"Something Urgent I Have to Say to You"

August 1, 2011
William Carlos Williams was an uneven figure: controversial as a modernist seeking a plainer American idiom; a trusted physician to untold women of Rutherford, N.J., yet a flagrant philanderer who somehow remained married for 50 years; an artist belonging to no school, imagist or otherwise, who is regarded, in the words of one poet, as "a dumb ox." He was one of the few modernist champions of liberal ideals. This is likewise an uneven biography. Leibowitz supplements Paul Mariani's towering work of 30 years ago, but he does not supersede it. His title is taken from one of Williams's greatest poems, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower," and indicates how the author of Kora in Hell, In the American Grain, and other masterpieces of disheveled elegance sought to confess and justify his actual and imaginative lives to his wife, Floss, as well as to all readers. Leibowitz is no apologist, but he does cut Williams considerable slack, and the book circles round Williams's life by seeking it through liberal quotes from his work. With decidedly mixed success, the book is an uneasy attempt at mingling psychobiography with literary criticism. Photos.

September 1, 2011

A detailed biography of pioneering modernist poet William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), seen through a discriminating and skeptical eye.

Skeptical because, for all the close attention Parnassus editor Leibowitz pays to each phase of the physician-poet's life, the author sometimes seems uncertain that Williams is a subject worthy of biographical scrutiny. Though Leibowitz has high praise for some of Williams' scattered poems and for the first two parts of his epic poem Paterson, he deems Williams an admirably experimental writer whose experiments often fell short. What Leibowitz acknowledges is the importance of the experiments: By tinkering with rhythm, line breaks and subject matter in new ways, Williams strove to capture the voice of the everyday American without feeling beholden to old-fashioned Victorian poesy or the obscurantism of T.S. Eliot and his mentor Ezra Pound. (Williams and Pound's relationship was always contentious. Pound could be equally supportive and condescending toward Williams, but Pound's embrace of fascism and anti-Semitism during World War II shattered their friendship.) Leibowitz identifies two crucial personal influences on Williams' poetry. First was his work as a physician in New Jersey, which exposed him to the working-class people he sought to embody in his writing. More important was his long but troubled marriage with his wife, Floss, which inspired some of his more powerfully embittered poems, as well as numerous affairs. (Leibowitz suggests Williams fathered at least one child out of wedlock.) The author concentrates heavily on close analysis of Williams' poems, sometimes at the expense of narrative thrust; for instance, Paterson is mentioned numerous times with little explanation before the chapter dedicated to its creation.

Leibowitz doesn't position Williams as a consistently great poet, but he saves him from the brickbats his work has recently absorbed, and gives him his due as a key figure in the creation of Modernist ideas.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 1, 2011

A quick search suggests that not a lot of biographies on leading American poet William Carlos Williams are currently available, so it's good to see this big new work examining his life, times, and accomplishments. That the author is the longtime editor of the literary magazine Parnassus is a plus. Buy where serious readers gather.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2011
Breaking with the practice of most contemporary literary biographers, Leibowitz bases his impressive life of William Carlos Williams almost exclusively on his subject's novels, stories, essays, letters, and notebooks as well as poems. Indeed, Leibowitz's apologia for proceeding so scandalously occupies what may be the book's most interesting, least biographical chapter, the first. The succeeding, purely biographical chapters, though lucid in their readings of Williams' writings and candid about Williams' personal contradictions (e.g., dependent husband and chronic philanderer), limn a somewhat sorry character. Williams' long service as a physician whose patients were primarily the children of poor workers and immigrants, honorable as it is, doesn't dispel discomfort with his sexual obsessiveness, emotional cruelty toward his wife, and unreasonable hatred for poets he saw as rivals, especially T. S. Eliot. What may be more important, Leibowitz never educes Williams' rationale for literary modernism, which then, by default, seems to consist of rebellion against sexual restraint and socially accepted conceptions of beauty. Williams' life, like much of his poetry, remains hard to love.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2011

In this extremely well-researched work, Leibowitz (editor, Parnassus) combines biography and literary criticism. The results are brilliant and dense, with the author dissecting Williams's relationships with his family, wife, literary peers, and romantic partners through his representation of them and himself in his various writings. Leibowitz begins with a clever defense of biography and the need to create a "multilayered portrait of the artist" through the poetry. He delivers on this promise. The reader gets to know a complete Williams with all his insecurities intact. While there have been many books on Williams's life and on his works, many of them are simplified or pared down to make them more accessible. Williams's work was as complex as his life. Leibowitz is successful in presenting a complete Williams. VERDICT A necessary work for graduate and advanced readers with a dedicated interest in modern poetry. Casual readers will not find this work easily accessible.--Paolina Taglienti, Everest Coll., Henderson, NV

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2011

A detailed biography of pioneering modernist poet William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), seen through a discriminating and skeptical eye.

Skeptical because, for all the close attention Parnassus editor Leibowitz pays to each phase of the physician-poet's life, the author sometimes seems uncertain that Williams is a subject worthy of biographical scrutiny. Though Leibowitz has high praise for some of Williams' scattered poems and for the first two parts of his epic poem Paterson, he deems Williams an admirably experimental writer whose experiments often fell short. What Leibowitz acknowledges is the importance of the experiments: By tinkering with rhythm, line breaks and subject matter in new ways, Williams strove to capture the voice of the everyday American without feeling beholden to old-fashioned Victorian poesy or the obscurantism of T.S. Eliot and his mentor Ezra Pound. (Williams and Pound's relationship was always contentious. Pound could be equally supportive and condescending toward Williams, but Pound's embrace of fascism and anti-Semitism during World War II shattered their friendship.) Leibowitz identifies two crucial personal influences on Williams' poetry. First was his work as a physician in New Jersey, which exposed him to the working-class people he sought to embody in his writing. More important was his long but troubled marriage with his wife, Floss, which inspired some of his more powerfully embittered poems, as well as numerous affairs. (Leibowitz suggests Williams fathered at least one child out of wedlock.) The author concentrates heavily on close analysis of Williams' poems, sometimes at the expense of narrative thrust; for instance, Paterson is mentioned numerous times with little explanation before the chapter dedicated to its creation.

Leibowitz doesn't position Williams as a consistently great poet, but he saves him from the brickbats his work has recently absorbed, and gives him his due as a key figure in the creation of Modernist ideas.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)