Collected Poems Volume I

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), a great contemporary of Pound, H.D., Wyndham Lewis and others, is one of the fathers of American free verse. Born in Rutherford, New Jersey, he began writing poetry while still 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. 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.

`Today it would be hard to find a reader of poetry who would not acknowledge Williams as one of the major American modernists.’ - Adam Kirsch; 'Williams sees the real function of the imagination as breaking through the alienation of the near at hand and reviving its wonder.' - Hugh Fox