LIES

by C. K. Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1969

A stunning, ferocious first book of poems by a writer whose language, drawn from current common speech, breaks into images of scarifying violence as he records the suffering and bestiality of man. Soaring through his lines is the black and fathomless despair of the religious man for whom God is ""missing."" One thinks of Kierkegaard in the abyss, of Bosch detailing dungeons of evil, of Job raging against a God impervious to human justice and mercy. For Williams the absent God is less awesome, more intimate. ""In this day and age Lord,"" he writes, ""you are like one of those poor farmers/ who burns the forests off/ and murders his land and then/ can't leave. . . ."" Men are wounded in pain, ""sifted from their loss, and without hope."" Abandoned, he cries: ""How will I know what loves me now/ and what doesn't?"" Man too has abandoned care for the earth and its creatures--a box turtle is torn to bits by a passing car or a river is clogged with putrefaction. Only through compassion for helpless things and creatures--stones, owls, dogs, children, old men, little fishes, grasses, rags--does the poet recall that ""I am still enough like you (Lord)"" to experience an immensity of love and longing.

Pub Date: May 15, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1969

Categories: NONFICTION