1. The Poet from Patterson William Carlos Williams 1883-1963

2. William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams lived most of his life in New Jersey. His father was English. His mother was Puerto Rican. He studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a family doctor.

3. Williams’ Kind of Poetry Williams was an imagist. Imagists thought a poem should make an exact visual image with simple, clear words.

4. Williams’ Kind of Poetry Imagists want to find the precise word. Imagists’ poems don’t rhyme. Imagists want absolute freedom in choosing subjects for their poems.

5. This is Just to Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

6. How does Williams break lines? Poets have three ways to break poetic lines: 1. By phrase 2. By image 3. By punctuation

7. How does Blake break the lines? Auguries of Innocence To see a World in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour.  By William Blake  1757-1827

8. How does Emerson break lines? Beyond Winter Over the winter glaciers I see the summer glow, And through the wild-piled snowdrift The warm rosebuds below. by Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882

9. Breaking poetic lines A Wolf A wolf I considered myself but the owls are hooting and the night I fear Osage Indian

10. The Locust Tree in Flower Among of green stiff old bright broken branch come white sweet May again

11. Between Walls the back wings of the hospital where nothing will grow lie cinders in which shine the broken pieces of a green bottle

12. Perfection O lovely apple! Beautifully and completely rotten, Hardly a contour marred— Perhaps a little shrivelled at the top but that aside perfect In every detail! O lovely Apple! what a deep and suffusing brown mantles that unspoiled surface! No one has moved you since I placed you on the porch rail a month ago To ripen No one. No one!

13. The Red Wheelbarrow so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens