Williams: Local, Ecology, China

　　Williams seized 30 percent of his "leisure" to reach heights that many American poets could hardly match in their lifetimes.

　　In both Chinese and Western literary history, there are many examples of Moke literati who were born as doctors. In addition to Lu Xun, there are also well-known writers such as Chi Li, Yu Hua, and Bi Shumin in China; as for foreign countries, Chekhov in Russia, Conan Doyle and Maugham in Britain are also thunderous to Chinese people. However, if it is said that writers who can not only practice medicine as their main profession, but also can make great achievements in literary creation, they are suddenly like morning stars. William Carlos Williams (1883-1963), one of America's most famous poets of the 20th century, was one of them. In 1906, Williams received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and began writing poetry that same year. Three years later, he published his first collection of poems, Poems, and in the following half-century creative career, he wrote nearly 40 works of different genres, winning the National Book Award (1950), the Boringen Poetry Prize (1952), the Pulitzer Prize (1963) and other important literary awards. But who would have thought that all these creations and achievements were only completed by Williams in his spare time. In the same year that the Psalms were published, he returned to his native state of New Jersey to work as a full-time pediatrician, and was close to retiring from retirement. Williams spends 70 percent of his time midwifery and healing babies, and 30 percent of his time creating. On his way to the clinic, he would suddenly pull over to the side of the road, scribble a few strokes on the medicine list, record his inspirations, and then drive away, and in his free time at the clinic, he would use the typewriter in his office to crack down verses until someone came to see him. In this way, Williams seized 30 percent of his "leisure" to reach a height that many American poets could hardly hope for in their lifetimes.

　　The Williams Tradition of American Poetry

　　In 1922, T. S. Eliot published an epoch-making long poem "The Waste Land", officially declaring the dominance of New Criticism poetry in the American poetry scene, represented by the sidelines and personal feelings. The poem references more than thirty-five works (even popular songs of the time) in six languages, including Sanskrit.

　　In Williams's view, "The Waste Land" does not even quote a single word from an American text. Multilingual and Harvard graduate Eliot was as knowledgeable as Pound, but he destroyed all the marks of his upbringing in the United States. Williams argues that Eliot has lost his roots by being so far away from the land where he grew up, isolating himself from the vivid life of life, and continuing the academic path of immersing himself in books, although it may be temporary, but in the long run, his rootlessness determines that he is committing cultural suicide. The rift between the two men intensified.

　　Williams, on the other hand, has his poetry rooted and sprouted from the lives of ordinary Americans. He travels to patients for inspiration: he stops to talk to an old black man who is excited to clean the sidewalk in front of his house, and he documents a woman who immigrated to the United States from Italy and expresses her concern about her husband's pneumonia in stammering English. In 1917, Williams's third collection of poems, Al QueQuiere!, exemplified his practice in the United States, marking the beginning of a mature period of Williams's poetry. In the years that followed, many well-known poems were published, such as "Sour Grapes," "Spring and All," and so on. His poems are simple in language, simple in imagery, delicate in emotion, and full of elegant and light life atmosphere, such as the famous work "The Red Wheelbarrow":

　　So many things / depend on // a red / cart // shiningly adorned / raindrops / / next to a flock / white chickens

　　The poem is only 8 lines simple. The poem's trolley, which represents human civilization, is organically combined with natural scenery in Williams's pen, suggesting that human beings are not the masters of nature, but a part of nature. It is not difficult to see that Williams, who was deeply influenced by Imagist poetry, was good at reconstructing "natural decorated" prose sentences to construct poetry, so that things were presented in their natural state in the poems, which had the aesthetic value of local authentic characteristics, and then laid the foundation for the later American poetry to emphasize imagery and express light books, forming a unique "Williams tradition", which influenced a large number of poets such as Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, and Ronald Johnson, and opened up a completely different creative line from T.S. Eliot.

　　Eco-care from Williams

　　Environmental protection has become the common demand of all mankind today, and a mighty ecological turn is also emerging in the literary world. As early as a century ago, Williams began to pay attention to the human living environment in his poetry, exploring the relationship between human beings and nature, showing a positive ecological concept, and advocating the use of art and language to "construct a closer contact with the natural world". As he lamented in his poem "Memory of April":

　　You say that love is this, love is that: / It's poplars, it's willow buds/It's the wind and the rain comb, / Dingdong dripping, dingdong dripping - / The branches are drifting away. Alas!/ Love has not yet come to this kingdom.

　　From an early age, Williams was close to the natural world, which was inseparable from the environment in which he grew up. Williams was born and raised in Rutherford, New Jersey (a town with a population of less than 5,000), and returned to his hometown to settle and work until his death. According to Williams' recollections, Rutherford City "had no gutters, no water supply, not even gas. Of course there is no electricity, no telephone, not even a tram". It was a relatively backward town that gave Williams a vast world to run wild: "over the back fence" is Kip's woods, "this is our wilderness". Farmland stretches from the outskirts of the town to the periphery, with the Pasayk and Hackensack rivers nourishing vast swamps, herons nesting in cattails, and wild geese migrating from Canada nesting and foraging in reed forests. The natural landscape of Rutherford City has become a recurring scene in Williams's poetry, and it is also the initial initiation of Williams's ecological poetry.

　　Williams's Chinese Edge

　　In the formation of the Williams tradition and the creation of Williams's ecological poetry, the influence of Chinese culture, especially Chinese poetry, is crucial. His father once gave Williams a gift as a child - a statue of Confucius. Confucius's expression was majestic and dignified, and he taught people to restrain themselves and improve their virtues. This childhood exposure to Chinese culture left a deep impression on Williams. In 1902, Williams entered the University of Pennsylvania, where he established a mentorship and friendship with Pound. On the recommendation of Pound, Williams visited the Chinese-American Wang Shenfu, and at the invitation of Wang Shenfu, he translated ancient Chinese poems with him, mainly during the Tang and Song dynasties. In 1966, Wang Shenfu published his translation of ancient Chinese poems under the title "The Cassia Tree: A Collection of Translations & Adaptations from the Chinese". In the translation, Williams carried out the creation of American colloquialism, and the form was relatively free, trying to reproduce the artistic conception and linguistic beauty of ancient Chinese poetry, and these ancient poems also fed Williams. Williams fully borrowed from Chinese poetry, such as the combination of poetry and painting, absorbed Taoist ideas such as Qiwu, and integrated themes such as homesickness in ancient Chinese poetry into his creation, making up for the lack of such emotions in American poetry culture, thus further shaping his local Williams tradition. (Produced by the "Thought Workshop" of the social science newspaper, the full text can be found in the social science newspaper and its official website)