Born on this day in Rutherford, New Jersey, poet William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) lived a double calling, with one hand delivering newborns and the other crafting language into luminous verse. A practicing pediatrician by day and a successful writer by devotion, he wove medicine and meaning into a single tapestry of care. He was a lifelong friend of Ezra Pound, who shared his passion for the sacred rhythm of words.

"The better work men do is always done under stress and at great personal cost," Williams once reflected. He published his first volume of poetry in 1913, marking the start of a lifelong effort to see the world clearly—and express it honestly.

"He exemplified the art of the eye," praised poet laureate Robert Pinsky. "What makes his poems persist is the art of ear and mind, the extraordinary sentences and rhythms he made." Williams painted with syllables, listening to the pulse of everyday speech and trusting it to lead him home.

Along with Pound and T. S. Eliot, Williams helped define the Imagist movement, celebrating the clean line and distilled moment. His work drew from the magic of American life itself. Like Robert Frost, he embraced idiom and language that felt lived in, rooted in the soil and soul of his country.

His eight-lined poem The Red Wheelbarrow (1959) asks us to notice—the ordinary, everyday objects that shape our lives. He taught us that poetry isn't separate from reality; it is reality, sharpened. The colors white and red become epiphanies when seen through his gaze.

“No ideas but in things,” he wrote in “A Sort of a Song”. “Invent.” The heart of his art was presence. A wheelbarrow. Rain. Chickens. All radiant, all worthy.

For forty years, Williams made house calls, stitched wounds, and listened. He jotted poems in his car between visits. The good doctor of words and wellness was awarded the 1963 Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel, a celebration of vision and detail. In its pages, he declared: “Only the imagination is real!” A truth for poets, dreamers, and caregivers alike.