Some Jazz a While: Collected PoemsSome Jazz a While, the eagerly anticipated collected poems of one of America's best-loved poets, gathers Miller Williams's most representative work and adds some new pieces as well. This generous collection welcomes newcomers as well as longtime admirers of Williams's trademark style: a compact and straightforward language, a masterful command of form, and an unsentimental approach to his subject matter. Williams treats the mundane interchanges, the lingering uncertainties, the missed opportunities, and the familiar sense of loss that mark daily life with the surgeon's deft touch. An American original, Miller Williams involves the reader's emotions and imagination with an effective illusion of plain talk, continually rediscovering what is vital and musical in the language we speak and by which we imagine. |
Contents
From A Circle of Stone | 1 |
From So Long at the Fair | 9 |
From The Only World There Is | 24 |
From Halfway from Hoxie | 44 |
From Why God Permits Evil | 54 |
From Distractions | 79 |
From The Boys on Their Bony Mules | 97 |
From Imperfect Love | 128 |
From Living on the Surface | 154 |
From Adjusting to the Light | 169 |
From Points of Departure | 202 |
From The Ways We Touch | 230 |
New Poems | 261 |
Acknowledgments | 273 |
| 275 | |