These writings, together with Dr. Robert Coles' enthusiastic appraisal of teaching Williams and Dr. William Eric Williams' personal and touching filial account, "My Father, the Doctor," make up an intriguing and timely study of the poet as a physician of rare humanity and self-knowledge. As Coles suggests, Dr. Williams' writing can help many others take a knowing look at the medical profession. Mind and body—Old Doc Rivers—The girl with a pimply face—The use of force—A night in June—Jean Beicke—A face of stone—Dance pseudomacabre—The paid nurse—Ancient gentility—Verbal transcription : 6 a.m. — The insane—Comedy entombed : 1930 — The practice (from The autobiography) — Poems: The birth ; Le médecin maglré lui ; Dead baby ; A cold front ; The poor ; To close—Afterword: My father, the doctor / by William Eric Williams
Author
William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician. Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures. In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press. Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.
