(First let me say, this photo does not do justice to these illustrations  because they are rich and gorgeous. )

A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams  by Jen Bryant and illustrated by Melissa Sweet (Eerdmans, 2008).  is a picture book biography of the Imagist poet William Carlos Williams.   Williams is considered one of the great American poets, and the pared down simplicity and strong images of his poems makes them accessible to children.  Their very simplicity also creates a unique intensity and force.

Little Willie Wiliams grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey, playing baseball and racing his friends. “But when the other boys went inside, Willie stayed outside.”  He observed everything and listened to the rhythm of the river.

In high school Willie’s teacher read him poetry and he tried to write his own.  But “he had pictures in his mind that didn’t fit exactly into steady rhythms or rhymes.”  “I want to write about ordinary things–plums, wheelbarrows, and weeds, fire engines, children, and trees.”  So he did. 

Willie was a good poet.   But he needed money too.  Willie’s mother suggested  he become a doctor like his Uncle Carlos.  Willie liked the thought of helping people, so off he went to the university to study medicine.  Could he write poetry and study medicine too?

Of course!  And when he returned to his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey to be a family doctor, Willie was busier than ever.   “But not matter how many babies he delivered, no matter now many sick people he cured, Willie could not stop writing poems.”  ”After his long doctor’s day, Willie climbed to the attic” and as the lights in the town turned off one by one Willie tooks words and “shaped them into poems.”

Jen Bryant’s lyrical style  is wonderfully suited to a book about a poet.  She has also written other books about artists:  Georgia O’Keefe, Marianne Moore, composer Olivier Messiaen.

Illustrator Melissa Sweet weaves several of the poems into her artwork and more poems are printed inside the front and back covers.  The dust jacket calls the illustrations “stunning” and that is not too strong of a word for Sweet’s mixed media.

 I adore this book.  I loved studying William Carlos Williams in college, and when I won this book at a writer’s conference, I was surprised by how many of my fellow writers had never even heard of him.  This simple biography provides a fantastic introduction.  It introduces Williams’ life, his poetry, his motivation, his style, and his amazing persistance and work ethic.  It has a timeline, additional biographical information, and a bibliography at the end.  All in just 32 pages!  A River of Words proves once again that picture books aren’t just for children.