Cover of The Singing

The Singing

New work from the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Repair

. . . Reality has put itself so solidly before me

there's little need for mystery . . . Except for us, for how we take the world

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to us, and make it more, more than we are, more even than itself.

—from "The World"

The awards given to C.K. Williams' two most recent books—a National Book Award for The Singing and a Pulitzer Prize for Repair—complete the process by which Williams, long admired for the intensity and formal daring of his work, has come to be recognized as one of the few truly great living American poets. Williams treats the characteristic subjects of a poet's maturity—the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, the receding memories of childhood, the baffling illogic of current events—with an intensity and drive that recall not only his recent work but also his early books, published forty years ago.The Singingis a direct and resonant book: searing, hearfelt, permanent.

The Singingis the winner of the 2003 National Book Award for Poetry.

Audience
adult
Length
short · 80 pages

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Liked The Singing? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked The Singing. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. In the Next Galaxy Shares poetry, national book award
  2. Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry Shares poetry, national book award
  3. Splay Anthem Shares poetry, national book award
  4. Blackbird and Wolf: Poems Shares poetry

“People who read The Singing tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Practical Gods
  2. Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980-1990
  3. Time and Materials
  4. Granted

“If you want more of the same, start with these.”

  1. HIV, Mon Amour
  2. Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, Expanded Edition
  3. Shake
  4. The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile

“If it was the poetry that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Passing Through: The Later Poems, New and Selected
  2. Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
  3. Country Music: Selected Early Poems
  4. Fire to Fire

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. White Egrets
  2. The Pupil: Poems
  3. Pierce the Skin: Selected Poems, 1982-2007
  4. Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast