House Calls With William Carlos Williams, MD (Hardcover)

by Robert Coles (Author), Thomas Roma (Photographer), William Carlos Williams (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"A visual and literary document of the lives and landscapes that inspired some of the most important and beautiful poetry of the 20th century." --V Magazine

Review
"These dual present-day accounts are interspersed with Williams's sparse poetry, where you see the modernist master's philosophy synthesized. This book is a quiet comparison of poetry and photography's composition, held together (and illuminated) by the subjective record of private memory."

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 106 pages
• Publisher: powerHouse Books; 1 edition (September 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576874753
• ISBN-13: 978-1576874752
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #163,374 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "I have eaten the plums", November 28, 2008

By	Linda Bulger (Avon, Maine) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

William Carlos Williams is known for his huge contribution to American literature during the first half of the twentieth century. He was friend, rival, or mentor to some of the most influential modernist and post-modernist poets of the era. He was also a pediatrician with a practice in and around Paterson, New Jersey for most of the same half-century.

Williams the doctor is the subject of House Calls With William Carlos Williams, MD. In an unusual collaboration, photographer Thomas Roma captured the streets where Williams had made his trademark house calls, and physician Robert Coles contributed the text from his memories of "rounding" with Williams as a medical student.

The linking principle between the photos and text is Williams's own practice of taking in the image and moving from there to the understanding. According to Coles, Williams "connected hearing and thinking to close, attentive watching, all part of the doctor's job." Coles quotes Williams on artists: "They made their house calls on us, got us to stop, look, consider -- the artist become a learner, a teacher, just as a house-calling doctor takes something in through his senses, then comes up with his 'findings.'"

Williams, steeped in urban America, was strongly socialist in his politics, and his doctoring was guided by the need to see patients in their social context. His role as observer is strongly stated in this book -- sometimes the sympathetic observer, sometimes passionate. Coles quotes Williams watching a group of children: "They never did, those big shots in Washington, during the 1930's, ask a lot of kiddos like those ... to talk about what's there, waiting to be heard, seen, handed over to others ... Where was the urban version of the FSA, aiming its sights at ordinary city kids? I guess we've gotten lost a little."

The reference to the Farm Security Administration's photo collection can't be accidental. The FSA collection is a definitive photographic record of rural and small-town life between the Depression and WWII, and Thomas Roma's bleak black-and-white cityscapes, taken in 2006 and 2007 for HOUSE CALLS, have the same feel. Harsh shadows, derelict buildings, drooping utility wires, fire escapes, trees blossoming against chain link fences -- they speak as strongly as the text. Both echo Williams's interest in structures, in juxtapositions, in the life of the city streets that gives modern America its shape and voice.

This small book (107 pages) is half text and half photos, with a few of Williams's poems incorporated; it's impossible, after all, to separate the doctor from the poet. Elusive, thought-provoking, deceptively simple, HOUSE CALLS begs to be read and then read again; like Williams's poetry, the structure and imagery convey as much as the words. Recommended for anyone interested in the poet, or in photography or mid-century urban American life. Five stars for a gift that keeps on giving.

Linda Bulger, 2008