Repair : Poems

Rating:
Summary: The Most Penetrating Poet of Our Time: Skill and Depth
Review: C.K. Williams poems wound us to heal us. They dig deep into the psyche, revealing our intimate thoughts, our guilt, our attempts at love, our failures and little triumphs. He is the most psychologically profound poet we have writing in America today. His skill is dazzling and he keeps the reader closely with him, building a tension that is at once inviting and beguiling. We feel that we're living inside his head and he is living inside ours as we read his amazingly wrought poems. This is poetry unlike any other of our times. C.K. Williams books are worth every minute and penny we spend with them. Accessible and penetrating. Imaginative and rich, but most of all honest and true. Deeply questioning and loving, this poet blames and forgives us for all at the same time that he heals our loneliness.

Rating:
Summary: Mere description is not poetry
Review: Sure, it is excellently wrought, heavily considered, well-written description. But in the end, it has not moved-- not transformed-- not gone anywhere. That is boring, and that is what the Pulitzer people seem to like. It's not enough to be a describer of things. Newspapers and other media already do that very well. To be a poet, you've got to go somewhere, be something. Pure boredom in this book.

Rating:
Summary: Craftsman delights in different forms: keeps moral focus
Review: Williams has nor stayed with the uniformly long and sometimes exhausting lines of his previous work, and shows us what can be done with briefer forms. The book reminds me of a visit to an ancient English home, in which a visitor wondered "How do they get that wonderful finish?" An attendant leaned forward and said "400 years of elbow grease Madam." The poems in 'Repair' are complex and multi-layered, the evidence of many years of elbow grease, and much mature reflection. I am privileged to be able to learn from them.