Falling Ill: Last Poems

A capstone to an unforgettable career Over the past half century, the great shape-shifting poet C. K. Williams took upon himself the poetÆs task: to record with candor and ardor ôthe burden of being alive.ö In Falling Ill, his final volume of poems, he brings this task to its conclusion, bearing witness to a restless mindÆs encounter with the brute fact of the bodyÆs decay, the spiritÆs erasure. Written with unsparing lyricism and relentless discursive logic, these brave poems face unflinchingly ôthe dreadful edge of a precipiceö where a futureless future stares back. Urgent, unpunctuated, headlong, vertiginous, they race against time to trace the sinuous, startling twists and turns of consciousness. All is coming apart, taken away, except the brilliant art to describe it as the end is coming. All along is the reassurance of loveÆs close presence. Here are no easy resolutions, false consolations. Like unanswered prayers, they are poems of deep interrogationùa dialogue between the agonized ôIö in its harrowing here-and-nowness and the elusive ôyouö of the beloved who flickers achingly just out of reach. WilliamsÆs Falling Ill takes its place among the enduring works of literature about death and departure.

• | Author: C. K. Williams
• | Publisher: Farrar, Straus And Giroux
• | Publication Date: Jan 23, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 64 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback/Poetry
• | ISBN-10: 0374537534
• | ISBN-13: 9780374537531