Writers Writing Dying
Poems
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Since his first poetry collection, Lies, C. K. Williams has nurtured an incomparable reputation—as a deeply moral poet, a writer of profound emotion, and a teller of compelling stories. In Writers Writing Dying, he retains the essential parts of his poetic identity—his candor, the drama of his verses, the social conscience of his themes—while slyly reinventing himself, re-casting his voice, and in many poems examining the personal—sexual desire, the hubris of youth, the looming specter of death—more bluntly and bravely than ever. In "Prose," he confronts his nineteen year-old self, who despairs of writing poetry, with the question "How could anyone know this little?" In a poem of meditation, "The Day Continues Lovely," he radically expands the scale of his attention: "Meanwhile cosmos roars on with so many voices we can't hear ourselves think. Galaxy on. Galaxy off. Universe on, but another just behind this one . . . " Even the poet's own purpose is questioned; in "Draft 23" he asks, "Between scribble and slash—are we trying to change the world by changing the words?" With this wildly vibrant collection—by turns funny, moving, and surprising—Williams proves once again that, he has, in Michael Hofmann's words, "as much scope and truthfulness as any American poet since Lowell and Berryman."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Williams, one of America's most celebrated poets, now in his 70s, has been thinking out loud about death his own concertedly over his past several books, but this is the first time he's really having fun, taking a jaunty stroll toward oblivion, departing a life wasted "Sucking up another dumb movie on HBO" to reckon with his masters, the poets whose enduring lines have left him, as he says memorably in the book's opening poem "whacked so hard that you bash the already broken crown of your head." In a poem about poetry's capacity to ease depression, he asks, "Who should I be reading? Let's see. Neruda? No way, too rich./ Lowell and Larkin, good god, we're already in the pits...." In talky lines like these, thick with self-mocking irony, Williams is able to embody, if not confront, his growing fear, offering a strong dose of sideways empathy at the same time. Williams charges ahead, racing to get out of his own control "Think, write, write, think: just keep galloping faster and you won't even notice you're dead," he says in the book's title poem making for his most thrilling book in years.