Living on the Surface: New and Selected Poems

by Miller Williams

Book Overview

Federico Garc a Lorca did not know Miller Williams, of course, but he was describing him when he told us that a poet is "professor of the five senses." The poems in this collection cover thirty years of loving contact with the endlessly varied surfaces of the world. They are poems in which the common furniture of our lives is always present, in which the universal resides in the local, in which elegance is born of clarity.

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807115746
• ISBN13: 9780807115749
• Release Date: December 1989
• Publisher: LSU Press
• Length: 152 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

One of the BEST!

I discovered this great poet at random in a library. Williams poetry is graceful and brutally honest all at once. Two must read poems are "The Associate Professor Delivers an Exhortation to His Failing Students" and "He Speaks to His Arguing Friends and to Himself". This is a collection to be cherished.

A Great Introduction to a Master

Miller Williams, the inaugaral poet, is a writer who offers more than meets the eye. His attention to detail, form, and motion are unsurpassed. This is a great introduction to his work, which spans over decades. Some of the notable poems in this collection are "Thinking of Bill, Dead of AIDS" and "Let Me Tell You," a poem which offers some of Williams's theories on writing.