Many critics have noticed the paradoxes and contradictions in the work of William Carlos Williams, but few have analyzed them in detail. Professor Ahearn argues that Williams criticism has not gone far enough in recognizing the uses Williams saw for contradiction. He contends that Williams began to acquire his own voice as a poet when he recognized that he could be a vehicle for contending voices.

Ahearn's reading departs from previous examinations of the early poetry in its emphasis on the poems as expressions of Williams's personal struggles with himself, his parents, his domestic role and his social position. We find a Williams whose contribution to modernism came not through a radical break with tradition or a rejection of inherited poetic norms alone, but rather in a cultivation of tension, conflict and a kind of poetic "crisis" that could be held forth as the metier of the modernist writer.

The reconciliation of things as old as civilization itself with the newest form of poetry, Ahearn argues, is the principal theme of Williams's early poetic practice.