In a review of Herbert Leibowitz's biography of Williams, book critic Christopher Benfey wrote: Early and late, Williams held the conviction that poetry was, in his friend Kenneth Burke's phrase, "equipment for living, a necessary guide amid the bewilderments of life." The American ground was wild and new, a place where a blooming foreigner needed all the help he could get. Poems were as essential to a full life as physical health or the love of men and women.
In a review of Herbert Leibowitz's biography of Williams, book critic Christopher Benfey wrote: Early and late, Williams held the conviction that poetry was, in his friend Kenneth Burke's phrase "equipment for living, a necessary guide amid the bewilderments of life." The American ground was wild and new, a place where a blooming foreigner needed all the help he could get. Poems were as essential to a full life as physical health or the love of men and women.