| Name: |
William Carlos Williams |
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Place of Birth: |
|
| Place of Death: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
| Occupations: |
|
One should perhaps always resist the temptation to sum up a writer's life and work, his "essence," by way of a single revealing anecdote. In the case of William Carlos Williams, however, a story Kenneth Burke has told captures something of that special quality of temper and feeling that pervades Williams's life and work. Some years after Williams had retired from his medical practice he, Burke, and a neighbor's dog were walking slowly along a beach in Florida. The dog was limping. Burke, hoping to help the dog, leaned down clumsily to grasp the injured paw, and the dog, suddenly frightened, nearly bit him. Williams took the paw in his left hand and started to feel around for the problem. "It was a gesture," Burke writes, "at once expert and imaginative, something in which to have perfect confidence, as both the cur and I saw in a flash." Probing the dog's padded paw "lightly, quickly, and above all surely," Williams found a small burr and removed it without hurting the animal.
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 20,079 words (approx. 67 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our William Carlos Williams Access Pass.
