William Carlos Williams
A New World Naked
The definitive biography of William Carlos Williams, one of the twentieth century's foremost poets
William Carlos Williams emerged alongside Pound, Eliot, Stevens, Frost, and Yeats as one of the foremost poets of the twentieth century. Paterson, Williams's epic masterpiece, raised everyday American speech to the highest levels of poetic imagination. A finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book, William Carlos Williams is a remarkable, rich blend of art and scholarship. From a small-town doctor who delivered more than 3,000 babies to an extraordinary revolutionary, Williams's life and times are unfolded here, while Mariani lets the reader inside the poet's mind and language in this definitive masterwork.
Praise
“The most laudable aspect of Paul Mariani's critical biography of William Carlos Williams is that it largely succeeds in placing him, in his biographer's words, as ''the single most important American poet of the twentieth century,' and though Williams is dead almost 20 years now, there has been no poet in that time to deny him his primacy.”
— New York Times Book Review
“Paul Mariani's perceptive, ranging, detailed biography of William Carlos Williams is not only a labor of oldtime love but a uniquely objective testament to the heroic dimensions of this man's life, which was so singularly American and whose work was so remarkable an influence upon the poetry of our time.”
— Robert Creeley
“Energetic, fast-paced. . . . It is a pleasure to have so much of [Williams's] exceptional life run by one's eyes, reach one's mind and heart again.”
— New Republic
“Effectively delineates Williams's many loves—personal and literary—and provides a superb gloss on the range of his truly innovative poetry and prose. . . . The reader is grateful for the massive feat of research and synthesis that brings to such vivid life this mercurially cranky personality.”
— Saturday Review