A poet once wrote memorable lines about the difficulty of getting the news. Today we are fortunate to have Spanish language journalism focused on culture, including 80grados prensa sin prisa (“80Degrees+ press without rush”). A column by Julio Marzán, published in July 2021, will be of interest to readers of William Carlos Williams and to the ongoing dialogue about Williams and twenty-first century literature and culture.
Continue readingCategory: Research and Scholarship
Leggere Poesia. William Carlos Williams e il modernismo statunitense
Published in Italian by Marietti 1820, Cristina Giorcelli’s new book consists of a 27-page Introduction to Modernism and U.S. Modernism and 10 essays that present close readings of 13 poems (2 of them in their earlier and later version) by William Carlos Williams.
Continue readingMy Excellency — With Jonathan Cohen & Gy Mirano at the Drama Book Shop, 266 West 39th Street, New York
The Drama Book Shop presents, in association with Jay Michaels Global Communications, My Excellency: William Carlos Williams’s “Lost” Translation of Luis Rechani Agrait’s Masterpiece — With Jonathan Cohen & Gy Mirano — A Talkback, signing and live podcast recording.
Continue readingALA Symposium on American Poetry
The William Carlos Williams Society will be sponsoring a panel at the second conference of the Society for the Study of American Poetry, March 27–28, 2026 in Salem, Massachusetts.
Continue readingSpecial Double Issue of the William Carlos Williams Review: Williams’s Latin American and Caribbean Heritage
The William Carlos Williams Review invites submissions for a special issue dedicated to exploring Williams’s Latin American and Caribbean heritage, emphasizing his engagement with Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Peninsular, and Colonial Spanish literary traditions, alongside broader themes of borders and translation—linguistic, geographic, and cultural—that shape his work.
Continue readingWalter Scott Peterson Prize (Volume 41 2024)
The Society is pleased to announce Richard Ratzan’s essay “Ambiguity in the Short Fiction of William Carlos Williams” as the winner of the 2024 Walter Scott Peterson Prize.
Continue readingFor William Carlos Williams (1883–1963): Martín Espada’s “Insult”
Readers of Williams will appreciate a recent poem by Martín Espada dedicated to William Carlos Williams. A print version of the poem Insult appears in the Michigan Quarterly Review 64.1 (Winter 2025); and a link to the poet reading the poem is available at the MQR Sound podcast.
Continue readingMy Excellency, a play by Luis Rechani Agrait, translated by William Carlos Williams
In November Swan Isle Press will publish Jonathan Cohen’s edition of Williams’s translation of Rechani Agrait’s play, My Excellency. The edition includes an Introduction by Cohen, a Foreword by Julio Marzán, and an Afterword by José Luis Ramos Escobar, theater scholar and playwright and former director of the drama department at the University of Puerto Rico−Rio Piedras.
Continue readingAmerican Poetry, William Carlos Williams, and Documentary Film
The relationship between the poems of William Carlos Williams and Gary Snyder has surfaced on the occasion of Snyder’s ninety-fifth birthday. Colin Still, introducing his documentary “O Mother Gaia: The World of Gary Snyder” on the Library of American web site, writes, “I’m a London-based filmmaker with an interest in American poetry dating back to my school days, when I encountered the poems of William Carlos Williams.”
Continue readingWilliam Carlos Williams and Failure: MLA Toronto 8–12 January 2026
Join us in Toronto for our 2026 MLA session “William Carlos Williams and Failure.” How did William Carlos Williams understand “failure”? Proposals on unfinished works, works Williams understood as failures, the opportunities he saw in failure, or how poets/critics have evaluated his work and his place in literary history.
Continue readingMLA 2025 (New Orleans): 100 Years of In the American Grain
Join us in New Orleans for our 2025 MLA session “William Carlos Williams and the Question of ‘America’: 100 Years of In the American Grain” featuring presentations by Stephen Hahn, Florian Gargaillo, and Zachary Tavlin.
Continue readingProceedings of the 2024 William Carlos Williams Society Biennial Conference
The Proceedings of the William Carlos Williams Society Biennial Conference is available in the October 1, 2024 edition of Tinta Regada, edited by Professor Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera and his students at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez.
Continue readingLatino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology
Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, edited by Rigoberto González, contains two poems by William Carlos Williams: “All the Fancy Things” and “The Poet and his Poems.”
Continue reading1995 Ginsberg Reading at Georgian Court University
Allen Ginsberg visited Georgian Court University in 1995 to talk with students in a British Romantics course led by Dr. Eric Wurmser and Dr. Gail Holian. Ginsberg read and discussed a range of poems, including “Good Night” by William Carlos Williams.
Continue readingTenth Biennial Conference in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico
Since 2005 the William Carlos Williams Society Biennial Conference has brought together writers, literary and cultural historians, and independent scholars to discuss Williams’s writing and its relationships to modern poetry and other literary forms––in North America and in other areas of the world. The 2024 conference, Crossing Borders / Cruzando Fronteras, convened at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez February 15–17, 2024.
Continue readingWalter Scott Peterson Prize (Volume 39 2022 and Volume 40 2023)
We are pleased to announce the 2022 (volume 39) award for Sam S. Hushagen’s “William Carlos Williams and the Traditions of Georgic,” and the 2023 (volume 40) for Florian Gargaillo’s “Invisible Labor in William Carlos Williams”
Continue readingThe Paterson Project
A Musical and Visual Response to William Carlos Williams’ poem: a composer of modern classical music and a visual artist unite to create the Paterson Project, based on the poetry of William Carlos Williams
Continue readingMSA Brooklyn: “Everything is and is new”: Spring and All at 100
A seminar for participants to consider the many afterlives of Williams’s Spring and All and to engage with both its overt and subtle influences in the work of poets throughout the twentieth century and into the contemporary moment.
Continue readingA Note on the Childhood Home of William Carlos Williams
Recent data collected by Rutherford Borough Historian Rod Leith provides evidence to support Williams’s birthplace as 87 West Passaic Avenue.
Continue readingA Concordance to the Poems of William Carlos Williams!
The Society is thrilled to announce that our open-access, digital concordance to the poems of William Carlos Williams is live!
Continue readingWinners of the Walter Scott Peterson Award
The WCW Society offers an annual prize of $500 for the best work published in the William Carlos Williams Review in a given year.
Continue readingWCW’s lost translation of E.C. Fabre’s short story “Cage”
Scheduled for publication in Translation Review, and now available online, is Jonathan Cohen’s essay presenting Williams’s translation of E.C. Fabre’s short story “Cage,” first published in Blast (1933).
Continue readingMLA 2022 Multilingual Williams
William Carlos Williams—including but not limited to his multilingual home and upbringing, his experiences living in Germany and France, his recognition of the need for knowledge of foreign languages, his readings of poetry and/or prose in translation, and his translations from Spanish, French, Greek, and Chinese.
Continue readingNew Acquisition in the William Carlos Williams Collection at the University of Buffalo Libraries
A collection of the papers of William Carlos Williams has found a new home in the Poetry Collection of the University Libraries at the University of Buffalo.
Continue readingWilliams and the Medical Humanities
A pre-med undergraduate at Oxford College at Emory University, Audrey Ruan, recently discovered an unpublished manuscript by poet and physician William Carlos Williams.
Continue reading2021 American Literature Association
The William Carlos Williams Society will sponsor two panels at the 2021 Annual Conference of the American Literature Association in Boston, Massachusetts. The dates of the conference are July 7–11.
Continue readingWilliams and Medicine
A double issue of the William Carlos Williams Review will be published in Spring 2022 on the topic of “Williams and Medicine,” guest-edited by Theodora Rapp Graham and Richard Ratzan,MD.
Continue readingMLA 2021 William Carlos Williams Thinking
A session dedicated to exploring William Carlos Williams’s thinking about the nature, function and operation of the mind. What would it mean to read Williams without privileging familiar terms and categories like imagism, objectivism or, more provocatively, the ordinary things which have so often anchored critical treatments of his work?
Continue reading