Presence: Poems

by Alan Williamson

Knopf Poetry Series, 10. A very good hardcover copy. Owner's name on frontpage. Tight binding. Clean, unmarked pages. Very good jacket in removable mylar; light fading and chipping. NOT ex-library. 82pg. Shipped Under 1 kilogram. Poetry; 0394528506. ISBN/ 9780394528502. Inventory 002427.

Genres: Poetry

82 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book of poems that nearly hit all the marks: the sequences fit together, the sound is well controlled, the book is well-structured. I somehow just didn't quite adore it the way that all of those things should indicate. Presence is a good book, and it works, but I fell back a little bit from it--the best poems were perfect, but the remainder somehow just didn't quite do it for me; they were too close to the poet's own self, or something.

I think the first section was my least favorite--an extended meditation on the themes of failure and of art, it was good, but the personae felt incomplete (who are the Mallarme and the Matisse and the Van Gogh he is embodying--the famous artists, of course, but the people themselves felt too similar to be full embodiments and too dissimilar for their status as facade to be interesting in its own right). The second and third sections were great, but there were moments where I felt like Williamson was telling me too much about his life and not performing enough transformation. That being said, the best transformations: "Good Dreams are Shown in Nightmare Theaters" "Tois Gymnopedies", "A Progress of the Soul," "Bernini's Proserpine," "Dream Without End," and "A Prologue" were my favorite poems in the book (though even several of those left me wishing that the beautiful veil between life and the page was just a tiny bit thicker). Section Four was relatively less impactful for me, though "The Mountains" was one of his better pieces of formal experimentation.

I was impressed by his willingness to embrace a sort of magic that made up the backbone of the best pieces--like this section from "A Progress of the Soul"

But the young have intangible allies: the senses
waiting to blossom like deep horns in the skull
and open the echoing valleys: so the outside
arrives in a thunderous surf. One day a lilac
sprig sways, and you are shaken from head to foot with the vertigo

The pieces are interlocked--a figure in "A Progress of the Soul" returns in "Good Dreams are Shown in Nightmare Theaters", for example. He takes on the power of association and juxtaposition, "A Prologue" ends, somewhat unexpectedly, with "Around him, with pale rinsed hair: witches and the desert planets; / they move, and he cannot move toward them: like the sun" an image that lingers, reshaping the poem that came before it and the section that follows just by being nearby them. This effect of presence is at the center of the book, what it means for the images and stories and people to be with each other and near each other, the little things that could alter everything through the effects of being present. Didn't quite succeed on all counts for me, but it was still a fantastic book that I recommend, if only for its best parts.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of really wonderful stuff in here. Some amazing poems, some really great imagery. More often, though, the language went over my head, just kind of failed to stick. I didn't give it the time it deserved, though. This is probably an amazing collection overall, but I breezed through it. I think it takes three times reading a poem to really get it; I didn't give these poems three reads.