Pulitzer Prize Poetry Winner

Repair

by C. K. Williams

Summary

The poems probe relationships, guilt, memory, and the ethics of bearing witness in a fractured social world. Williams writes in long, prose-like lines that accumulate detail with novelistic patience while preserving the urgency of lyric thought. Across the book, mending becomes both a private and public act, suggesting that attentiveness itself is a form of moral repair.

Historical Context & Significance

Williams developed a signature "long line" that maintains the rhythmic urgency of poetry with novelistic detail.