Writers Writing Dying: Poems

Writers Writing Dying: Poems

Since his first poetry collection, Lies, C. K. Williams has nurtured an incomparable reputationâ€•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 identityâ€•his candor, the drama of his verses, the social conscience of his themesâ€•while slyly reinventing himself, re-casting his voice, and in many poems examining the personalâ€•sexual desire, the hubris of youth, the looming specter of deathâ€•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 slashâ€•are we trying to change the world by changing the words?" With this wildly vibrant collectionâ€•by turns funny, moving, and surprisingâ€•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."

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