Books: Poetry Between Patients

PATERSON, BOOKS I & II (113 pp.)—William Carlos Williams—New Directions ($1.50).

PATERSON, BOOK III (51 pp.)—William Carlos Williams—New Directions ($3).

Just off the main street of Rutherford, NJ. (pop. 16,000) stands the clapboard home and office of Dr. William Carlos Williams, M.D., 66, the best-known pediatrician in town. Doctoring is a busy life, but it is not enough for Williams: for over 40 years, on prescription blanks, old envelopes and other odd scraps of paper, he has been jotting down his impressions. A lot of the jottings turned out to be poetry.

Offhand, nobody...