One Unblinking Eye : Poems

by Williams, Norman

• ISBN13: 9780804010580
• ISBN10: 0804010587
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-05-01
• Publisher: Ohio Univ Pr

Summary

The poems in One Unblinking Eye cast a steady and serious gaze at life outside the beltways. Whether testifying at a prayer meeting in Indiana, tramping the backwoods of northern New England, or working on an oil derrick in the Gulf, the inhabitants of these poems live on the margins of society. "They are the left-behind, odd-mannered ones, / Who speak in starts," Norman Williams writes of the last residents of a West Virginia mining town. Describing the woods of central Maine, he speaks of "lives ... scraped from sides / Of deer and garden plots; where double-wides / On concrete pads abut a hard-pan road." It is the art of these poems to convince the reader that these lives matter. There is desperation here, and madness, but there is an equal measure of determination and faith. In one poem, Mr. Williams writes of a fisherman haunted by his daughter's death, who "casts his line / In hopes a flash and strike will draw him back." These words describe the poet's method as well. The work in this collection is built on a supple metrical foundation; it is filled with glancing rhymes and wordplay; and it is touched off by striking images. It is, in other words, composed with care, and it richly rewards a careful reading. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Norman Williams is the recipient of an Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, an Ingram Merrill Fellowship, the I. B. Lavan Award, and the Amy Lowell Fellowship. A practicing attorney in Burlington, Vermont, Williams has appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in several cases, including Williams v. Vermont

Table of Contents

A Christmas Song	1	(2)
An Invocation from the Hot Noon of Central Ohio	2	(1)
Now, Until, Because	3	(2)
Taking Panfish	5	(2)
Those Left to Tend	7	(1)
Coming to Terms	8	(1)
Prayer for an Irish Father	9	(1)
Portrait of Cecil Higbee	10	(2)
The Unearthing	12	(2)
Following the Crowd Home	14	(1)
Eastertide at Anse La Raye	15	(1)
Our Station	16	(1)
The Conversion near Jessups on the Big Raccoon	17	(2)
The Doomsayers Awake Following the Predicted Apocalypse	19	(1)
Independent Contractor	20	(1)
Horror at Hoosick Falls	21	(2)
Dispatch from Garelochhead	23	(1)
Near Antietam	24	(1)
Pegging Out	25	(2)
In Pavidus	27	(1)
From the Profound Ward	28	(1)
Nightwork	29	(1)
The Wrong Body	30	(2)
The Dow Is Off	32	(1)
Slave Ground near Pine Bluffs	33	(1)
October in the North	34	(1)
Words for a Young Widow in Maine	35	(1)
Prince Philip to Quit Exclusive Men's Club Because It Serves Swan	36	(1)
Games in the Darkening Air	37	(1)
From A Journal of the Ascent	38	(7)
Delicate Repose	45	(1)
Farmhouse Left	46