Publisher Description

Originally published in 1959, Yes, Mrs. Williams has long been unavailable. In recalling one of the "determined women" in his life. William Carlos Williams, the quintessentially American poet of this century, does not write about his mother so much as recreate her. An experimentalist in prose as well as poetry, Williams records the "talk" of Raquel Helene Rose Hoheb Williams, capturing the contradictions of this Spanish-speaking, Puerto Rican-born, Parisian-trained artist turned New Jersey wile and mother, her strength and cantankerousness, her vitality and sense of failed purpose. For this first New Directions paperbook edition, Dr. William Eric Williams, son and grandson, has written an illuminating foreword that includes newly discovered Williams family letters.

Author Biography

William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was born in Rutherford, New Jersey. He received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where he met and befriended Ezra Pound and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle). At the same time as maintaining a popular medical practice, he became a prolific poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright. Experimenting with new techniques of meter and lineation, Williams sought to invent an entirely fresh and singularly American poetics, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall

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