&quote;Happy genius of my household&quote;

This work tells the inside story of William Carlos Williams's busy family life as parent, doctor, and poet. Through chapters that evoke the stream of everyday life, his son William Eric Williams's unique insight into the domestic context of an ordinary American household illuminates an extraordinary poetic legacy in the first decades of the 20th century. The 18 chapters focus on different contexts that colored the family's years, from the importance of sports, walking trips, food, and cars to money, gardening, and the legendary house at 9 Ridge Road--home not only to the poet's medical practice but also to works by many visiting artist friends such as Charles Demuth and Marsden Hartley. As a physician himself, William Eric's approach to the biography of his father is that of doctor to patient, offering the family, social, sexual, and occupational histories, as well as a physical examination.