Selected PoemsWilliam Carlos WilliamsLabel: Penguin ClassicsDescription: In his work as a physician Williams had learnt the skill of objective observation which he applied to his poetry examining as he said 'the particular to discover the universal'. Marked by a vernacular American speech and direct observation of the landscape and people of his native New Jersey his poetry explores the 'raw merging of American pastoral and urban squalor. Emotionally restrained but rich in sensory experience the poems were written according to the guiding concept: 'no ideas but in things' and those 'things' a red wheelbarrow a group of trees a river convey the local and the particular with a vivid intensity.
