Selected Poems (Paper) - Softcover

Williams, William Carlos; Tomlinson, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081120958X ISBN 13: 9780811209588

Publisher: New Directions, 1985

Synopsis

For his Selected Poems, C. K. Williams has chosen from three decades of his work - ranging from his early poems to a group of new poems - to produce a volume that represents every aspect of his remarkable career. The book opens with poems from Lies (1969) and I Am the Bitter Name (1971), which introduced Williams as one of the most gifted poets of his generation, and moves on to an exquisite series of poems inspired by the Japanese poet Issa. These are followed by a substantial portion of With Ignorance (1977), where Williams first explored the bold, sinewy, capacious long line that has become a hallmark of his work - and one of the genuine innovations in postwar American poetry. The selections from his subsequent work, Tar (1983), Flesh and Blood (1987), and A Dream of Mind (1992), show him mastering that line in fiercely unsentimental, succinct eight-line vignettes, and longer poems in which his vigilant sensibility ranges over the American moral landscape with a characteristic authority and intensity of insight. The book closes with thirteen new poems in which the metaphysical aspect of Williams's recent work emerges with fresh and striking directness.

About this title

Review:

The greatness of a poet is not to be measured by the scale but by the intensity and perfection of his works. Also by his vivacity. Williams is the author of the most vivid poems of modern American poetry. --Octavio Paz"

Williams's best reader on either side of the Atlantic has been a Briton, Charles Tomlinson... --Hugh Kenner"

About the Author:

Besides being a practicing physician, William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a poet, short-story writer, novelist, translator, playwright, and essayist whose contribution to the development of modern American poetry grew out of his commitment to recording the "local" experience of Rutherford, New Jersey, and its environs.

Charles Tomlinson read English at Queens College, Cambridge, has lived in Northern Italy and London, and has recently retired after thirty-six years of teaching at the University of Bristol. In 1993 he received the Bennett Award for achievement in literature from The Hudson Review of New York, and in 1991 the Premio Europeo di Cittadella. He is the editor of the classic anthology The Oxford Book of Verse in English Translation. He lives in Gloucester, England.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 081120958X
• ISBN 13: 9780811209588
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 302