W. Scott Peterson, MD
Comments on the William Carlos Williams Biennial
Tinta regada
1 de octubre de 2024
As an independent scholar who has published work on William Carlos Williams,* I have attended all the WCW Biennials to date. They are wonderful meetings, allowing anyone interested in Williams to participate in the substantive discussions following each formal presentation.
This year’s conference in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, was especially noteworthy, opening new vistas into the life and work of one of the twentieth century’s most important writers. New vistas were also opened, for this attendee, into the history, culture, and beauty of a part of Puerto Rico not as widely known or visited as it should be. There is much to learn and experience in and around Mayagüez. I would highly recommend UPRM as the site for other academic conferences in any and all fields supported by the university.
As a physician I was especially interested in the discussions related to connections between Williams’ medicine and his poetry (and other literary modes). My own work, presented at the last WCW Biennial (Chicago) and soon to be published in the William Carlos Williams Review, demonstrated the influence of medical case histories and presentations on the organization of Paterson. The presentation at this year’s Biennial by Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera (UPRM) demonstrated how Williams’ writing combined both a medical/medicinal language with a poetic/literary language. Combining these two approaches makes a strong case for continued work relating medicine and literature in Williams’ oeuvre. It should be noted that Williams’ medical heritage extends back to his maternal uncle and namesake, Carlos Hoheb, a Mayagüez physician. A walking tour of Mayagüez, including the most likely sites for Williams’ mother’s house, was yet another highlight of this conference.
Roundtable Discussion: ‘William Carlos Williams and Translation.” Jonathan Cohen (Independent Scholar), Peter Ramos (Buffalo State University), and Julio Marzán (author of The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams). Tenth Biennial Conference of the William Carlos Williams Society, February 15-17, 2024, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Mayagüez.
An additional major theme of this WCW Biennial was “translation” – in many ways an act of love as exemplified by Martin Buber’s concept of “I and Thou,” also a central theme of WCW’s long poem, Paterson. Although my Spanish could be stronger, I returned home from this conference with new understanding of the Hispanic roots of WCW and a deep and abiding love for a beautiful island, its culture, and its people, all powerfully and fully translated by the experiences of my time in Puerto Rico.
Work Cited:
*Peterson, Walter Scott, An Approach to Paterson, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967.
