[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 172 (Sunday, November 23, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2439-E2440]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        HONORING C. K. WILLIAMS

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. RUSH D. HOLT

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, November 21, 2003

  Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, this week C. K. Williams was honored with the 
National Book Award in Poetry for his book ``The Singing: Poems''.
  The National Book Award, established in 1950, has become one of the 
most significant literary prizes in the country and comes with a 
$10,000 cash award. A creative writing professor at Princeton 
University since 1995, C. K. Williams has authored 14 books of poetry 
over his long and distinguished career and in 2000 he received the 
Pulitzer Prize in poetry for his work ``Repair''.
  Charles Kenneth Williams was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1936. He 
started writing poetry at the age of 19 and has said that ``Poetry 
didn't find me, in the cradle or anywhere else near it: I found it. I 
realized at some point--very late, it's always seemed--that I needed 
it, that it served a function for me--or someday would--however unclear 
that function may have been at first.''
  Mr. Speaker we all are very lucky that C. K. Williams found poetry 
and its clear to me that he has served a function to those of us who 
have had the pleasure to read his wonderful poetry. At times his poetry 
delves in to the dark areas of despair and our eventual mortality. As 
such his poetry is thought provoking, deeply moving, and at times 
extremely personal.
  Again, I congratulate Mr. Williams on his award, and I deeply thank 
him for the contributions he has made through his poetry to enrich our 
society. C. K. Williams continues in the long great tradition of other 
New Jersey poets such as Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Alan 
Ginsburg, and Robert Pinsky, and he is certainly one of the best poets 
that New Jersey has to offer today. And as the National Book Selection 
Committee, The Pulitzer Committee, and other juries make clear, C. K. 
Williams is one of the best. I am so pleased to have a poet of such 
talent and mettle both writing and teaching in my district.
  Mr. Speaker I would like to include in the Record a copy of the title 
poem of C. K. Williams's award winning book, which is entitled The 
Singing.

                              The Singing

     I was walking home down a hill near our house on a balmy 
           afternoon under the blossoms
     Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here every spring 
           with their burgeoning forth

     When a young man turned in from a corner singing no it was 
           more of a cadenced shouting
     Most of which I couldn't catch I thought because the young 
           man was black speaking black

     It didn't matter I could tell he was making his song up which 
           pleased me he was nice-looking

[[Page E2440]]

     Husky dressed in some style of big pants obviously full of 
           himself hence his lyrical flowing over

     We went along in the same direction then he noticed me there 
           almost beside him and ``Big''
     He shouted-sang ``Big'' and I thought how droll to have my 
           height incorporated in his song

     So I smiled but the face of the young man showed nothing he 
           looked in fact pointedly away
     And his song changed ``I'm not a nice person'' he chanted 
           ``I'm not I'm not a nice person''

     No menace was meant I gathered no particular threat but he 
           did want to be certain I knew
     That if my smile implied I conceived of anything like concord 
           between us I should forget it

     That's all nothing else happened his song became 
           indecipherable to me again he arrived
     Where he was going to a house where a girl in braids waited 
           for him on the porch that was all

     No one saw no one heard all the unasked and unanswered 
           questions were left where they were
     It occurred to me to sing back ``I'm not a nice person 
           either'' but I couldn't come up with a tune

     Besides I wouldn't have meant it nor he have believed it both 
           of us knew just where we were
     In the duet we composed the equation we made the conventions 
           to which we were condemned

     Sometimes it feels even when no one is there that someone 
           something is watching and listening
     Someone to rectify redo remake this time again though no one 
           saw nor heard no one was there

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