I Am The Bitter Name

by C.K. Williams

His second book of poetry. National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

C.K. Williams was born and grew up in and around Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in philosophy and English. He has published many books of poetry, including Repair, which was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, The Singing which won the National Book Award for 2003, and Flesh and Blood, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Prize in 1987. He has also been awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the PEN Voelker Career Achievement Award in Poetry for 1998; a Guggeheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, a Lila Wallace Fellowship, the Los Angeles Book Prize, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He published a memoir, Misgivings, in 2000, which was awarded the PEN Albrand Memoir Award, and translations of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Euripides’ Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, Adam Zagajewski, as well as versions of the Japanese Haiku poet Issa.

His book of essays, Poetry and Consciousness, appeared in 1998. and his most recent, In Time, in 2012. He published a book about Walt Whitman, On Whitman, in 2010, and in 2012 a book of poems, Writers Writing Dying. A book of prose poems, All At Once, will be published in 2014.

He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

And Abraham said to him, "And art thou, indeed, he that is called Death?"
He answered, and said, "I am the Bitter Name."

Like the poems of Lies , the poems of I Am The Bitter Name are reminiscent of Surrealism, with their focus on dreams and dream-like imagery (as in "Keep It", "What Did the Man Do with the Clouds?", and "This Day")...

the lonely people are marching
on the capital everyone's yelling not
to give them anything but just
buying dinner together was fun
wasn't it? don't give them a thing
the boss said the boss
is dreaming of beautiful nurses
the lonely people are taking
all their little dogs to washington
back home the channels change
by themselves the soap changes
to perfume perfume to cereal the boss
dreams of the moon landing on
spruce street nobody is lonely...
- Keep It

...the grandma bagpipe out of their soft womb like apples
and go up like autumn in long rows like pearls like pearls
goodbye grandmas goodbye again thanks
for my present I swallowed them they're flapping
around inside me like uncle sol in the last chair
maybe someday they'll lift me like you
by the top of my guts out of here goodbye
charlie! go to sleep! eat! you're skin and bones! goodbye! goodbye!
- What Did the Man Do with the Clouds?

...when
we were wolves remember? she doesn't
understand the inside of bodies the voids
wasted the patient holes used up
like planets when I count three she says
everything was a dream everything before
now was really dead was I really dead?
- This Day

Of course "dream-like imagery" doesn't begin to describe Williams's poetry. More than exploring "dream-like imagery", Williams has captured the irrational state of mind associated with dreaming, often to disturbing effect (as in "Flat", "The Undead", and "The Last")...

the pillows are going insane
they are like shells the skulls have risen out of them like locusts
leaving faces in them but cold vacant immobile
heavy with tears
they are like clouds and are so sick of us
so furious with us they swear next time
when we come back if they can they will spring up and our faces will empty
next time they will soar like clouds and dissolve
and not touch us it is morning
our heads thrown back in agony
- Flat

I want you not comforting me
the soles of our feet beaten until worms of flesh erupt from them
our genitals dialed like wrong numbers don't
put your tongue in me don't give me anything heart
soul laughter anything children turning the light on and off
on and off MA! don't feed me! don't feed me!
- The Undead

when I was sleeping this morning one of my feet
fell out of the covers and my daughter
came in and covered it up with her little dolly blanket

I was dreaming right then that flames were shooting out of my cock
and when I woke up with her patting the soft cloth down on me
I believed I understood the end of eternity for the first time

don't ever make me explain this
- The Last

But Williams's poems go beyond the realm of dreams. His poems address political concerns (as in "A Poem for the Government", "Another Dollar", and "In the Heart of the Beast")...

this poem is an onion
for you mr old men because
I want tears from you now
and can't see how else to get them
I want tears for miguel now
for the poor people and their children
and for the kids you hate going
around cunt-frontwards full of carrying on
and bad shit like mercy and despair...
- A Poem for the Government

I dreamed of an instrument of political torture
so that the person thinks he's breathing into a great space
that flows like a river beyond men
into infinity the ethical disconnects like a phone
and what he says everything comes back to him WE ARE NOT DOING THIS
angels skulls prisoners WE ARE NOT DOING THIS
the children scouring themselves like genitals NOT DOING THIS
- Another Dollar

but it could be a delusion couldn't it?
it could be like thinking those soldiers were shooting blanks
up until the last second standing there scared shitless
but inside
thinking americans don't shoot innocent people!
I know it!
I learned it in school in the movies!
it doesn't happen like this
and hearing a bullet slam into the ground next to you and the flesh
and every voice in your body saying o no no
and seeing your friend go down
half her head blown away
and the image of kennedy in back of the car
and of king
and the other kennedy
and wanting to explode o no no no no no
- In the Heart of the Beast

His poems are critical of misogyny and concepts of masculinity (as in "Madder", "Innings", "The Beginning of April")...

the nations have used up their desire
the cunts of the mothers the cunts
of the bad daughters stinking
of police stations of the sisters
and generations of men saying
look cunt what about me saying cunt cunt
where is forgiveness? what bullshit
- Madder

somebody keeps tack of how many times
I make love don't you god don't you?
and how good it is telling me
it's marked down where I can't see
right underneath me so the next time
something unreal happens in the papers
I don't understand it it doesn't touch
me I start thinking
everyone's heart might be pure
after all because what the hell
they don't kill me just each other
they don't actually try making me sad
just do things make things happen
suffer things I erupt
into the feminine like a lion don't
I god? among doves? so even being with me
is like beauty? I move under this god
like a whore I gurgle I roll
like a toy boat what's the score
now god? am I winning?
- Innings

I feel terribly strong today
it's like the time I arm-wrested a friend
and beat him so badly I sprained his wrist
or when I made a woman who was really beautiful
love me when she didn't want to
it must be the warm weather
I think
I could smash bricks with my bare hands
or screw
until I was half out of my mind
- The Beginning of April

One of my favourite passages from the collection...

there's somebody who's dying
to eat god
when the name happens
the juices leap from the bottom of his mouth like waves
he almost falls over with lightheadedness
nobody has ever been this hungry before
- They Warned Him Then They Threw Him Away

In one of the poems, "Yours", Williams addresses the style in which the poems of I Am The Bitter Name are written. The poem ends...

listen! everyone! you have your own poem now
it's yours as much as your heart as much as your own life is
you can do things to it shine it up iron it dress it in doll clothes
o men! o people! please stop how it's happening now please
I'm working as fast as I can I can't stop to use periods
sometimes I draw straight lines on the page because the words
are too slow
I can only do one at a time don't die first please
don't give up and start crying or hating each other they're coming
I'm hurrying be patient there's still time isn't there? isn't there?
- Yours

[Grace McDonough · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I thought if I could take somebody like that in my arms
I could convince them that everyone was alone before death
but love saved us from living our lives reflexively with death"

Beautiful first book of Williams' poetry, largely centered around anti-war sentiment, death, money, and god. Found it on sale in a bookstore and was drawn to the cover and title. Favorites are "In the Heart of the Beast," "The Long Bells," "Jetsam," "Yours," and "Clay Out of Silence" to name a few.

[Loocuh Frayshure · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a slim 72 pages, this delivers punch after punch of quality, offbeat, angry, sexual, absurd imagery with bizarre emjambments and wonky ass meter.

The first and final poems are my favorites, both being amazing. What’s inbetween ranges from solid to nice to fine. Never hated anything here. Real cool stuff.

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, heart-rending, devastating. Early C. K. Williams.

[Mills College Library]

811.54 W7221b 1972