SOURCE: "Rare Presences: The Knife of the Times and Life Along the Passaic River," in William Carlos Williams, A Study of the Short Fiction, G. K. Hall & Co., 1989, pp. 39-78.

In the following excerpt, Gish elucidates the thematic, stylistic, and technical characteristics of Williams's short fiction.

Williams's first two volumes of short stones, The Knife of the Times (1932) and Life Along the Passaic River (1938), represent the kinds of "rare presences" he found as a doctor in his various encounters with his patients and with people in general; in listening to what they said and how they said it—with the ear not just of a physician formulating a diagnosis or prescription but of a poet tuned in for the music and dance of their words and voicings. Williams's stories are records of those times, those meetings, those places, and of his remembering of them; they are his attempt...