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poetry12
, December 09, 2006
(view all comments by poetry12)
C.K. Williams book Repair was full of poems of both intriguing style and content. The poems ranged from relaxing, to challenging, to tragic and even amusing. Williams? style was distinctly different from other poets we?ve read this year, and the messages in his poems shared some similarities with the poems of Sam Taylor and Adrienne Rich, but also provided some contrast. While I didn?t feel that there were really any main themes running through all the poems in the book, this body of work was an interesting read and a look at a different type of poetry.
One thing that was interesting about this book was the titles Williams chose for his poems. Almost all of the titles were one word, and usually very simple. For me, this had a interesting effect on the way I read the poem. Titles such as ?House,? or ?King,? or ?Ice? gave a basic context for the poem, but went no further. I found myself reading the poems, trying to connect their content to the title. I found that this approach to reading the poems was effective in focusing my attention to what Williams was trying to get across with the poems, and it was a good way of reading them. With some of the other poetry we have read, I have found the titles confusing and at times too narrowly focused, therefore not having the same effect. Williams? titles in this book narrowed my thinking enough to clarify my thinking going into a poem, but they left the poems open enough for interpretation and did not try to make obscure references that took away from comprehension. The poem ?House? was a good example of this. Reading the title directed my mindset as I read the poem, and it helped to create strong images as I read lines like, ?Down to the scabrous plaster, down to the lining bricks with mortar squashed joints.? The poem, ?Naked? also had an interesting relationship to its title. There were parts of the poem in which the content?s relation to the title was fairly obvious, like, ?So, naked under the low lintel, an unaffrightening darkness before you.? It also made me think of how the poem as a whole, and less obvious segments, could relate to the title. It helped in thinking about all aspects of the poem and looking deeper into the meaning, which was the case with many of the poems in the book.
One poem that really caught my attention was ?King.? One thing I noticed about the poem was that it was written in more of a prose-like language than most of the other poems. This poem was almost a story, like a narrative description of an event or a memory. In the case of this poem, the event was very powerful and in itself very poetic, which is perhaps a reason Williams felt the language used to describe didn?t need to be especially poetic. Also, this poem, unlike the rest, was segmented, containing five sections. The five sections, united under the title of ?King,? explored different aspects and viewpoints of racial tension. It was fitting that King, in reference to Martin Luther King, Jr. was the title that unified the segments, as it reflected the unifying effect Martin Luther King had during the civil rights movement and his stature at the center of controversy. The first section set the stage for the poem, describing a memory of a black man walking to MLK?s memorial service and being impeded by the threat of white police officers. The poem then goes on in section 2 to describe the racial injustice that was prevalent at the time by discussing specific instances, such as, ?you?d be raped, gang-raped, and no one would dare say a thing.? Section 3 then returns to the memory and explores the unspoken emotional tensions that would have occurred during an encounter between the black man walking to the service and the white police, the narrative switching between the whites? thoughts and emotions, and those of the black man. A particularly powerful line in this sequence was,
sready to break their fists on you, maim or kill you so that you?d understand:
that their world would prevail, that authority, power, and absolute physical coercion
with no ethical dimension whatsoever must and will precede all and resolve all
This is an evocative description of the emotions that would have transpired in the situation being discussed. It encompassed the viewpoint of the white racists and shed light on how these views manifested themselves during the civil rights movement. Section 4 looks at how the black man would have reacted to the intimidation, and raises questions about motives and consequences. It closes with a powerful statement in italics about how whites could never truly understand the oppression that blacks felt, and that it was insulting when they tried. Finally, section 5 describes the scene at the memorial service and comments on the absence of tension there, even though both whites and blacks were present, which provided a stark contrast to previous section in which the tension was very evident. ?If there were tensions, they were constrained by our shared grief; we held hands.? This was a great image and helped describe both the sadness and the peace of the moment. I read in a C.K. Williams interview that he has been writing this poem for thirty years, struggling with how to deal with the subject. It is interesting to see which details survived in the poem over time and how the message of the poem may have been shaped by the passage of time. One way it definitely did affect the poem was how it was set in the past; in memory. One line in section 5 seemed to make this explicit, ?A black man, a white man, three decades of history, of remembering and forgetting.? Thinking of the poem in this sense had a deepening effect on my reading of it. I thought the structure and the writing style were very effective in achieving Williams? intent for the poem.
Another poem in which I thought the formatting style was effective was ?Owen: Seven Days.? In this poem, Williams? thoughts are arranged into short, three line segments. Also, in contrast to most of the lineation in the book, the lines were very short. This formatting seemed to reflect the subject of the poem, which explored the thoughts of and surrounding a newborn. The short stanzas were an excellent way to reflect the idea of simplicity and conciseness. This worked especially because of the contrast to Williams? usual formatting. This poem was a distinct deviation from the others in terms of format, which begged attention and raised questions about its intent. In this way, Williams was able to create a rich texture in the poem, simply by the arrangement of the words, apart from the words themselves. I found this to be a particularly effective tool and one that added a great deal to the poem, however, I also noted that without the context of the other poems in the book, the formatting would not have been significant. It was interesting to consider how the poems interact to add to each others? meaning.
While this book didn?t seem as theme based as the previous books we?ve read, I found it to be a coherent body of work in terms of style and emotional content. Williams? style was enjoyable to read and I took a lot from it that I will try to incorporate what I perceived to be his approach to channeling his passions into his poetry into my own work.
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