Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems

by Miller Williams

Book Overview

Some Jazz a While, the eagerly anticipated collected poems of one of America's best-loved poets, gathers Miller Williams's most representative work and adds some new pieces as well.

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. Williams treats the mundane...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252067746
• ISBN13: 9780252067747
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Robin Gardner, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The Miller Williams collection in Some Jazz a While provides highly enjoyable reading. It is a classic portrayal of the poet's extraordinary ability to interpret life's past, present and future experiences from a wide variety of angles to which most ordinary men-in-the-street such as I can even relate. Just like life, Miller's writings range from the humorous to the sad, but never fear, there's lots of tongue-in-cheek stuff too.

Nonsense

Williams is humorous, heartfelt, and honest. While a "simpleton" according to Miss PhD, Williams can capture the life struggle of a woman in a single poem. Heartfelt, dramatic, and truthful. I recommend this wonderful collection of poems to anyone. Truly a diamond in the rough in American Poetry.

An 'American' Poet

Miller Williams has the distinction of being one of four poets to write a poem for a presidential inauguration (including Robert Frost, James Dickey, and Maya Angelou). But don't let Bill Clinton's opinion that Maya Angelou and Miller Williams are in the same class. They are not. Miller Williams is a far, far superior poet than Angelou. What strikes me most about Miller Williams is how 'American' a poet he is (he reminds me much of Carl Sandburg in this respect). Williams is one of the best loved poets of his generation, and for good reason. Of course he has poems that don't quite reach the potential he has, but the vast majority are good poems. I can think of no better way discuss Williams' poetry than by taking the eight best poems he has written. "The Caterpillar" is the best known and most anthologized of his poems. It's one of his earlier poems that discusses the endless circling of a caterpillar on a bowl, where it continued until it died. One would think it a poem in futility, but the final lines, "I think he thought he was going/in a straight line" sums it all up, not about futility, but about purpose and nature. "The Book" is a poem about joy changing to horror. "The Curator" is a touching poem about a Russian museum in WWII, where the paintings are taken down, in fear of bombing, and the curator describes what the painting are rather than the patrons viewing. It shows what are truly is, especially when the blind come to 'see' the paintings they never could before. "Thinking about Bill, Dead of AIDS" is a poem about love, even in the face of an unknown, deadly disease. How we love those close to us, even at our own risk and how we protect them, "not knowing anything yet,/we didn't know wha tlook would hurt you least." "The Shrinking Lonesome Sestina" is one of the few good sestinas that exist among the thousands of sestinas out there (much like Elizabeth Bishop's and Dana Gioia's sestinas are worth reading). "Personals" is one of the funniest poems I've seen in a long time, and I will quote in full:Like a challange? Male, 45could pass for 60, at least twice divorced,heavy smoker, sober now and then,living in trailer home with no water,looking for female with good job.We may have no more need for half our doctorsand every talk show will fold flatwhen we can understand why there are peoplewho will enclose a picture and answer that."Ruby Tells All" is a beautiful poem about a strong woman, that you have to read to fully appreciate. And finally, a poem with one of the most interesting titles I've seen, "Why God Permits Evil: For Answer to This Question of Interest fo Many Write Bible Answers, Dept. E-7" followed by the epigram "ad on a matchbook cover". It's a great poem on God and life.What I really like about Miller Williams is his subject matter, which ranges from the mundane to the profound and that he writes in both formal and free verse. He is a treasure to American poetry and one we should all read at some point. After reading his wor

annoying the pretentious is always a good thing

Any book able to cause people intellectually insecure enough to put their academic credentials right next to their names to use both "unintelligible" and "simpleton" in the same paragraph has to be doing something right. (If a "simpleton" like Williams understands the poems, yet you find them "unintelligible," doesn't that, erm, make you dumber than a simpleton?)Williams is a low-key, unpretentious poet who writes with a stirring sense of geography, like a Louisiana-bred Robinson Jeffers. That the Harold Bloom-loving "Daisy Horvath, PhD"s get so thoroughly het up about his poetry is rather part of the point.