Modernism Medicine William Carlos Williams

"Of all the modernist poets, William Carlos Williams is unique in that his training as a physician and his lifetime of medical practice made him especially conversant in the language of medical science, at a time when medical education was being reformed along more scientific lines and the physician's everyday experience was being transformed by technological innovations." "Using Williams's poetry as a focal point, T. Hugh Crawford examines the relations between the rise of modernism and the history of medical science, medical education in America, and the cultural authority of scientific discourse. The main argument of Modernism, Medicine, and William Carlos Williams is that clarity and cleanliness function as organizing concepts in Williams's writing, in medical texts, and in the discourse of modernism in general. By examining Williams's poems, fiction, and essays, Crawford shows how the poet's ideas were imbued with the perspectives of early twentieth-century science and how he was able to gain authority to speak as a poet by appealing to powerful technoscientific discursive practices." "As science and technology came to occupy different positions of power in the middle twentieth century than they had earlier, so too did Williams's writings shift. Williams came increasingly to question the assumptions of modernist medicine and science, to the point where he participated in (and in some ways anticipated) today's critique of Enlightenment science. In other words, he made the leap from modernism to postmodernism, a change seen most clearly in his epic poem Paterson." "Crawford's thought-provoking study reveals the conflicts inherent in Williams's ideas and poetic practice, finding parallels between those conflicts and developing problems in American medical education as well as the changing role of scientific authority in American culture. Fifteen illustrations accompany the text."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

"Crawford's book, which is richly informative & unfailingly interesting & readable, makes a substantial & theoretically sophisticated contribution to scholarship."--AMERICAN LITERATURE.

Not only for students and doctors, this volume contains Williams's thirteen doctor stories, several of his most famous poems on medical matters, and The Practice from The Autobiography.

Spring and All (1923) is a book of poems by William Carlos Williams. Predominately known as a poet, Williams frequently pushed the limits of prose style throughout his works, often comprised of a seamless blend of both forms of writing. In Spring and All, the closest thing to a manifesto he wrote, Williams addresses the nature of his modern poetics which not only pursues a particularly American idiom, but attempts to capture the relationship between language and the world it describes. Part essay, part poem, Spring and All is a landmark of American literature from a poet whose daring search for the outer limits of life both redefined and expanded the meaning of language itself. “There is a constant barrier between the reader and his consciousness of immediate contact with the world. If there is an ocean it is here.” In Spring and All, Williams identifies the incomprehensible nature of consciousness as the single most important subject of poetry. Accused of being “heartless” and “cruel,” of producing “positively repellant” works of art in order to “make fun of humanity,” Williams doesn’t so much defend himself as dig in his heels. His poetry is addressed “[t]o the imagination” itself; it seeks to break down the “the barrier between sense and the vaporous fringe which distracts the attention from its agonized approaches to the moment.” When he states that “so much depends / upon // a red wheel / barrow,” he refers to the need to understand the nature of language, which keeps us in touch with the world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All is a classic of American literature reimagined for modern readers.

Contains 170 letters selected from the surviving correspondence of two of Modernism's legendary poets. Dating from 1907 until Williams' death in 1963, each letter is reproduced in full and accompanied by explanatory notes. Includes a historical introduction setting the letters in context. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Autobiography is an unpretentious book; it reads much as Williams talked—spontaneously and often with a special kind of salty humor. But it is a very human story, glowing with warmth and sensitivity. It brings us close to a rare man and lets us share his affectionate concern for the people to whom he ministered, body and soul, through a long rich life as physician and writer. William Carlos Williams’s medical practice and his literary career formed an undivided life. For forty years he was a busy doctor in the town of Rutherford, New Jersey, and yet he was able to write more than thirty books. One of the finest chapters in the Autobiography tells how each of his two roles stimulated and supported the other.

An invaluable introductory guide for students, this Companion features thirteen new essays from leading international experts on William Carlos Williams, covering his major poetry and prose works. It addresses central issues of recent Williams scholarship and considers his relationships with contemporaries as well as the importance of his legacy.

The Cambridge History of American Modernism examines one of the most innovative periods of American literary history. It offers a comprehensive account of the forms, genres, and media that characterized US modernism: coverage ranges from the traditional, such as short stories, novels, and poetry, to the new media that shaped the period's literary culture, such as jazz, cinema, the skyscraper, and radio. This volume charts how recent methodologies such as ecocriticism, geomodernism, and print culture studies have refashioned understandings of the field, and attends to the contestations and inequities of race, sovereignty, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity that shaped the period and its cultural production. It also explores the geographies and communities wherein US modernism flourished-from its distinctive regions to its metropolitan cities, from its hemispheric connections to the salons and political groupings that hosted new cultural collaborations.