In the American Grain is, as William Carlos Williams said, “a study to try to find out for myself what the land of my more or less accidental birth might signify.” Although Williams wrote poetry and prose—and was a doctor—he was not a historian. In this book, he applies a fresh, lyrical perspective to moments in America’s past. Beginning with the bloody Erik the Red, discoverer of Greenland and father of Leif Erikson, Williams revisits episodes...

The poet, doctor, and publisher William Carlos Williams lived one of the most interesting literary lives of the 20th century. Though initially an imagist poet like Ezra Pound, Williams broke with him and sought to invent an entirely fresh--and singularly American--poetic, whose subject matter was centered on the everyday circumstances of life and the lives of common people.