William Carlos Williams was a great poet and maybe an even greater influence on generations of American poets. As John Berryman wrote in a poem in memory of Williams, “Your generosity to juniors made you deeply loved, deeply …”

This book is evidence of his influence on about 100 poets, living and dead, who either knew Williams or found their own voices in part because of his.

Williams (1883-1963) lived long enough to inspire a lot of writers. He was present at the birth of literary modernism, was pals with Ezra Pound for many years, had a fist fight with Ernest Hemingway and survived strokes and poor health to write powerful poetry into his 70s, just as the Beat poets and Bob Dylan were catching hold.

He also was a medical doctor, a fact that gets reworked too many times in this collection, but it’s an angle on one of the most angular of poets, one who refuses to be defined in just one way.