I'm sure one of the biographies would give the anecdote in detail, but all I've got in my home office is a footnote in the Kennedy/Gioia Introduction to Poetry: "Dr. Williams's poem reportedly contains a personal experience: he was gazing from the window of the house where one of his patients, a small girl, lay suspended between life and death. (This account, from the director of the public library in Williams's native Rutherford, NJ, is given by Geri M. Rhodes in 'The Paterson Metaphor in William Carlos Williams's Paterson,' master's essay, Tufts U, 1965.)"
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