"January Morning" by Physician-Poet William Carlos Williams | Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University

Williams Demonstrates the Poetic Can Be Found Everywhere around Us

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<a href="https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/sites/default/files/wcw-as-youn…; title="William Carlos Williams as an intern at Nursery and Child's Hospital, New York, around 1909." class="colorbox colorbox-insert-image" data-colorbox-gallery="gallery-all">
<img src="/sites/default/files/wcw-as-young-doctor_475.jpg" style="width:179px;height:208px;" alt="an image is here" title="William Carlos Williams as an intern at Nursery and Child's Hospital, New York, around 1909." /></a>
 
<div class="caption"><table width=173><tr><td>William Carlos Williams as intern at Nursery and Child's Hospital.</td></tr></table></div></DIV>

This year marks the centennial of the famous poem "January Morning" by America's great physician-poet <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/william-c…; target="_blank">William Carlos Williams</a> (1883–1963). A masterpiece of modernist verse, this poetic sequence — he subtitled it "Suite" — presents moments in his daily life, including his life as a pediatrician and obstetrican at Passaic General Hospital in Passaic, NJ.

"January Morning" first appeared in Williams's book, Al Que Quiere! (1917; "To Him Who Wants It!";
<a href="http://www.ndbooks.com/book/al-que-quiere/" target="_blank">Centennial Edition</a> forthcoming from New Directions). His voice in it remains totally vibrant. The New York Review of Books recently said, "It seems clear that Williams is the 20th-century poet who has done most to influence our very conception of what poetry should do."

The young doctor is dancing with happiness / in the sparkling wind, alone / at the prow of the ferry! — "January Morning"

Williams lived his entire life in <a href="https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/sites/default/files/Rutherford_…; target="_blank">Rutherford, NJ</a>, the small town where he was born and raised. It is where he maintained his medical office in his home — where most people knew him simply as "Doc" without knowing he was a man of letters and leader of modernism. He often spent time in Manhattan with fellow artists, crossing the Hudson River by ferry.
Al Que Quiere! was his third book but the first to present his unique poetic voice, as found in "January Morning."

All told, Williams published during his lifetime some 20 books of poetry as well as 17 books of prose, including novels, and he delivered more than 3,000 babies. Throughout his career he used his clinical gaze to his advantage as a poet:

<div class=subhead>January Morning (Suite)</div>

I 
I have discovered that most of 
the beauties of travel are due to 
the strange hours we keep to see them: 
the domes of the Church of 
the Paulist Fathers in Weehawken 
against a smoky dawn—the heart stirred— 
are beautiful as Saint Peters 
approached after years of anticipation. 
 II 
Though the operation was postponed 
I saw the tall probationers* 
in their tan uniforms 
                                  hurrying to breakfast! 
 III 
—and from basement entries 
neatly coiffed, middle aged gentlemen 
with orderly moustaches and 
well-brushed coats 
 IV 
—and the sun, dipping into the avenues 
streaking the tops of 
the irregular red houselets, 
                                                        and 
the gay shadows dropping and dropping. 
 V 
—and a young horse with a green bed-quilt 
on his withers shaking his head: 
bared teeth and nozzle high in the air!

VI 
—and a semicircle of dirt-colored men 
about a fire bursting from an old 
ash can, 
 VII 
                       —and the worn, 
blue car rails (like the sky!) 
gleaming among the cobbles! 
 VIII 
—and the rickety ferry-boat "Arden"! 
What an object to be called "Arden" 
among the great piers,—on the 
ever new river! 
                         "Put me a Touchstone 
at the wheel, white gulls, and we'll 
follow the ghost of the Half Moon 
to the North West Passage—and through! 
(at Albany!) for all that!"

IX 
Exquisite brown waves—long 
circlets of silver moving over you! 
enough with crumbling ice crusts among you! 
The sky has come down to you, 
lighter than tiny bubbles, face to 
face with you! 
                        His spirit is 
a white gull with delicate pink feet 
and a snowy breast for you to 
hold to your lips delicately!

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X 
The young doctor is dancing with happiness 
in the sparkling wind, alone 
at the prow of the ferry! He notices 
the curdy barnacles and broken ice crusts 
left at the slip's base by the low tide 
and thinks of summer and green 
shell-crusted ledges among 
                                the emerald eel-grass!

XI 
Who knows the Palisades as I do 
knows the river breaks east from them 
above the city—but they continue south 
—under the sky—to bear a crest of 
little peering houses that brighten 
with dawn behind the moody 
water-loving giants of Manhattan. 
 XII 
Long yellow rushes bending 
above the white snow patches; 
purple and gold ribbon 
of the distant wood: 
                      what an angle 
you make with each other as 
you lie there in contemplation. 
 XIII 
Work hard all your young days 
and they'll find you too, some morning 
staring up under 
your chiffonier at its warped 
bass-wood bottom and your soul— 
out! 
—among the little sparrows 
behind the shutter. 
 XIV 
—and the flapping flags are at 
half-mast for the dead admiral. 
 XV 
All this— 
                was for you, old woman.† 
I wanted to write a poem 
that you would understand. 
For what good is it to me 
if you can't understand it? 
                But you got to try hard— 
But— 
            Well, you know how 
the young girls run giggling 
on Park Avenue‡ after dark 
when they ought to be home in bed? 
Well, 
that's the way it is with me somehow.
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* Nursing students. 
† WCW's mother, who rejected his modernist poetry. 
‡ Street in Rutherford, NJ, near WCW's home.

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William Carlos Williams practiced pediatrics and obstetrics for over 40 years. He was a physician of immense integrity, who regarded
allegiance to humanism as important as excellence in medical science. He now serves as a role model, and medical students read him
(<A href="http://ndbooks.com/book/the-doctor-stories" target=_blank>The Doctor Stories</A>) to learn how he
labored to get the "right picture" of patients — much like artists do with paint on canvas, and photographers with cameras; what
today we call the holistic approach.

At Stony Brook Medicine, Williams is read in <A href="http://www.stonybrook.edu/bioethics/" target=_blank>The Center for Medical
Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics</A>. Established in 2008 to expand and succeed the Institute for Medicine in Contemporary
Society, the Center is dedicated to furthering the School of Medicine's long tradition of emphasizing humanism in medical education,
and serving as "a place where the human side of medicine is elevated, examined, and revered."

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<a href="https://www.stonybrookmedicine.edu/sites/default/files/allen_ginsberg_o…; target="_blank">Listen to Allen Ginsberg</a> (4:16 min), whom Williams mentored, reading from and commenting on "January Morning." For more biographical info, see our post "<a href="/surgery/blog/remembering-william-carlos-williams">Remembering William Carlos Williams</a>."