A Dream of Mind

C. K. Williams's work has won an essential place in contemporary American poetry. The long lines that have characterized his style since the mid-seventies have allowed him to make ever more radical forays into what Edward Hirsch, writing in The New York Times Book Review, has called "a unique and inclusive poetry of consciousness." Williams's new collection is dominated by the long title poem, "A Dream of Mind," which explores the materials and qualities of states of consciousness with enormous flexibility and suppleness. Other poems make similar investigations of jealousy, family life, and psychological and intellectual constructs. Passionate, truculent, humorous, and always questioning, C. K. Williams's poetry is, in more than one sense, the poetry of contemporary experience. This challenging, exhilarating book marks a new stage in this groundbreaking writer's constantly evolving work.