William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey on September 17, 1883 He studied at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and began practicing as a pediatrician in Rutherford, New Jersey before publishing his first literary work, 'Poems,' in 1909. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962, the year before his death. He died on March 4, 1963.
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First he said:
It is the woman in us
That makes us write--
Let us acknowledge it--
Men would be silent.
We are not men
Therefore we can speak
And be conscious
(of the two sides)
Unbent by the sensual
As befits accuracy.
I then said:
Dare you make this
Your propaganda?
And he answered:
Am I not I--here?
This is Just to Say
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
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
To Waken an Old Lady
Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze.
Gaining and failing
they are buffeted
by a dark wind --
But what?
On harsh weedstalks
the flock has rested,
the snow
is covered with broken
seedhusks
and the wind tempered
by a shrill
piping of plenty.
The Hunters in the Snow
The over-all picture is winter
icy mountains
in the background the return
from the hunt it is toward evening
from the left
sturdy hunters lead in
their pack the inn-sign
hanging from
a broken hinge is a stag a crucifix
between his antlers the cold
inn yard
is deserted but for a huge bonfire
that flares wind-driven it is tended by
women who cluster
about it to the right beyond
the hill is a pattern of skaters
Brueghel the painter
concerned with it all has chosen
a winter-struck bush for his
foreground to
complete the picture.