Oscar Williams

Oscar Williams was a poet and influential anthologist known for his fluency in multiple languages.

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Profession :

Poet

Birthday :

December 29, 1900

Death Date:

October 10, 1964

Age :

63

Oscar Williams (1899-1964) was a renowned poet and anthologist who gained prominence in the early 20th century. Born as Oscar Kaplan to Russian parents, he moved to New York at a young age and later adopted the pen name Oscar Williams due to a clerical error on his birth certificate. He is best known for his work “The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse,” a compilation of modern poetry. Additionally, Williams edited other poetry collections, such as “Master Poems of the English Language” and “Immortal Poems of the English Language.”

Williams co-founded the publishing company New Directions and held editorial positions at various literary magazines. A jazz enthusiast, he experimented with writing jazz poetry and maintained friendships with jazz musicians Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie, even writing liner notes for their albums. Some of his other notable works include “The War Poets,” “The American Poetry Anthology,” and “The Pocket Book of Modern Verse.”

An interesting aspect of Williams’ life is that he was fluent in Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew, owing to his Russian heritage.