In his work as a physician Williams had learnt the skill of objective observation which he applied to his poetry examining as he said 'the particular to discover the universal'. Marked by a vernacular American speech & direct observation of the landscape & people of his native New Jersey his poetry explores the 'raw merging of American pastoral & urban squalor. Emotionally restrained but rich in sensory experience the poems were written according to the guiding concept: 'no ideas but in things' & those 'things' a red wheelbarrow a group of trees a river convey the local & the particular with a vivid intensity.