The Vigil

by C. K. Williams

Overview

In The Vigil, his seventh book of poetry, C. K. Williams broadens and deepens the themes of A Dream of Mind with a range and imaginative vigor that make this his most powerful book yet.

"Williams is famous for his long verse line. An admirable instrument indeed, it is an Offenbach Barcarole of a line, seductively wafting us over the deeps Williams plumbs and charming attention away from the narrowness of the channel of subject matter through which he steers." - Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466880641
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	09/09/2014
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	150 KB

About the Author

C. K. Williams (1936–2015) published twenty-two books of poetry including, Flesh and Blood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Repair, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; and The Singing, winner of the National Book Award. Williams was awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2005. He wrote a critical study, On Whitman; a memoir, Misgivings; and two books of essays, Poetry and Consciousness and In Time: Poets, Poems,and the Rest.
C. K. Williams (1936–2015) published twenty-three books of poetry, including Flesh and Blood, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Repair, which won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry; and The Singing, winner of the National Book Award. He lived in New Jersey.

Editorial Reviews

A line of two-dozen syllables is, for Williams (A Dream of Mind, 1992), small potatoes. His stanzas extend to and from the book spine like knobby, elongated hands grabbing for God, for relief from pain and for love. A menagerie of woeful lives is explored, including those of a retarded woman, a metaphor-laden locust and a stroke victim. Williams wants to get miserable along with his subjects but continually finds himself too shell-shocked to be a player. In "Hawk," his response to a dying bird reminds him of his father's dying: "I was frightened then, too; then, too, something was asked and I wasn't who I wanted to be./ How seldom I am, how much more often this self-sundering doubt, this bewildering contending." He writes that a lover's pain "startled, then bored, then repelled" him, that as his mother was dying there was "Grief for my own eyes that try to seek truth, even of pain, of grief, but find only approximation." The real heart of Williams is that he fears he might just be heartless. This consternation makes him eminently appealing. However, one gets the feeling Williams wouldn't mind being pitied, even if he is a fool for love, and his wife speaks French; even if, as this work reflects, he plumbs a life that is relatively tragedy-free. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A line of two-dozen syllables is, for Williams (A Dream of Mind, 1992), small potatoes. His stanzas extend to and from the book spine like knobby, elongated hands grabbing for God, for relief from pain and for love. A menagerie of woeful lives is explored, including those of a retarded woman, a metaphor-laden locust and a stroke victim. Williams wants to get miserable along with his subjects but continually finds himself too shell-shocked to be a player. In "Hawk," his response to a dying bird reminds him of his father's dying: "I was frightened then, too; then, too, something was asked and I wasn't who I wanted to be./ How seldom I am, how much more often this self-sundering doubt, this bewildering contending." He writes that a lover's pain "startled, then bored, then repelled" him, that as his mother was dying there was "Grief for my own eyes that try to seek truth, even of pain, of grief, but find only approximation." The real heart of Williams is that he fears he might just be heartless. This consternation makes him eminently appealing. However, one gets the feeling Williams wouldn't mind being pitied, even if he is a fool for love, and his wife speaks French; even if, as this work reflects, he plumbs a life that is relatively tragedy-free.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

"Williams is famous for his long verse line. An admirable instrument indeed, it is an Offenbach Barcarole of a line, seductively wafting us over the deeps Williams plumbs and charming attention away from the narrowness of the channel of subject matter through which he steers." - Booklist

From the Publisher