Some of his efforts were less successful than others; in some works he seems to be foaming at the mouth rather than writing and/or his imagination just doesn't achieve lift-off. But that's the exception rather than the rule. More often than not his works sound fresh and original even today; and at every moment, one feels his excitement for the written word, for the act of slapping words down on the page even when one is dropping dead from exhaustion (he was a full-time pediatrician after all, with two sons). Sometimes he scribbled down a poem on a prescription pad at 11 p.m. when the family had dropped off to sleep and he finally had a chance to be alone with his thoughts. (My situation right now.)
How badly we need a William Carlos Williams today...or more precisely, how badly we need an efflorescence of imaginative art, similar to the one that occurred about a century ago.
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