Customer Reviews

Back Talk

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Although I didn't agree with everything in this book, the way Williams has a way of getting his opinion across is like no other poet I have come across. I love his reading his work!

BackTalk is beautiful. It has its flaws, to be sure, but most of these come not from bad writing but rather from the experimental nature of the work. Combining the text of poetry with pop-art graphic design, Williams has transcended the bookishness of poetry and reconcilled it to our society's increasing fascination with visual/video imagery. Much in the way music videos integrate music and image, BackTalk integrates poetry and image intelligently (Talking About God), wittily (Untitled) and emotionally (I Suppose I Should Mention I Wrote This Poem For Someone Else). Williams's themes range from a Gen-X, tongue-in-cheek approach to love poetry to reverently irreverent inquiries into the nature of God and religion to poetic self-identity. His writing is characterized by the new Fusion/Slam style of poetry that is written to be read out loud. To read BackTalk quietly in a library or coffeehouse or classroom is to miss the point... This book should be read out loud, in church services, at political debates, on the 2 a.m. streets. It should be shouted, yelled, whispered, spoken, debated. This is a book that needs to make its way to the heart via the mouth, to the brain via the tongue. It is a visceral, no-holds-barred powerhouse of a book, and it hints at the beginning of what poetry can become in the 21st century. It's well worth the money.