Invisible Mending: The Best of C. K. Williams

(Paperback)

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The essential poetry of C. K. Williams, winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. C. K. Williams (1936-2015), one of the most treasured American poets of the past century, was also one of the most surprising. From poem to poem, his voice would shift in register and style, yet a certain essence would remain: his conviction, his ethic, and his burning gaze. As William Deresiewicz wrote in The New York Times, "Williams's scorching honesty has always been his calling card. His poetry proceeds not from a verbal impulse, not from a lyrical impulse, not even from a prophetic or visionary impulse, but from a moral impulse. Everything, in his work, is held up to the most exacting ethical scrutiny, beginning with the poet himself." Invisible Mending: The Best of C. K. Williams is the essential collection of the great poet's work. Selected by his family and friends and with an introduction by the award-winning poet Alan Shapiro, this book charts Williams's path from gifted young poet to his status as one of the most consequential poets of his-or any-generation. "If American poetry today is, as I believe it is, more diverse than ever," Shapiro writes, "more open to any and all forms of life, more vitally engaged with a world external to the self and shared with others, it's because of what the poems in this volume accomplished." This collection distills the prolific poet's body of work into one indispensable volume, through which one can trace the shifts and innovations that Williams's work bore on American poetry.

Reviews

"This remarkable volume gathers essential work from Williams (1936-2015; Falling Ill), highlighting his ranging thought and moral intensity as well as his transformations as a poet . . . Sensitive and humane, this dazzles." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"C.K. Williams is a masterful straight-speaker, and throughout his body of work the reader cannot help but feel his dynamic mind and astute irony. This collection of selected poems, Invisible Mending, introduced by Alan Shapiro, captures the reach and spirit of this one-of-kind American voice. And, in his longish, Whitman-like lines, C.K. is a witness who addresses head-on what glorifies and ails us. In his deep, personal voyage, from Lies to Catherine's Laughter, this poet beckons to humanity, as he praises and laments, and the reader knows this is where one confronts basic truths in a world of divergences and modern shapechangers, where earthly encounters and everyday lives collide magically in the brave poetry of C.K. Williams." --Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth

Author Bio

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.