Yes, Mrs. Williams: Poet's Portrait of his Mother

by William Carlos Williams

Originally published in 1959,  Yes, Mrs. Williams  has long been unavailable. In recalling one of the “determined women” in his life. William Carlos Williams, the quintessentially American poet of this century, does not write about his mother so much as recreate her. An experimentalist in prose as well as poetry, Williams records the “talk” of Raquel Hélene Rose Hoheb Williams, capturing the contradictions of this Spanish-speaking, Puerto Rican-born, Parisian-trained artist turned New Jersey wile and mother, her strength and cantankerousness, her vitality and sense of failed purpose. For this first New Directions paperbook edition, Dr. William Eric Williams, son and grandson, has written an illuminating foreword that includes newly discovered Williams family letters.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Nonfiction

158 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.

Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.

In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.

Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.

Reviews

[Eugene · Rating 5 out of 5]

not including the stetcher trilogy, his (early) prose is beautiful and strange, much of it "automatic writing". (new directions has most of it collected in an outstanding volume called IMAGINATIONS)... Yes Mrs. Williams is in that same family of his experimental texts... the poet's mom was a aspiring painter, with ambitions thwarted, and that drama--herr dokt what do you tink?--comes up frequently in his autobiographical mentions.

[Yesenia · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read, a few months ago, a fictional account of the life of Raquel Hoheb (etc.--she had more than one first name and a rather complicated surname--i mean, all Puerto Ricans and most Hispanics in general have two surnames, our father's and our mother's, but hers were complex because to me because they were french and dutch or something that my mind does not retain). it made me very interested in the woman, in knowing more about her, because the novel i had read had evidently been based on SOMEthing, some evidence, some letters, perhaps published...? (i wasn't about to travel to new jersey to some archive just because this woman made me curious) and in my googling (well, i use duckduckgo, to tell the truth), i found that this book existed.

do not be misled by a four-star rating to thinking that i recommend this book to just any reader. one almost must have started the journey of reading it by, first, reading some William Carlos Williams poetry, at least three poems (The Two we all know and love and can recite by heart, and another, perhaps a longer one, just because). and one must then become aware of the greatness of this poet. if one can read about his life, that would be a plus (i did not, because while i was embarking on this Journey To Read Yes Mrs. Williams, i did not know that i was on it). the necessary thing, however, is to read La muerte feliz de William Carlos Williams--which is not a great book, by far, but it is a necessary prelude and the lives it approaches are fascinating in and of themselves (if one can forgive the author for her desire to introduce sordidness when it might or might not have been there). well, perhaps it is not necessary, but it definitely makes for a different experience, i am sure, to have read that before reading Yes, Mrs. Williams. i wonder now if the order should not have been reversed... no, surely not. i had great sympathy for Raquel Hoheb because of Alsina's novel, and would have only seen... what would i have seen, had i read this book first? i cannot say...

as it is, the absolutely essential key to enjoying Yes, Mrs. Williams, is to know Spanish well, particularly the Spanish spoken in the Caribbean. without that, Raquel Williams (as she was known to her children and to all in the country that adopted her when she had become the wife of William George Williams--in Puerto Rico, a woman does not lose her own surname when she marries, she does not become like the man's sister!) might be incomprehensible. in fact, it would be helpful to know Puerto Rico, to have been in Mayaguez, to understand the history of the island if not to be Puerto Rican or have lived in Puerto Rico.

in the end, this is a very, very strange book, which can truly only be enjoyed by bilingual puerto ricans or individuals who lived in puerto rico during a certain time (anytime up to, say, the 1980s), or by folks like william carlos williams, who was raised by a puerto rican mother, and who are fascinated by words and language and constantly translate them back and forth in their minds... this book is for, what, 300 people on the planet? perhaps 500?

if Williams set out to capture a flesh-and-blood woman's speech, and through it, something of her person, the book is a success. i can see her, i can hear her, she is real. despite the many mistakes Williams made in transcribing the Spanish phrases that her mother said (and some funky translations, such as "ponerse las botas" as "getting on" or something... no! that's not right! ponerse las botas--donning the boots--is more like, um... reaping the benefits of something ill-begotten or not entirely deserved, or splurging, also... in a banquet, he ate and drank a lot could be said as, "se puso las botas comiendo y bebiendo" (he sure donned the boots eating and drinking!)...), one comes to know this woman as a real woman. she is a Puerto Rican woman who was raised in the island but then sent to France, and even that comes through, not only in her French (which is often not continental French at all, which makes it possible for a non-French speaker like me to figure it out, because it is Hispanicized) but in her love of France, which is something that high-born Puerto Ricans in the late 19th and early 20th century cultivated and spoke of (and one has great-grandparents and greandparents who spoke thus), perhaps not France in particular, but any European country, and usually Spain)--this again makes the book's audience even smaller, for high-born Puerto Ricans who went to Europe for a year or two or three, to study, are a tiny minority). a Puerto Rican woman who learned English later in life, and never dropped the Spanish structure of her mind when speaking English. an older woman who spoke of this or that and the other, and many anecdotes make sense, again, if you know Mayaguez, if you know Puerto Rican history or of the island's past in the late 19th century, when it was open to the world (before the US invaded and took it over in 1898)...

And there she is, and there is her speech, her language, her words, and William Carlos Williams understood that there was something particular about it and he did not want that something to die when she died, and he wrote it all down. And he wrote it for me.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

A charming little book, constructed of mostly disconnected anecdotes. Many are priceless and direct, i.e. "Lo que no mata engorde (what does not kill, fattens)" others are less so. All in all, a pleasant read.

[GK Stritch · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Puerto Rico belonged to the Spanish . . . young officers from Andalusia and Castilla . . . would take their capes and throw them before the feet of the girls they admired. Dichosa es la madre que te pario! They would say. Happy is the mother who bore you! And they would throw flowers . . . Echando flores! Such flowers! Such flowers! (p. 23)

Any wonder WCW became the poet that he is? His mother, a spoiled child raised among the tropical flowers on the family's hacienda, tough and vain, retained interesting ways and stories to tell.

Sparkles and salt and island breezes are captured in the private words documented by the son of his elderly mother . . . about Pavlova she said, "I always feel sorry when someone who is doing so nicely here in the world has to die." (p.75) About herself, "Why am I alive? No one can realize what I have desired. I succeeded in nothing . . . I am nothing." He concludes, "This is the defeated romantic. It is not by any means a true picture . . . Under it lies the true life, undefeated if embittered, hard as nails . . ." (p. 33).

At least five stars for the cover alone.

[Louis Cabri]

The premise of this book is a facade but also a reality of multilingualism, American and British English, West Indies French and Spanish and some patois and creoles, and early modern Spanish. Williams wanted to preserve in writing the way his mother spoke, the anecdotes she told. He had to devise a ruse to get beyond her refusal to "sit" for his writing, though. He came up with co-translating the 17C novella The Dog and the Fever, since her Spanish was better than his. Thus he had a pretext for carrying around pen and paper wherever she went in the house, he could write down her asides, anecdotes, stories, memories.

We were talking about some fish that the boys had caught - at Oyster Bay. She said: La ray fa(r)cil l'a mit là. What you call it that you put on a tombstone? Epitaph, that's it! All in notes. Ray is a kind of fish, you know. La re fa si la mi la! (a stew made of the ray put him there under ground) (91)

Yes, there was some famous actor, a comedian, who was feeling sick and he went to a doctor who told him: There's nothing the matter with you. What you need is to forget yourself. Go out, go to the theater, see so and so. He will make you laugh. But doctor, replied the patient, I am that man. (77)