Books Noted
C. K. Williams, Wait

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010

With Wait, C. K. Williams displays a remarkable ability to reflect with acuity on a variety of subject matter, objects, and situations, in settings as diverse as farmland's back roads, a Paris metro car, and a Tsvetaeva essay. With sure and powerful diction, Williams culls object after object, situation after situation, in an attempt to gain the "real" from the imminent moment, no matter how hard a truth might be uncovered. In the title poem, perhaps in an attempt to distinguish his will from fate, Williams writes, "time . . . render me, leave me slop in a pail, one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore, another still riven with idiot vigor." Indeed, the vigor throughout this volume of poems spotlights Williams's singular poetic flair.