Williams, William Carlos

Date of Birth: Sept 17, 1883 Place of Birth: Rutherford, New Jersey Date of Death: March 4, 1963 Like Chekhov, William Carlos Williams was a country doctor before he became a writer. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and began practicing as a pediatrician in Rutherford, New Jersey (near the present-day Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford) before publishing his first literary work, 'Poems,' in 1909. He wrote stories, plays and autobiographies as well as poems. His most memorable achievement is probably his five books of poetry about the humble and downtrodden Northern New Jersey city of Paterson, which few people would have seen as a fit subject for an epic poem. "No ideas but in things," he writes in the first page, and to hammer the point home he studs this unpretentious but dramatic work with ancient newspaper articles, anecdotes and letters from friends and admirers. One of the letter-writers was A.G., an enthusiastic young poet admirer from Paterson. This was the then-unknown Allen Ginsberg. Williams wrote the introduction for Ginsberg's "Howl and Other Poems" in the mid-fifties. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1963, the year of his death.