William Carlos Williams Research Paper

Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, William Carlos WIlliams was a well known doctor by day and modernist poet by night. He began writing poetry as a young high school student and his poetry was later influenced by his friend whom he met in college, Ezra Pound. He and Williams were some of the prominent inventors of modern free verse style poetry. He was also a renowned imagist and wrote about images from moments in time and had a way of portraying them in a beautiful way without using adjectives or feelings. Although his writing style wasn’t the traditional poetry method, Williams was immensely successful for writing poetry using imagism and free verse (“William Carlos Williams” The Poetry Foundation).

On September 17, 1883 the successful and inspirational poet, William Carlos Williams, was born. He spent his life as a pediatrician and simultaneously pursued his literary career as a poet. At the age of 19 he attended medical school where he met Ezra Pound, who was also an imagist and inspired Williams’ poetry. However, he started to disagree with Pound’s works later on because he did not like how they were always based on European cultures. Williams began basing his poems on everyday life and common people and he started to become recognized as a poet in the 1950s. In 1948 he encountered a heart

He was even criticized for his use of simplified language because it made him appear less smart than other poets of his time period (“William Carlos Williams” The Poetry Foundation). In this poem he is focusing on a red wheelbarrow and he starts off by saying “so much depends” meaning everything that is associated with the red wheelbarrow during a typical work day on the farm. This first line is what shapes the meaning of the poem because it is simply saying that even the little things in life make all the difference even though sometimes people don’t