When they ask me, as of late they frequently do, how I have for so many
years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that
they amount for me to nearly the same thing.
-William Carlos Williams
William Carlos Williams made his mark on the world as a legendary
modernist poet, but he filled an equally significant role on a local
level in his native New Jersey-as a doctor. Over the first half of the
twentieth century, Williams built a successful practice as a
pediatrician and OB-GYN, and while some of his patients made the journey
to his office in the affluent town of Rutherford, many more were
privileged with house calls.
House Calls with William Carlos Williams, MD is a collaborative effort
by child psychiatrist Robert Coles and photographer Thomas Roma to
retrace Dr. Williams' rounds, which included patients from Rutherford
all the way north to Paterson. Coles, an early fan of the doctor's
literary work, befriended Williams as a young man, and in the early 50s
was invited to come along on many of these outings; his experiences are
recounted here in engaging first-person anecdotes. Roma was given access
to the patients' addresses in 2001, and plotted a route he would travel
with his camera over the course of the next five years; his quiet,
contemplative photographs of the streets Dr. Williams walked provide a
striking visual counterpoint to Coles' text. Selections of Williams'
poetry are reproduced throughout, including excerpts from his five-part
epic, Paterson. The result is an immersive experience, in which the
reader may travel side-by-side with Williams, listening and learning
from the famed poet, doctor, and mentor.