Other Writers: Richard Brautigan Charles Bukowski William S. Burroughs Neal Cassady Gregory Corso Robert Creeley Diane di Prima Robert Duncan William Everson Lawrence Ferlinghetti Allen Ginsberg John Clellon Holmes LeRoi Jones Bob Kaufman Jack Kerouac Ken Kesey Philip Lamantia Denise Levertov Michael McClure Frank O'Hara Peter Orlovsky Kenneth Patchen Kenneth Rexroth Gary Snyder Lew Welch Anne Waldman Philip Whalen     PHOTO GALLERY William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, in 1883. He began writing poetry while a student at Horace Mann High School, at which time he made the decision to become both a writer and a doctor. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound. Pound became a great influence in Williams' writing, and in 1913 arranged for the London publication of Williams's first collection, The Tempers. Returning to Rutherford, where he sustained his medical practice throughout his life, Williams began publishing in small magazines and embarked on a prolific career as a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Following Pound, he was one of the principal poets of the Imagist movement, though as time went on, he began to increasingly disagree with the values put forth in the work of Pound and especially Eliot, who he felt were too attached to European culture and traditions. Continuing to experiment with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh--and singularly American--poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. His influence as a poet spread slowly during the twenties and thirties, overshadowed, he felt, by the immense popularity of Eliot's "The Waste Land"; however, his work received increasing attention in the 1950s and 1960s as younger poets, including Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, were impressed by the accessibility of his language and his openness as a mentor. Williams's health began to decline after a heart attack in 1948 and a series of strokes, but he continued writing up until his death in New Jersey in 1963. His major works include Kora in Hell (1920), Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), the five-volume epic Paterson (1963, 1992), and Imaginations (1970).   Portrait of a Lady   ( Top of Page ) Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Which sky? The sky where Watteau hung a lady's slipper. Your knees are a southern breeze -- or a gust of snow. Agh! what sort of man was Fragonard? -- As if that answered anything. -- Ah, yes. Below the knees, since the tune drops that way, it is one of those white summer days, the tall grass of your ankles flickers upon the shore -- Which shore? -- the sand clings to my lips -- Which shore? Agh, petals maybe. How should I know? Which shore? Which shore? -- the petals from some hidden appletree -- Which shore? I said petals from an appletree. To Waken an Old Lady   ( Top of Page ) 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 seed husks and the wind tempered with a shrill piping of plenty. The Desolate Field   ( Top of Page ) Vast and grey, the sky is a simulacrum to all but him whose days are vast and grey and -- In the tall, dried grasses a goat stirs with nozzle searching the ground. My head is in the air but who am I . . . ? -- and my heart stops amazed at the thought of love vast and grey yearning silently over me. Willow Poem   ( Top of Page ) It is a willow when summer is over, a willow by the river from which no leaf has fallen nor bitten by the sun turned orange or crimson. The leaves cling and grow paler, swing and grow paler over the swirling waters of the river as if loth to let go, they are so cool, so drunk with the swirl of the wind and of the river -- oblivious to winter, the last to let go and fall into the water and on the ground. Blizzard   ( Top of Page ) Snow falls: years of anger following hours that float idly down -- the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! a clutter of yellow and blue flakes -- Hairy looking trees stand out in long alleys over a wild solitude. The man turns and there -- his solitary track stretched out upon the world. Spring Storm   ( Top of Page ) The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water is seething from a thousand runnels. It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered grass stems of the overhanging embankment.