A Study of the Objectivist Elements in William Carlos Williams’ selected poetry

This paper aims to undertake a study based on the Objectivist elements present in the selected poetry of William Carlos Williams. To do this, the article puts light on the fact that Williams’ poetry consists of concrete and clear pictures which are the byproducts of the Imagist and later on the Objectivist movements which he was strongly influenced by. In Williams’ poetry one can hardly find traces of abstractions. There are just physical, concrete and palpable things which will be easily imagined. Williams’ belief that a poem is an object with autonomous reality is in line with the way he puts things at the core of his poems. After illuminating the tenets of the Objectivist movement, this study will discuss three of Williams’ poems, namely The Red Wheelbarrow , Between Walls and The Term to illustrate the Objectivist elements within them and to show how he emphasizes matters rather than concepts.

Keywords:

The Objectivist Movement , The Imagist Movement , Concrete , Thing , Matter.