| Born on the seventeenth of September, 1883 in Rutherford, New Jersey, William Carlos Williams is one of the most beloved and iconic of all American poets. Poetry has been Williams’s ambition ever since his time as a student at Horace Mann High School where he was inspired to become both a writer and a doctor. From High School Williams went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, from which he earned his Medical Doctors, and befriend the notable Modernist writer Ezra Pound. Williams continued to practice medicine through his life, working as physician practicing a mixture of pediatrics and general medicine. Though, he lived Rutherford Williams served as the chief of pediatric for the what was then known as Passaic General Hospital from 1924 until his death on March 4th, 1963, at the age of seventy-nine of a stroke, after suffering from a series of them since a heart attack in 1948. Williams is remembered by the Passaic General Hospital, with which he is so closely affiliated, by a tribute plaque upon which is engraved "we walk the wards that Williams walked" and it hangs to this day in the hall of what is now St. Mary’s General Hospital. After they met in University, Ezra Pound become a significant influence to Williams’s writing, and Pound was responsible for the second publication of Williams’s work, “The Tempers” in London. Both, Williams and Pound are often though of as some of the most prolific authors of the Imagist movement, however as he aged Williams began to develop views separate from those of Pound and especially T.S. Eliot, whose publication “The Waste Land,” greatly overshadowed his later works. Williams considered the Imagist poets to be growing too infatuated with European culture and traditions, causing them to begin losing sight of the future. Williams never let his consuming medical career keep him from writing and continued to experiment throughout his life, testing new techniques of meter and lineation. Williams sought to create something new and uniquely American in the literally world, a proud patriot and writer of the people, Williams themes softened consisted of day to day precedences of his own life and the lives of common people. During the 1920’s and 1930’s the popularity of Williams’s poetry continued to spread though slowly, due to the mass acclaim of other American Imagist poets especially Eliot. However, the 1950’s and 1960’s brought about a prominent revival of Williams’s work by the new generation of poets, aroused by Williams eagerness to teach and instruct, and the accessibility of his writing, some of blooming poets included Allen Ginsberg and the Beats. Williams is consider a unintentional member of the group of four major American writer born between 1874 and 1886, the association consisted of Robert Frost, who was born in 1874; Wallace Stevens, who was born in 1879; and Hilda "H.D." Doolittle, who was born in 1886. Of the small company Williams lived the longest and lead a creatively rich life, first being published only in small magazines then evolving to generate productively poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Just as with his medical practice William Carlos Williams sustained his writing into his old age, publishing the major works Kora in Hell(1920), Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), the five-volume epic Paterson (1963, 1992), and Imaginations (1970). |
The verse form William Carlos Williams has chosen is undefinable it is the this is the free verses held not by a single rhythmic constraint, it has all the liberation and independence of the cat he describes in it. There is no specific meter to William’s work, it is as singular and free as poetry can be. It’s structure is determined by the spontaneous whims of the phonetic style best fitting to the line in question. Without pattern, Williams provides flow. Without rhyme he has created rhythm. Two unique tercets, each individual in nature are followed by a sestet, and these mere line counts are the only categories that can be given to Williams’s free-wheeling verse, the slow is not slow but calculating and sagaciously hesitant, it is steady and graceful as any feline with a hint of solemn pride and sassy audacious.
The poem is strictly straight-forward, honest and lucid in its expression. Akin to an artful film short, it captures a brief moment in time, enclosing in its brevity all the beauty and meaning that can be extracted from a single instant and emphasizing them, bringing attention to all the details that define the seconds in question, moving beyond the “Still-life” style poetry that simply praises, Williams composes a moving picture that embodies the balance and articulation of the cat with his or her conscientious movements, shifting between lines with the adeptly precise movements of a cat. One cannot help but smile at the image of a cat cautiously slipping himself or herself into a flowerpot and candid realism which Williams uses to achieve this elementary yet astute composition is brilliant and seemingly effortless all at once, one could not imagine a better way to express the exclusive nature of at than through the rare nature of one particular free-verse poem, that Williams has so kindly achieved doing it glorious justice.
The magic of William Carlos Williams’s writing is it’s lucidity and clarity, it’s perfectly clear to the reader what his intentions are and the nature of the joy and beauty that he has transformed into words, his address is forthright and his presentation is transparent in it’s executed meaning. “As a Cat” is no more complex or more convoluted than it outwardly seems, it’s focus is solely on the cats and it’s movement works as a super-organism to bring depth and beauty to natural feline actions. William Carlos Williams does not add needless complexities to bring sophistication to his work he is well aware that the cat in its purity is the epitome of refinement and finesse. “As a Cat,” is a impeccable expression of feline elegance and it is a pleasure to pursue and is of course best accompanied by a warm dignified cat in one’s lap.