The Farmer's Daughters: Collected Short Stories

by William Carlos Williams

Williams, William Carlos

Genres: Poetry, Short Stories, Fiction

372 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

William Carlos Williams was an American poet closely associated with modernism and Imagism. He was also a pediatrician and general practitioner of medicine. Williams "worked harder at being a writer than he did at being a physician," wrote biographer Linda Wagner-Martin. During his long lifetime, Williams excelled both as a poet and a physician.

Although his primary occupation was as a doctor, Williams had a full literary career. His work consists of short stories, poems, plays, novels, critical essays, an autobiography, translations, and correspondence. He wrote at night and spent weekends in New York City with friends—writers and artists like the avant-garde painters Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia and the poets Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. He became involved in the Imagist movement but soon he began to develop opinions that differed from those of his poetic peers, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. Later in his life, Williams toured the United States giving poetry readings and lectures.

In May 1963, he was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962) and the Gold Medal for Poetry of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The Poetry Society of America continues to honor William Carlos Williams by presenting an annual award in his name for the best book of poetry published by a small, non-profit or university press.

Williams' house in Rutherford is now on the National Register of Historic Places. He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2009.

Reviews

[Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of my friends writes medical notes for local physicians - seems wildly fascinating to chronicle the daily events of a doctor's office. It seems Dr. Williams was his own medical scribe - here are his records - what he finds fascinating, so do I.

[Marcia Lassiter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't tell you why. I just really liked it

[Aleksandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could have easily been depressing, but the narrator looks at all the people he meets with a sympathetic eye and makes us do so too

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Williams was a prolific writer who ventured into a variety of forms, from the formal poetry of his early craft, to the enjambed pile-up of images he made famous with poems such as "The Red Wheelbarrow", to the drama, fiction, and short stories. He tried in his short stories to create the same objective feel which works so well in his poems. However, the short story is a different form, and the mock reader of the stories does not draw the reader into the story in the way it works whimsically in his poetry. My advice: stick with the poems.