All at Once
Prose Poems
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Short, sharp musings on things profound and mundane (and sometimes both) from the Pulitzer Prize winning poet
C. K. Williams has never been afraid to push the boundaries of poetic form—in fact, he's known for it, with long, lyrical lines that compel, enthrall, and ensnare. In his latest work, All at Once, Williams again embodies this spirit of experimentation, carving out fresh spaces for himself and surprising his readers once more with inventions both formal and lyrical.
Somewhere between prose poems, short stories, and personal essays, the musings in this collection are profound, personal, witty, and inventive—sometimes all at once. Here are the starkly beautiful images that also pepper his poems: a neighbor's white butane tank in March "glares in the sunlight, raw and unseemly, like a breast inappropriately unclothed in the painful chill." Here are the tender, masterful sketches of characters Williams has encountered: a sign painter and skid-row denizen who makes an impression on the young soon-to-be poet with his "terrific focus, an intensity I'd never seen in an adult before." And here are a husband's hymns to his beloved wife, to her laughter, which "always has something keen and sweet to it, an edge of something like song."
This is a book that provokes pathos and thought, that inspires sympathy and contemplation. It is both fiercely representative of Williams's work and like nothing he's written before—a collection to be admired, celebrated, and above all read again and again.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pulling material from all periods and avenues of his life, Pulitzer Prize winner Williams (Wait) has aptly titled his 21st volume; a retrospective on love, art, and mortality, told in a voice dripping with equal parts nostalgia and self-interrogation. Keeping with his trademarked long, narrative lines, he muses on the minutiae of his life, keeping each vignette to a brief and tightly rendered prose poem, as if anxious to finish. At age 78, he acknowledges that this may very well be his last book: "here the end is almost upon me," he writes in "Mnemosyne". All the more reason to abandon the collection's disjointed nature in the second section, "Catherine's Laughter," to focus on a candid, loving portrayal of his French wife. Looking back on love, life, and art, Williams concludes that even now he has "no recognizable qualifications, and so was thrust into a nearly constant state of feeling... illicit, illegitimate, unentitled." The collection reads like a confessional, as in poems such as "Neither" he admits to the "perverse" enjoyment he gets from stealing condoms and smelling baby diapers. A master of poetics in his twilight years, Williams asks, "Aren't I still a thief, stealing some horde of language trash to justify my inner stink?"