The Singing Poems

New work from the Pulitzer-Prize winning author ofRepair . . . Reality has put itself so solidly before me there's little need for mystery . . . Except for us, for how we take the world to us, and make it more, more than we are, more even than itself. --from "The World" The awards given to C.K. Williams' two most recent books--a National Book Award forThe Singingand a Pulitzer Prize forRepair--complete the process by which Williams, long admired for the intensity and formal daring of his work, has come to be recognized as one of the few truly great living American poets. Williams treats the characteristic subjects of a poet's maturity--the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, the receding memories of childhood, the baffling illogic of current events--with an intensity and drive that recall not only his recent work but also his early books, published forty years ago.The Singingis a direct and resonant book: searing, hearfelt, permanent. C. K. Williamsis the author of several books of poems; he has also published an essay collection, works of translation, and a memoir. His work has received numerous awards, including the PEN/Voelcker Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the prestigious Berlin Prize, and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Williams teaches in the Writing Program at Princeton University and lives part of the year in Paris. Winner of the National Book Award ABooklistEditors' Choice In his first volume of poems sinceRepair, which was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, Williams treats the characteristic subjects of a poet's maturity--the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, the receding memories of childhood, the baffling illogic of current events--with an intensity and drive that recall not only his recent work but also his early books, which were published some forty years ago. Williams here gazes at a Rembrandt self-portrait, and from it fashions a self-portrait of his own. He ponders an "anatomical effigy" at the Museum of Mankind, an in so doing "dissects" our common humanity. Stoking a fire at a house in the country, he recalls a friend who was burned horribly in war, and then turns, with eloquence and authority, to contemporary life during wartime, asking "how those with power over us can effect these things, by what cynical reasoning do they pardon themselves." The Singingis a direct and resonant book of poems: touching, searching, heartfelt, permanent. Winner of the National Book Award "There are masterful poems in this book . . . Williams's ability to describe continues to be extraordinary and so is his gift for telling a story."--Charles Simic,The New York Review of Books "There are masterful poems in this book . . . Williams's ability to describe continues to be extraordinary and so is his gift for telling a story."--Charles Simic,The New York Review of Books "The poems in Williams's stunning new collection,The Singing, have a new density and clarity. They are clear about complex things, which one sees as slightly magnified, like pebbles on the bed of a very clear stream. Williams now realizes more than ever that 'your truths will seek you, though you still / must construct and comprehend them.' He succeeds at this task with a flair that tempers the regret that is the recurring note in these poems, and transforms it into something like joy."--John Ashbery "Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Williams has written, 'Poetry confronts in the most clear-eyed way just those emotions which consciousness wishes to slide by.' This crucial observation can be read as Williams' creative credo, because he has taken as his mission the articulation of those aspects of life that haunt and plague us th

C. K. Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Repair in 1999. His most recent work is Misgivings (2000), a memoir. He teaches at Princeton University and lives part of the year in Paris, France.