Home is Where the Pen is

It has long been said that any good writer can only write about what he or she knows. What we know best is our home. Every leaf on every tree, the street sign's colors, the neighbor's houses are all ingrained into our brains for life. This is the same for William Carlos Williams. He wrote not about his home but rather incorporated a little of it into every one of his poems.

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford, just outside of Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson is the place of our focus. Paterson was founded in 1792 indirectly by Alexander Hamilton as a hub of water falls. It soon became known as the "silk city" for its massive output of the material. Not too much longer after that, Paterson sprouted as a massive factory locale. What Paterson is most known for, however, is not its accomplishments but the people it turned out and the writings spun around the third largest town in New Jersey.

Paterson was the birth place of not only William Carlos Williams but also to two other major poets: Allen Ginsberg and Simon Perchik. The first was one of the first beat poets and one of the most influential voices of the Postmodernism movement. Ginsberg was very vocal in his activism and stood up for, among other things, Gay Rights, Free Speech, and NAMBLA. Ginsberg wrote "Howl," which is still read in High Schools around the country. Simon Perchik, on the other hand, is much less controversial. He is an ex-lawyer who served in the military, Ginsberg's polar opposite. Perchik still writes poetry about his hometown.

Paterson mainly played role as setting for two other semi-random authors. It was the setting of Junot Diaz's short story that won her the Pulitzer. For John Updike, Paterson was the setting for his short story "In the Beauty of the Lillies." The most famous work, though, lies with William Carlos Williams and his five book poem with the title of the town.

Thus, the town was clearly important to William Carlos Williams. His family history is quite skewed, not based out of just one place. "His maternal grandmother, an Englishwoman deserted by her husband, had come to America with her son, married again, and moved to Puerto Rico. Her son – William’s father – married a woman descended on one side from French Basque people, on the other from Dutch Jews. This mix of origins always fascinated Wiliams and made him feel that he was different from what he thought of as mainstream Americans" (pg 1263). This only helped Williams to separate himself from the average people. He was raised mainly by his mother and grandmother as well, which also played well into his poetry. In his work, any woman is portrayed "as an earth mother, whom men require for completion and whose reason for being is to supply that completeness" (pg 1263). Thus, home is where the heart is and his heart was not only in with his family but with the town that nurtured him, Paterson, New Jersey.

Works Cited
The Norton Anthology of American Literature Between the Wars 1914-1945, Sixth Edition, Volume D
http://www.patersonnj.gov/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paterson,_New_Jersey