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. 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.
"One of our very finest poets in full stride." — Harvard Review
"Offers the many fans of his earthy and genuine style a collection of Williams' most representative works, along with some fresh flowers for picking in a 279-page garden of prose. . . . Williams is at his best when telling rawboned tales of life at its deepest roots. . . . You will not regret buying this book." —Mike Masterson, Northwest Arkansas Times
"A terrific introduction to the distinguished work of Arkansas's best-known contemporary poet. . . . The poems are sophisticated, intelligent, wry, whimsical and mostly short, and the voice is as place-distinctive of Arkansas as, say, Robert Frost's was of New England. It's a wise voice, unloud, unbitter, increasingly avuncular." — Bob Lancaster, Arkansas Times
Cloth, $42.50; Paper, $21.95
More poetry by Miller Williams
"Of History and
Hope" read by Miller Williams at the 1997 Presidential
Inauguration
(13.9 megabyte Quicktime video)