William Carlos Williams Essay

The poet William Carlos Williams was best known for his short poems that formed immediate bonds with his audience by soliciting an image in the mind of the reader, holding it for a few seconds and then letting go. Williams used any item he could find to pen his random thoughts on, a piece of paper, a napkin, or at the top of the medical chart of his last patient. Each was as random as the subject of his thought-provoking short lines of pro. He saved all his random notes, and periodically published them a few times a year. His works are beloved by millions of followers. He has his place in history and the classrooms as student’s study and ponders the meaning of the plum or a red wheel barrel. Fast ford to the twenty-first century and Tweets

Some tweets are informative, but the general everyday user is unconsciously expressing their random thoughts in less than 140 characters. The intent is to prompt a reaction, a smile, a laugh, anger or an image to share. It is a connection of minds on the same simple thing. Sharing an experience creates a bond. A website called Hello Giggles talks about how twitter is endless memes. Rachel Leishman said, “Meaning to say that now Twitter’s made even a William Carlos Williams poem go viral” (Leishman). Williams wrote short poems then turned them into memes and posted them on twitter. Individuals like reading tweets and posting them. Williams writes in his autobiography that he wrote his random thoughts between patients based on experiences with his patients. His work was not born out of sitting down to write a poem about a river or a flower or a lover. It was small, select words cleverly placed together to create a specific image that could have untold amounts of interpretations. That people could take it 100 different ways was the genius of his work. It is what made it so popular that there are twitter followers writing his poems to this day. In fact, there are now Twitter