Product Description

Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award

The Vigil, which first appeared in 1997, finds contemporary American master-poet C. K. Williams taking a more reflective and empathetic turn in his work. As Jonathan Aaron wrote in The Boston Globe: "A matchless explorer of the burdens of consciousness, Williams has always written brilliantly about human pain, that which we inflict upon others and upon ourselves, and that which we experience in dreading what we're fated for. In The Vigil Williams affirms the uncanny resiliency of love as solace for pain—what he calls 'these invisible links that allure, these transfigurations even of anguish that hold us' ('The Neighbor'). It is a mystery he has probed before, but never with quite such sympathy and candor."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #834123 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Amazon.com Review
C. K. Williams's finest work thus far, this group of poems is about the valiant attempt to make sense of a chaotic world, the secrets we keep from ourselves and each other, and the odd moments of clarity emerging from bewilderment. "Villanelle of the Suicide's Mother" is especially powerful as the constraint and repetition of the form inevitably fail to bend unfathomable events into sense. These are disturbing, searching poems written in an unforgettable voice.

From Publishers Weekly
A line of two-dozen syllables is, for Williams (A Dream of Mind, 1992), small potatoes. His stanzas extend to and from the book spine like knobby, elongated hands grabbing for God, for relief from pain and for love. A menagerie of woeful lives is explored, including those of a retarded woman, a metaphor-laden locust and a stroke victim. Williams wants to get miserable along with his subjects but continually finds himself too shell-shocked to be a player. In "Hawk," his response to a dying bird reminds him of his father's dying: "I was frightened then, too; then, too, something was asked and I wasn't who I wanted to be./ How seldom I am, how much more often this self-sundering doubt, this bewildering contending." He writes that a lover's pain "startled, then bored, then repelled" him, that as his mother was dying there was "Grief for my own eyes that try to seek truth, even of pain, of grief, but find only approximation." The real heart of Williams is that he fears he might just be heartless. This consternation makes him eminently appealing. However, one gets the feeling Williams wouldn't mind being pitied, even if he is a fool for love, and his wife speaks French; even if, as this work reflects, he plumbs a life that is relatively tragedy-free.
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From Booklist
Williams is famous for his long verse line. An admirable instrument indeed, it is an Offenbach Barcarole of a line, seductively wafting us over the deeps Williams plumbs and charming attention away from the narrowness of the channel of subject matter through which he steers. This new collection is in three parts. The first consists of elegies for the dead and for the living but lost and the times that are no more. The second is a set of eight "Symbols"--poems about the imaginative significance of animals and things. The third begins with the book's title poem; the poems in it are ruefully, wistfully written from the perspective of an incipient old age in which living has become a matter of watching the ongoing project of life rather than being actively immersed in it. This would all be sentimental and mawkish if it weren't for Williams' erudition and that line, that lovely, musical line. Ray Olson

Customer Reviews

A great read!
The Vigil is a wonderfully reflective collection of poetry. I found the poet's insights and speculations about death and love a delight to read. My favorite poem would have to be "Realms," a fun, dreamlike image of the afterlife coupled with a beautiful testament to the strength of the speaker's own love and need for intimacy. Poems such as "Fragment," "Grief," and "Hawk" provide a chilling reflection on the nature of dying. Other poems such as "Money," "In Darkness," and "The Demagogue" force us to stop and think about what we as human beings are doing. I could go on and on about all of the poems contained in this book, but the best advice I can give is, READ IT! You won't be disappointed.