"When we come home, we are half way. / Our screams heal the torn silence. We are like scars." (Williams xx) Are these the scars healing the slices and cuts in the heart of night? I believe that this is Williams' inference here. That the poet presented as healer performs his or her art, however it is always at a price. Sometime that price is to be misread or misconstrued:
He has been misunderstood as an entirely "social" poet, but his real subject is the mind that attempts, never entirely successfully, to ward off the social world that bombards it from every side. His lines, longer than those written by any other significant English-language poet, suggest a big, Whitman-like appetite for worldly variety. This is not simply the case. Williams is a poet of imaginative composure amid real-world disarray. His fastidious, refined heart camps in the middle of the worldly misery that minimizes its claims. (Chiasson 12)
Dan Chiasson in his review of William's poetry certainly has captured this lot of life for the poet in his criticism. The phrase he has chosen here "imaginative composure amid real-world disarray" captures the flavor of the poets view in Dimensions as he peers from his world into ours.
Williams' poetry, for lack of a better word, has a basic moral intent. A poet is charged with the salvation of humanity's soul. Williams sees it divorced from a religious aspect and presents a more humanistic approach, creating a consciousness for a better worldview.
And while not the sole intent of his work, some critics like William Deresiewicz do see it as an overriding passion of his:
His poetry proceeds not from a verbal impulse, not from a lyrical impulse, not even from a prophetic or visionary impulse, but from a moral impulse. Everything, in his work, is held up to the most exacting ethical scrutiny, beginning with the poet himself. Implicitly, and often explicitly, this scrutiny extends to very act of writing poems in the first place. And so while other poets sometimes make...
(Deresiewicz)
So while art for art's sake is still a viable part of any poet's creed, there is also the need to benefit humanity at the heart of any poetic endeavor. And in this noble cause the inhabitant of the world of poets have strong hearts themselves, even though they may get weary,."..We hold out. / Sometimes a dream will shake us like little dogs, a fever / hang on so we're not ourselves or love wring us out, but we prevail, we certify and make sure, we go on." (Williams xx) However, some believe this bravado is a sign of Williams being too good for the world in a sense. "Williams recognizes the desire to identify and be accepted is entwined with an infantile desire to be seen as a 'good person.'" (Sadoff 46) While this may be the case it goes to the point that when all is said and done, the poet, as noble as he may be, is at the last truly human and filled with the same foibles and folly as any of us.
Finally the poet, although he views darkness and despair in our world, places no blame upon its inhabitants. This is certainly part of the objective viewpoint of distance, but also it is the realization that events are often a product of chaos and random chance in this world:
Those who live in it are helpless in the hands of the elements," (Williams xx) and as such are at the whim of the wind.
Works Cited
Chiasson, Dan. "Review: Collected Poems by C.K. Williams." International Herald Tribune 12 Dec 2006
Deresiewicz, William. "To Tell the Truth" the New York Times 15 Feb 2004
Norris, Keith S. "An Interview with C.K. Williams." New England Review 17.2 (1995): 127-140.
Sadoff, Ira. "Dreaming Creatures." American Poetry Review. 34.1 J (2005): 45-50,
Slavitt, David R. "Reader's Notebook: a Critic on the Poetry Scene." New England Review 18.2 (1997): 163-169.
Williams, C.K. "Dimensions" Title of collection, date location publisher
