Biography Essay

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...