Portland Public Library

"Something urgent I have to say to you", the life and works of William Carlos Williams, Herbert Leibowitz

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

individual biography

illustrationsplates

index present

non fiction

"Something urgent I have to say to you"

bibliography

681499519

Herbert Leibowitz

the life and works of William Carlos Williams

"Herbert Leibowitz's "Something Urgent I Have to Say to You" provides a new perspective on the life and poetry of the doctor poet William Carlos Williams, a key American writer who led one of the more eventful literary lives of the twentieth century. Friends with most of the contemporary innovators of his era--Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and Louis Zukofsky, among others--Williams made a radical break with the modernist tradition by seeking to invent an entirely fresh and singularly American poetic, whose subject matter derived from the everyday lives of the citizens and poor immigrant communities of northern New Jersey. His poems mirrored both the conflicts of his own life and the convulsions that afflicted American society--two world wars, a rampaging flu pandemic, and the Great Depression. Leibowitz's biography offers a compelling description of his work, as well as a rounded portrait of a complicated man"--Publisher description

Poetry as biographical evidence -- Roots and branches of the family tree -- "Halfway to hell" -- Youthful fumblings -- Many loves -- A risqué liaison with the fabulous baroness -- Adventures in the skin trade -- Experimental breakthroughs -- The "strange phosphorus" of American history -- Revisiting the seductions of Europe -- Confronting the Great Depression -- New directions in a tumultuous decade -- Poetry, the mistress, and medicine, the wife -- The poet in a time of war -- The magnificent torso: Paterson -- The lion in winter