Search results for ""author miller williams""

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 interchanges, the lingering uncertainties, the missed opportunities, and the familiar sense of loss that mark daily life with the surgeon's deft touch. An American original, Miller Williams involves the reader's emotions and imagination with an effective illusion of plain talk, continually rediscovering what is vital and musical in the language we speak and by which we imagine.

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Includes "Of History and Hope," the 1997 Presidential Inaugural Poem When Miller Williams read his Inaugural Poem, "Of History and Hope," to a world-wide audience in January, his proverbial "fifteen minutes of fame" lasted far less--somewhere between three and four minutes. That was long enough to make a big impact on many. Said poet Paul Zimmer, one of the millions in his viewing audience, "I came up out of my Lazy-Boy and cheered loudly!" Williams is an American original whose poems have been praised for both the elegance of their style and the simplicity of their language, for their wonderful humor and genuine passion. The works in his newest collection, The Ways We Touch, may be nostalgic or challenging, humorous or full of moral fortitude; always Williams speaks with the kind of insight that rises from wisdom and experience. Praise for Williams's earlier work: "Miller Williams is one of those writers whose books drag me snorkeling happily along. Happy as a pig among truffles, I hurry to the next treasure." -- William Stafford "Most contemporary poets might well go to him for lessons in the art of speaking plainly in disciplined lines alive with emotional energy." -- X. J. Kennedy "Better than almost anything else being published." -- Donald Justice

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