Books by Miller Williams

"One of our very finest         poets in full stride." -- HarvardReview, on Adjusting         to the Light       A 1995 recipient of the Academy         Award in Literature of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Miller         Williams is one of America's best known and loved poets. He also has won         the prestigious Poets' Prize; the Amy Lowell Award in Poetry, presented         by Harvard University; the Prix de Rome for Literature from the American         Academy of Arts and Letters, and many others.       Williams's newest collection         is built of the idiom of ordinary speech. Mostly narrative and dramatic,         these indelible poems are populated by individuals who go about their         lives much as all of us do; in fear of pain and loneliness, in hope of         something like love. The breath of Williams's talent gives them life,         his honesty and precision make them unforgettable.

An encyclopedia of the forms used by poets throughout the history of English, from blank verse to hymnal measure, from englyn penfyr to the double dactyl, from the clerihew to the sonnet. Each form is introduced with a brief discussion of its origin, which is followed by a graphic presentation of its scansion, metrics, and rhyme scheme.

An intimate, conversational treatise on poetry by a man of letters with decades of practice in both the business and the craft of verse. Readers will take away from this delightful book a deeper appreciation of the poet's art and the vital role poetry can play in their everyday lives.

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.

A collection of poems that 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.