In his first book of poetry since Repair, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, C.K. Williams treats the characteristic subjects of a poet's maturity-the loss of friends, the love of grandchildren, the receding memories of childhood, the baffling illogic of current events-with an intensity and drive that recall not only his recent work but also his early books, published forty years ago. He gazes at a Rembrandt self-portrait, and from it fashions a self-portrait of his own. He ponders an "anatomical effigy" at the Museum of Mankind, and in so doing "dissects" our common humanity. Stoking a fire at a house in the country, he recalls a friend who was burned horribly in war, and then turns, with eloquence and authority, to contemporary life during wartime, asking "how those with power over us can effect such things, and by what cynical reasoning pardon themselves." The Singing is a direct and resonant book: tough, searching, heartfelt, permanent. New work from the Pulitzer-Prize w

"A soggy survival story set in Alaska features a young singing wolf, Agorek, as chief companion, hunter-champion to a nine-year-old Eskimo boy. Together they hunt, fish and keep warm, save a baby caribou, face a polar bear, a wolf pack and a tribe of human strangers, escape a caribou migration stampede."--Kirkus

Collects nearly four decades of the author's work featuring poems from "Tar," "With Ignorance," "Flesh and Blood," "A Dream of Mind," "Repair," and "The Singing."

"A selection from the last twenty years of C.K. Williams's career, plus new work--proof of his enduring power C.K. Williams's long career has been a catalog of surprises, of inventions and reinventions, of honors. His one constant is a remarkable degree of flexibility, a thrilling ability to shape-shift that goes hand in hand with an essential, enduring honesty. This rare, heady mix has ensured that his verses have remained, from book to book, as fresh and vibrant as they were when he first burst onto the scene. Dear Reader--a generous selection of the last two decades of Williams's poetry, capped by a gathering of new work--is a testament to that enduring vibrancy. Here are the passionate, searching, clear-eyed explorations of empathy in The Vigil; here is the candor and revelation of Repair; here is the agonizing morality of The Singing and Wait, and the unsparing reflections on aging of Writers Writing Dying; here are the poignant prose vignettes of All at Once. Williams's poetry is

Sixty-two songs and hymns characterize the nineteenth century American pioneer.