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In the American Grain Author Biography

One of the best-loved, most enduring, and most American of all poets, William Carlos Williams balanced a life of aesthetic contemplation with a life of constant, hands-on involvement with the most brutal facts of life. Forever envious and resentful of the American modernist poets, like Ezra Pound, H. D., and T. S. Eliot, who fled to Europe to live bohemian lives, Williams stayed home in New Jersey and practiced family medicine among the poor and working-class citizens of his region. He stayed involved in the artistic ferment going on in the world, however, and established and maintained friendships with many of the writers, painters, and photographers who were creating the movement known as modernism. Like his contemporary, Wallace Stevens, Williams identified himself primarily with his profession and only secondarily with his vocation of poetry. Also like Stevens, this split caused him endless inner turmoil, but also provided him with material...
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