, and title index are appended. RO. 811'.54 [OCLC] 86-5448
Choice Review
The first fully collected (including 100 poems not previously collected) and chronological arrangement of William Carlos Williams's poetry to 1939 (``the turning point of his poetic life''). It undoes the confusion of Williams's 1951 volume (The Collected Earlier Poems), which was arranged thematically. This and the planned second volume will for the first time firmly establish an accurate record of Williams's poetic development. Litz and MacGowan, two leading modernist scholars, give 76 pages of annotations, notes on textual variations, early versions (if the versions are separated by many years), and full bibliographical information on the poems. Essential for any student of Williams's poetry and a landmark in Williams scholarship, it is recommended for academic (community college through graduate) and public libraries.-N.R. Fitch, Point Loma Nazarene College
Library Journal Review
Except for Paterson and Poems (1909), a volume that Williams himself rejected, this first volume of a projected two-volume set contains all the published poems written from 1909 to 1939, a year that Williams saw as a turning point leading to greater experimentation. Nearly 100 poems not found in Collected Earlier Poems or Collected Later Poems are included. Poems appear in chronological orderWilliams himself grouped poems thematically in the earlier collectionsand extensive annotations include early versions of poems modified later, significant textual variants, and background information. Highly recommended to scholars, this carefully edited volume will also be useful to the general reader. Walter Waring, Emeritus Prof., English Dept., Kalamazoo Coll., Mich. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
