Game

Game approaches the catastrophe of language in call-and-response interplay between poems and Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, set in diverse spaces—rooms, dining tables, thresholds, picture frames, deserts, swamps and creeks, urban streets, seashores, a spider’s web, cafes, playground, porches in the rain—all places where the multiform gods dwell, love, play, ignore, and destroy. Underpinning the emotional territory of the book Is the shared experience—mine and Ludwig’s—of losing brothers to suicide; hence every poem, every philosophical phrase, is an act of survivor’s guilt.
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Praise for Game
“The poems in Game are written with a precision that digs deep into the heart of consciousness and emotion. There’s an intellectual honesty here centered on the analogy of language to experience, expressed in a variety of forms that mirror their subjects by means of the startling leaps Williams makes. These poems are revelatory; they will stay with you long after the last page has been turned.”
—Wyn Cooper

“Game has a unique voice, an edge (Wittgenstein is the guide for many poems) grounded in lyric detail and the emotional human crucible which makes it accessible and compelling. Williams has a hip and jazzy ear for language, a poignant economy of narrative and nostalgia. ‘The Temple’ is a tour-de-force employing the long lyric line and symphonic form; Williams is a master of the prose poem form; and there is existential insight derived from an engagement with science. There is range, great intelligence, and a honed vision—a fresh and exceptional book.”
—Christopher Buckley

“Poems in Game take readers to places where you’ll want to stay. They mix private musings, mythologies, and varied voices as they forage forests for mushrooms, walk high deserts of mesquite and scrub, drive highways, sing jukebox blues in bars, roam small towns and the land of salt flats, watch graffitied boxcars of night trains pass in the rain, cradle your head between speakers of a stereo, wade pasture and ponds, wander through water oaks and gum-trees, play basketball, watch out for cottonmouths and orb spiders and kites, glimpse hummingbirds, turn compost and grow sweet potato vines. They widely travel geographies and meet people. These poems feed you flavored coffees and evening meals. They bring you wild roses, and they are full of care but not sentimental. They generously remember mentors and meditate on love. Written in several styles and forms, Williams’ poems are alert and alive to language that intensely places us in the here-ness of living in the world and not retreating from it. M. L. Williams is an author of beautifully crafted writing that lingers in the mind and invites us to return to it again.”
—Loretta Collins Klobah