William Carlos Williams

One of the most celebrated physician-poets in American Poetry is featured at The Poetry Foundation website today. William Carlos Williams was an Internist, before they were called such a thing, who practiced in Paterson, NJ. His patients and his life as a doctor inspired many poems and short stories. He used language that was spare and exact, though not simple. He was even known to jot down lines on his prescription pad which would later become poems. Here, his poem Winter Trees.