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C. K. Williams
(1936- ) Born in Newark, New Jersey, C.K. Williams is the
author of numerous books of poetry, including
Repair (1999),
which won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize;
The Vigil
(1997),
A
Dream of Mind (1992);
Flesh and Blood (1987), which
won the National Book Critics Circle Award;
Tar
(1983);
With
Ignorance (1997);
I Am the Bitter Name (1992); and
Lies
(1969). Williams is also a translator: Selected Poems of
Francis Ponge (1994); Canvas, by Adam Zagajewski
(with Renata Gorczynski and Benjamin Ivry, 1991);
The Bacchae
of Euripides (1990);
The Lark. The Thrush. The Starling
(Poems from Issa) (1998); and
Women of Trachis, by
Sophocles (with Gregory Dickerson, 1978).
Among his many awards and honors are an American Academy of
Arts and letters Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lila
Wallace-Reader's digest Award, the PEN/Voelcker Award for
Poetry, and a Pushcart Prize. Williams teaches in the creative
writing program at Princeton University and lives part of each
year in Paris.
Randall Jarrell famously compared the likelihood of writing a
good poem to that of being struck by a meteor. If that's the
case, C.K. Williams has been defying the odds for almost 20
years, ever since he published
Tar
. That collection, which appeared in 1983, marked the
debut of his poetic signature: the lengthy, elaborately
discursive line, packed to the gills with novelistic detail. And
since then, with
Flesh and Blood
and
The Vigil
, he's only refined his methods. At times Williams seems to
be working that no man's land between prose and verse, daring us
to read him as a rococo Raymond Carver--an Ash Can School unto
himself. But he always manages to pull one more syntactical
miracle from his hat, reminding us that he's a poet after all,
and a superlative one.
—James
Marcus
* * * *
*
THE
SINGING
I was walking home down a hill near our house
on a balmy afternoon
under the blossoms
Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here
every spring with
their burgeoning forth
When a young man turned in from a corner singing
no it was more of
a cadenced shouting
Most of which I couldn't catch I thought because
the young man was
black speaking black
It didn't matter I could tell he was making his
song up which pleased
me he was nice-looking
Husky dressed in some style of big pants obviously
full of himself
hence his lyrical flowing over
We went along in the same direction then he noticed
me there almost
beside him and "Big"
He shouted-sang "Big" and I thought how droll
to have my height
incorporated in his song
So I smiled but the face of the young man showed nothing
he looked
in fact pointedly away
And his song changed "I'm not a nice person"
he chanted "I'm not
I'm not a nice person"
No menace was meant I gathered no particular threat
but he did want
to be certain I knew
That if my smile implied I conceived of anything like
concord
between us I should forget it
That's all nothing else happened his song became
indecipherable to
me again he arrived
Where he was going a house where a girl in braids
waited for him on
the porch that was all
No one saw no one heard all the unasked and
unanswered questions
were left where they were
It occurred to me to sing back "I'm not a nice
person either" but I
couldn't come up with a tune
Besides I wouldn't have meant it nor he have believed
it both of us
knew just where we were
In the duet we composed the equation we made
the conventions to
which we were condemned
Sometimes it feels even when no one is there that
someone something
is watching and listening
Someone to rectify redo remake this time again though
no one saw nor
heard no one was there
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