Miller Williams’ Influence

Remind you of anyone?

I am reading a book about Lucinda’s dad, Poet Miller Williams, entitled “Miller Williams and the Poetry of the Particular”. Contributor Howard Nemerov writes of Miller “But it is remarkable how much he gets in of the agonizing complexity of the human response to life, to situations that are simple only because they are also impossible; remarkable how sensitive his language is to the ultimate identity of hope and hopelessness, of sarcasm and tragic resignation, of social protest and religious abandonment to despair.”

John Ciardi said “Miller Williams writes about ordinary people in extraordinary moments in their lives. Even more remarkable, doing this, is how perilously close he plays to plain talk, without ever falling into it; how close he comes to naked sentiment, without yielding to it; how close he moves to being very sure, without ever losing the grace of uncertainty. Add to this something altogether apart, that what a good reader can expect to sense, coming to these poems, is a terrible honesty, and we have among us a voice that makes a difference.”