Poems
by C. K. Williams
Wait finds C. K. Williams by turns ruminative, stalked by "the conscience-beast, who harries me," and "riven by idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was for whom everything was going too slowly, too slowly." Poems about animals and rural life are set hard by poems about shrapnel in Iraq and sudden desire on the Paris Métro; grateful invocations of Herbert and Hopkins give way to fierce negotiations with the shades of Coleridge, Dostoevsky, and Celan. What the poems share is their setting in the cool, spacious, spotlit, book-lined place that is Williamss consciousness, a place whose workings he has rendered for fifty years with inimitable candor and style.
"Williams at his best has soul: a perfect ear for the just right ending coupled with an exquisite eye for images that resonate. This book belongs on all poetry lovers' shelves." - Library Journal
"Starred Review. Exacting and impassioned, Williams adds another electrifying and important collection to his extraordinary canon." - Booklist
"Starred Review. In his first new collection since his monumental Collected Poems, Pulitzer-winner and septuagenarian Williams delivers his best book in a decade, and one of his best outright." - Publishers Weekly
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
C.K. Williams's books of poetry include Repair (FSG, 2002), which won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and The Singing (FSG, 2003), winner of the National Book Award. He teaches at Princeton University and lives part of the year in France.
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