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The Autobiography of William Carlos Williams
The Autobiography is an unpretentious book; it reads much as Williams talked―spontaneously and often with a special kind of salty humor. But it is a very human story, glowing with warmth and sensitivity. It brings us close to a rare man and lets us share his affectionate concern for the people to whom he ministered, body and soul, through a long rich life as physician and writer. William Carlos Williams’s medical practice and his literary career formed an undivided life. For forty years he was a busy doctor in the town of Rutherford, New Jersey, and yet he was able to write more than thirty books. One of the finest chapters in the Autobiography tells how each of his two roles stimulated and supported the other.
414 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1951
About the author
William Carlos Williams
433 books846 followersWilliam 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
April 21, 2021
This is the most postmodernistic collection of Micro-Imagery I know.
And aside from some previous surrealist micro-imagery, like the inimitable poetical imagery of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, it is perhaps the earliest.
It was published in 1951, and Williams' micro-images can become seared upon your brain. It leaves you breathless.
Like flash fiction.
I was rereading S.E. Bourne's little book of flash fiction stories, Every Awful Thing (see my review) just this afternoon, and the section about tripping out on LSD hit me in That way.
In Williams' autobiography, and there, the reader is NO LONGER IN CONTROL. Loose ends stick out all over. There is no plot to speak of that is nicely folded over into an agreeable feeling of your - the reader's - logic.
No control means: it's like a totally unpredictable day at work. Is anyone in charge here? Well, look and see - life's just randomly unravelling!
Now, you may not get that feeling with this book at all. But you will get the feeling in the back of your mind that there's no progression.
So Williams was a prankster as a kid.
So Williams wrote unforgettable imagery in his poetry.
So he was a forthright New Jersey doctor (in family medicine).
So what?
So that's the way the cookie crumbles, kid.
Sometimes you want a bio and you get poetry!
But, hey, are you soaking up the stark new aliveness of each image? Are you sometimes shocked to your boots? Do you quake at his audacity?
It's working, then.
Williams remains a poet.
He didn't want to write his own bio anyway.
He wanted to BOMBARD you with word pictures from his life.
And the cookies are never afraid to crumble in it.
It's REAL!
And aside from some previous surrealist micro-imagery, like the inimitable poetical imagery of Joyce's Finnegans Wake, it is perhaps the earliest.
It was published in 1951, and Williams' micro-images can become seared upon your brain. It leaves you breathless.
Like flash fiction.
I was rereading S.E. Bourne's little book of flash fiction stories, Every Awful Thing (see my review) just this afternoon, and the section about tripping out on LSD hit me in That way.
In Williams' autobiography, and there, the reader is NO LONGER IN CONTROL. Loose ends stick out all over. There is no plot to speak of that is nicely folded over into an agreeable feeling of your - the reader's - logic.
No control means: it's like a totally unpredictable day at work. Is anyone in charge here? Well, look and see - life's just randomly unravelling!
Now, you may not get that feeling with this book at all. But you will get the feeling in the back of your mind that there's no progression.
So Williams was a prankster as a kid.
So Williams wrote unforgettable imagery in his poetry.
So he was a forthright New Jersey doctor (in family medicine).
So what?
So that's the way the cookie crumbles, kid.
Sometimes you want a bio and you get poetry!
But, hey, are you soaking up the stark new aliveness of each image? Are you sometimes shocked to your boots? Do you quake at his audacity?
It's working, then.
Williams remains a poet.
He didn't want to write his own bio anyway.
He wanted to BOMBARD you with word pictures from his life.
And the cookies are never afraid to crumble in it.
It's REAL!
August 21, 2021
I certainly enjoyed reading it, though the project appears vague, fawning at the alter of Stein and forsaking much of the contemptible notions thematic unity and coherent transitions. The Parisian anecdotes were a cold water Movable Feast. That said, his encounters with Joyce and Hemingway were remarkable especially in the banality of the exchanges. The flaws of WCW are likely what keeps me returning, the parallels with my own mumbling are heartening. He disclosures an anger which I must admit I find foreign. I suppose I’m lucky that way. Williams is at his best finding the marvel while remaining humble.
I can’t recommend this to most folks except to mine for anecdotes, especially as part of the vast array of testimony by visitors to Ezra Pound during his internment and subsequent exile.
I can’t recommend this to most folks except to mine for anecdotes, especially as part of the vast array of testimony by visitors to Ezra Pound during his internment and subsequent exile.
September 9, 2014
If the first thing you want to know is where he was born and what his lousy childhood was like and how WCW's parents were occupied before they had him and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, then this is the book for you. It starts there, meanders through his adolescence, and dwells for the rest of the time in adulthood. It's an autobiography, after all. There is no end in an autobiography... if you know what I mean.
But here's the man behind the poems, college friend of Ezra Pound and H.D., who chose his profession (M.D.) not because its exactly what he wanted to do, but because it could support his writing. He chose his home (Suburban New Jersey) because it was more to his temperament than NYC.
He never mentions the Red Wheelbarrow. Not once in the entire book. The poem Patterson gets a chapter. One of the asynchronous ones at the end of the book, when his formerly linear autobiography suddenly becomes patchwork.
If you want to find undisclosed meaning in his poems by reading this book, I think you will. There is no undisclosed meaning. The poems are very simple. WCW hoped to strip poetry away from the academy, which is why he writes an angry chapter about T.S. Eliot, who --in WCW's opinion-- gave it back to the academy at the very moment it could have broken free.
Perhaps this is why Ginsberg wrote to WCW. And why WCW put those letters in his poem. You can see that man here, if you linger in these pages. Here's the New Jersey born Unitarian. Here's an American poet.
But here's the man behind the poems, college friend of Ezra Pound and H.D., who chose his profession (M.D.) not because its exactly what he wanted to do, but because it could support his writing. He chose his home (Suburban New Jersey) because it was more to his temperament than NYC.
He never mentions the Red Wheelbarrow. Not once in the entire book. The poem Patterson gets a chapter. One of the asynchronous ones at the end of the book, when his formerly linear autobiography suddenly becomes patchwork.
If you want to find undisclosed meaning in his poems by reading this book, I think you will. There is no undisclosed meaning. The poems are very simple. WCW hoped to strip poetry away from the academy, which is why he writes an angry chapter about T.S. Eliot, who --in WCW's opinion-- gave it back to the academy at the very moment it could have broken free.
Perhaps this is why Ginsberg wrote to WCW. And why WCW put those letters in his poem. You can see that man here, if you linger in these pages. Here's the New Jersey born Unitarian. Here's an American poet.
July 15, 2015
Marvelous! WCW as storyteller, his story, of lyrical days, a different time, indeed, and I beg to differ, but the poet from Rutherford lead an extraordinary life. It's been a very long time since I enjoyed a book so thoroughly, some favorites: "A Maternity Case," "Our Fisherman," "The Baroness," and, of course, the invaluable insight into the many artists he knew (I agree, Marsden Hartley, one of the best), and seems he met or knew just about everyone. Perhaps even more valuable are the lessons he provides to writers regarding the humiliating rejection upon rejection of his work and his ability to persevere. I read this book after reading Mariani's, which was a chore, so if you have limited time stick to the autobio from Carlos, the source--pun intended. Sometimes WCW is described as a "gentle poet." False, tough as Paterson silk, and silk is a strong fiber, tough in a tough-guy way (that Americans no longer seem to be), and I think he would like that description. Sometimes I rate a book five stars because it's well written or well researched or written by a friend who can use encouragement, but this I give five stars because I love it . . . so bracing to get away from recently-published tripe.
"No one, and I meant no one (for money) was ever (never) going to tell me how or what I was going to write . . . Therefore I wasn't going to make any money by writing." (p. 49).
Reading from the First Printing, 1951, Random House embossed with "Paterson Free Public Library 1885."
"No one, and I meant no one (for money) was ever (never) going to tell me how or what I was going to write . . . Therefore I wasn't going to make any money by writing." (p. 49).
Reading from the First Printing, 1951, Random House embossed with "Paterson Free Public Library 1885."
June 8, 2025
the life of a writer hidden within an outsider profession, an idea explored. like the core of an apple.
Carlos William Carlos was a practicing doctor for more than thirty years. I remember reading about Murakami and how he ran a jazz bar in Tokyo for around the same time period. Kafka too, an office worker for most of his life. an insurance lawyer in Prague.
now that I have graduated from university and I step into the professional world I hold close to my heart my pen and I feel the fear of losing my hand. poetry and politics and the dramatic pull in between. and yet, life is not all choice. Williams is one of my favourite poets - his simplicity is like an open window in the spring. reading his diary was healing and comforting, a reminder that the days are long and that work is not the opposing evil to creativity. rather, he describes the decades he dedicated to medicine - his university studies, his residency, his practice - as the food and drink that nourished his writing. to be in contact with man is an essential premise for both good poetry and good prose. Murakami said the same thing - he started writing later in life after a prophetic baseball match and referred back to the cycle of working and writing as valuable. the stories you hear, the faces you see.
I don't have to choose? maybe I can have it all?
the perfect read for the greedy and the undecided and the normal person. to be a writer - the meaning is undisclosed and does not abolish the addition of something else. we can be many things. I loved this book - all the childhood anecdotes, the scientific details, his marriage with Flossie, his friendship with Ezra Pound, the stories of his poet friends and his doctor friends and the American landscapes and the trips to Europe and the normalcy of it all. his vain mother and the books no one wanted to publish and the lectures he gave. the habit of taking notes to use for a novel, like after helping a woman with giving birth. William Carlos Williams - a normal man and his normal life all laid out in a book for me to read and see myself in. I carried this book with me to work, to a policy panel, to the hair dresser. a lesson on patience and faith and curiosity - to write is to live and to live is to write.
Carlos William Carlos was a practicing doctor for more than thirty years. I remember reading about Murakami and how he ran a jazz bar in Tokyo for around the same time period. Kafka too, an office worker for most of his life. an insurance lawyer in Prague.
now that I have graduated from university and I step into the professional world I hold close to my heart my pen and I feel the fear of losing my hand. poetry and politics and the dramatic pull in between. and yet, life is not all choice. Williams is one of my favourite poets - his simplicity is like an open window in the spring. reading his diary was healing and comforting, a reminder that the days are long and that work is not the opposing evil to creativity. rather, he describes the decades he dedicated to medicine - his university studies, his residency, his practice - as the food and drink that nourished his writing. to be in contact with man is an essential premise for both good poetry and good prose. Murakami said the same thing - he started writing later in life after a prophetic baseball match and referred back to the cycle of working and writing as valuable. the stories you hear, the faces you see.
I don't have to choose? maybe I can have it all?
the perfect read for the greedy and the undecided and the normal person. to be a writer - the meaning is undisclosed and does not abolish the addition of something else. we can be many things. I loved this book - all the childhood anecdotes, the scientific details, his marriage with Flossie, his friendship with Ezra Pound, the stories of his poet friends and his doctor friends and the American landscapes and the trips to Europe and the normalcy of it all. his vain mother and the books no one wanted to publish and the lectures he gave. the habit of taking notes to use for a novel, like after helping a woman with giving birth. William Carlos Williams - a normal man and his normal life all laid out in a book for me to read and see myself in. I carried this book with me to work, to a policy panel, to the hair dresser. a lesson on patience and faith and curiosity - to write is to live and to live is to write.
xx-dnf-skim-reference
March 30, 2019Elliptical & impenetrable, imo. Also too much casual sexism and racism, not necessarily by W. but all too prevalent, all too many references to 'girls and men.'
September 16, 2014
Absolutely brilliant autobiography.
Like most autobiographies, it is, at times, self-indulgent but this is largely overshadowed by the sparkling diamonds shed on to the page from a beautiful mind that WCW had.
He gives much advice to up-and-coming poets such as...
"the first thing to do in hearing poems is not to try to understand them at the start at least, but to listen" (p. 387) In other words he tells us that we need to feel the MUSIC of poetry first, and then look for meaning later on.
I agree with Williams' assessment that the governments of the world are out to keep the artists on the sidelines as much as possible. Williams says, "I believe heartily what Dallam Simpson has said or quoted that: 'The whole aim of the gang that runs Russia, U.S.A., Britain and France, is to destroy the contemplative life altogether, to its last vestige, and to create 'WORK' until no one shall be left with time to think about anything" (p. 307)
And my favourite part was Williams' brilliant analysis of dialectics - "A dialectic, of whatever sort, is merely a premise, in this case false, logically followed to its verbal terminations, whereat we close our eyes and commit logical murder." I hadn't been able to clearly articulate my fascination for learning foreign languages until I found the explanation right here in Williams' autobiography. This was a very exciting moment to have an idea which has been bashing around in your head for years finally confirmed by someone else.
In other words, we all get locked into one dialectic or another but by being open to other people's dialectics we can assess them from an 'insider's' point of view, rather than making the mistake, which most of us do, of assessing them from an external point of view, from which we don't have access to their dialectic, culture, language, thoughts etc.
In this book, there is a real banquet of knowledge on...
1) Williams' childhood / upbringing
2) his romances
3) his early years as an intern
4) some interesting patients / cases
5) his thoughts / philosophy on writing and poetry
but the most interesting chapters for me were the ones on Paris in the 1920s, where he met many of the great writers of the day who went on to become some of the best writers of the century - people like Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Bob McAlmon, Ezra Pound as well as many painters and musicians like Antheil.
This book is also very well written. There were a couple of chapters which didn't interest me at all - like I said above slightly self-indulgent but Williams himself can't really be blamed for that because he mentions in the Introduction how he came to write this book simply because so many of his close friends insisted that he write one.
But all in all, I'm glad that he did. This book gives us great insight into not only one of the great minds of 20th Century American letters but also a glimpse into an America that no longer exists - an America of wooden footpaths, dime stores a less hedonistic way of life.
Well worth reading.
Like most autobiographies, it is, at times, self-indulgent but this is largely overshadowed by the sparkling diamonds shed on to the page from a beautiful mind that WCW had.
He gives much advice to up-and-coming poets such as...
"the first thing to do in hearing poems is not to try to understand them at the start at least, but to listen" (p. 387) In other words he tells us that we need to feel the MUSIC of poetry first, and then look for meaning later on.
I agree with Williams' assessment that the governments of the world are out to keep the artists on the sidelines as much as possible. Williams says, "I believe heartily what Dallam Simpson has said or quoted that: 'The whole aim of the gang that runs Russia, U.S.A., Britain and France, is to destroy the contemplative life altogether, to its last vestige, and to create 'WORK' until no one shall be left with time to think about anything" (p. 307)
And my favourite part was Williams' brilliant analysis of dialectics - "A dialectic, of whatever sort, is merely a premise, in this case false, logically followed to its verbal terminations, whereat we close our eyes and commit logical murder." I hadn't been able to clearly articulate my fascination for learning foreign languages until I found the explanation right here in Williams' autobiography. This was a very exciting moment to have an idea which has been bashing around in your head for years finally confirmed by someone else.
In other words, we all get locked into one dialectic or another but by being open to other people's dialectics we can assess them from an 'insider's' point of view, rather than making the mistake, which most of us do, of assessing them from an external point of view, from which we don't have access to their dialectic, culture, language, thoughts etc.
In this book, there is a real banquet of knowledge on...
1) Williams' childhood / upbringing
2) his romances
3) his early years as an intern
4) some interesting patients / cases
5) his thoughts / philosophy on writing and poetry
but the most interesting chapters for me were the ones on Paris in the 1920s, where he met many of the great writers of the day who went on to become some of the best writers of the century - people like Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Bob McAlmon, Ezra Pound as well as many painters and musicians like Antheil.
This book is also very well written. There were a couple of chapters which didn't interest me at all - like I said above slightly self-indulgent but Williams himself can't really be blamed for that because he mentions in the Introduction how he came to write this book simply because so many of his close friends insisted that he write one.
But all in all, I'm glad that he did. This book gives us great insight into not only one of the great minds of 20th Century American letters but also a glimpse into an America that no longer exists - an America of wooden footpaths, dime stores a less hedonistic way of life.
Well worth reading.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2021
I'm clearly the exception, but I really found this to be boring. It might be different for those who are fans of Williams' work. I was just looking for a good life story. Rather, this is more of a collection of tales of events over the course of his life, & not so much about a telling of his life, if that makes any sense. The tales he tells left me unengaged, uninterested, & uninvested. It just wasn't for me. Dnf'd before reaching 50 pages in....b/c I just couldn't anymore.
November 11, 2010
Stubborn, affectionate, charming, clever, and self-deprecating in the most appealing way, William Carlos Williams comes across as someone I'd love to know.
January 25, 2026
This wasn’t a perfectly imagined autobiography, but it was a well-written and entertaining one! Williams is funny, and his prose is detailed. Sometimes he spent too long on certain subjects that didn’t have much relevance, and not enough time on others. We get chapters upon chapters about the beauties of Paris and nothing that explains how he goes from “poet that can’t get anyone to publish his work” to “poet getting honorary degrees on a book tour.”
I’m glad to have read this, and would recommend it to poets and readers of Williams!
I’m glad to have read this, and would recommend it to poets and readers of Williams!
June 17, 2014
This book is worth the price of admission if only for the description of Ezra Pound onstage, in drag with his "great blonde wig at which he tore as he waved his arms about and heaved his massive breasts in ecstasies of extreme emotion."
(4/5)
(4/5)
April 18, 2021
Reread; One of the most helpful instances of giving us the growth of the poet's mind, in this case by one of the greatest from last century. The long friendship with Ezra Pound detailed finally in poignant visits to St Elizabeth's reminds us of Pound's central place. Of Medicine and Poetry and so many other stories here show how Williams can embrace the world in ways no one else could.
December 30, 2023
4.5. A book that has been on my to-read radar since 1993... Finally got round to it and enjoyed the (mostly) direct and affable0 style, the jawdropping early 20th C medical stuff (not for the fainthearted) and the insights into the process
July 20, 2019
A great read a great story of the life of a great poet And his reflections on life
Read
August 2, 2026Such an interesting person
April 27, 2014
I found the first three quarters only mildly interesting, his travels and interactions with various artists and fellow writers...Joyce, Stein, Man Ray, and of course his buddy Pound (the chapter on his visits to Pound in the mental hospital are quite moving). However, when I finally got to chapter 43, Of Medicine and Poetry, I was excited to read his thoughts/philosophy related to this topic...
"When they ask me...how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing. Any worth-his-salt physician knows that no one is 'cured'...a cure is absurd, as absurd as calling these deployments 'diseases'. Sometimes the home team wins, sometimes the visitors. Great excitement...We want home runs, antibiotics to 'cure' man with a single shot in the buttocks.
...I found by practice, by trial and error, that to treat a man as something to which surgery, drugs and hoodoo applied was an indifferent matter; to treat him as material for a work of art made him somehow come alive to me.
This immediacy, the thing, as I went on writing, living as I could, thinking a secret life I wanted to tell openly-if only I could-how it lives, secretly about us as much now as ever...I was permitted by my medical badge to follow the poor, defeated body into those gulfs and grottos. And the astonishing thing is that at such times and in such places-foul as they may be with the stinking ischio-rectal abscesses of our comings and goings-just there, the thing, in all its greatest beauty, may for a moment be freed to fly for a moment guiltily about the room."
"When they ask me...how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing. Any worth-his-salt physician knows that no one is 'cured'...a cure is absurd, as absurd as calling these deployments 'diseases'. Sometimes the home team wins, sometimes the visitors. Great excitement...We want home runs, antibiotics to 'cure' man with a single shot in the buttocks.
...I found by practice, by trial and error, that to treat a man as something to which surgery, drugs and hoodoo applied was an indifferent matter; to treat him as material for a work of art made him somehow come alive to me.
This immediacy, the thing, as I went on writing, living as I could, thinking a secret life I wanted to tell openly-if only I could-how it lives, secretly about us as much now as ever...I was permitted by my medical badge to follow the poor, defeated body into those gulfs and grottos. And the astonishing thing is that at such times and in such places-foul as they may be with the stinking ischio-rectal abscesses of our comings and goings-just there, the thing, in all its greatest beauty, may for a moment be freed to fly for a moment guiltily about the room."
Read
September 16, 2022I am reading excerpts of this book and enjoying what I have read. His account of a month or so in Paris is like reading gossip about Hem (Hemingway) and Ezra (Pound) and Nancy Cunard who I came across in Six Flappers--a sad story then and somewhat in his account too. I found a few of his poems on The Poetry Foundation site and remembered the one about the plums which was short and so evocative and real.
This Is Just To Say
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
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
see private notes for February 2023
This Is Just To Say
BY WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
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
see private notes for February 2023
July 20, 2019
awesome medical clinician and writer
Read
May 23, 2018- worth reading if only to appreciate the amusing memories involving Ezra Pound
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews