The Embodiment of Knowledge

by William Carlos Williams

The miscellany of essays, notes, fragments, and jottings to which William Carlos Williams gave the title  The Embodiment of Knowledge  was found in manuscript after his death in the archive of his papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Written in 1928-30, and dedicated to his sons, it was intended as a concrete demonstration of the organic nature of education, to show that knowledge is an ongoing process by which we create our selves from day to day. And to underscore the fact that so many of his own books were extended works of self-exploration, Dr. Williams wrote on the cover of his “to be printed as it is, faults and all.”

Genres: Essays

228 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1974

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

[Kristen · Rating 5 out of 5]

You should have some familiarity with Williams' poetics going into this book to get the most out of it. But don't necessarily expect it to align with his poetics stylistically - you might be disappointed. It is a bit hard to unpack the way he writes philosophy. I personally read it in conjunction with Husserl and Merleau-Ponty which is perhaps why I loved it so much.

[Eugene · Rating 3 out of 5]

this one i remember as him being kinda crazy.