Customer Reviews

Repair: Poems

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have been an admiring reader of C.K. Williams since picking up a copy of "With Ignorance" from a new publication shelf in my college library, some twenty years ago. I have continued, volume after volume with Williams. Something that I can say for only a few poets. In "Repair" Williams is moving into new territory, beginning to move away exclusively from the long line that has come to represent his work. The poetry of the older Williams is as distinguished as his earlier work. He has found a new sense of calm and belonging not found in previous books. I can only recommend that someone who is new to C.K. Williams, should search out his earlier volumes. He is a great American poet and he continues only to satisfy.

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.

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.

This worthwhile collection of 38 poems was nominated for the National Book Award. It then went on to win the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, which is what prompted me to read it. Williams' poems are about, among other things, trying to connect with the sacred while "trapped" in a world of "abandoned, graffiti-stricken factories," portable phones, and "subdivisions, parking lots, [and] malls" ("The Train," "Not Soul"), trying to connect with others ("I felt again how separate we all are from each other," he writes in "Archetypes"), trying to connect with "those long-ago days" of childhood ("The Dress," "The Cup," "Dirt"), trying to connect with oneself ("All I see is the residue of my other failed faces," he writes in "Glass"), trying to connect with love ("Depths"), and trying to connect with his seven-day-old grandson ("Owen"). These poems are about the troubled journey of life.

G. Merritt

C.K. Williams's REPAIR is an excellent volume of poetry. Because it was the first volume of his that I have read, I wasn't sure what to expect; however, he pleasantly surprised me with clear diction, vividly sharp imagery, and excellent subject matter. One main negative aspect of the book is Williams's tendency to become too abstract. Still, his great poems, such as "Ice," "The Poet," and "King," with their impressive range, lilting and forceful tones, and meditative facets, more than made up for any abstruse statements on his part. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a vibrant and realistic poet in an age of volubility and fake sentimentality.

This review is in light of the previous view of 1 star...all I can say is that when one denotes a poet who bares his or her soul in the form of verse with the talent of Mr. Williams as "watching a dog lick up its vomit" is saying more about him-or-herself than the poet...

What a joy to pick up the newest book of poems by C.K. Williams. As a longtime reader I can only say that he has out-done himself this time. His work gets better and better.

Despite the occasional strong image and consistent sentiment(ality) of his recent poems, especially those in Repair, CK Williams fails to do much with language, and therefore fails to write good poetry. His long lines carry more tendentiousness than Whitman and Ginsberg (I see Williams as a contemporary Carl Sandburg--perhaps right in his heart, but embarrassing on the page), and little of those poets' exuberance and innovation. William Logan (in The New Criterion) once wrote that reading a poem by CK Williams is like watching a dog devour its own vomit; Logan is wrong only in attributing something so fascinating to Williams's poetry: reading the poems in Repair is like watching a dog sleep. Williams is no seer or sage, but a sack of air hissing slowly.

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.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wasn't at all impressed with this book. There were exactly three poems in the book that I thought worth reading. The others just ramble on and on without saying or doing anything new or interesting - complete waste of time. I haven't read his other books, so I'm not sure whether he just forgot to edit these poems, or if all his poems read this way.