Review by Choice Review
Unlike the hardcover edition of this book, this paperback release comes with a CD of Williams reading "The Summer Belvedere," "Which Is My Little Boy?" and seven other poems. Williams's voice is strong and quite distinct, hardly the "Mississippi drawl" described on the book cover. Roessel (Richard Stockton College of New Jersey) and Moschovakis (Reed College) have gathered all of Williams's poetry, both previously published collections In the Winter of Cities (1956) and Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977), and uncollected and posthumously published poems. In their excellent introduction, the editors remark that Williams's "profound commitment to romanticism and bohemianism" at times alienated him from the modernist "poetry establishment." "Gay cruising" and other references to homosexuality appear in several of the more confessional verses. The editors also emphasize "the importance of [Williams's] verse to his writing in other genres," including fiction and such well-known dramas as The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. The volume's value to scholars is enhanced by a list of textual variants and a long section titled "Explanatory Notes and Publication History." Libraries that do not own the first edition (and perhaps even some that do) will want this enhanced edition. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers; all levels. J. W. Hall University of Mississippi
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Even after his plays made him a celebrity, Tennessee Williams "identified himself, privately, as a lone and tortured poet," reveal editors Nicholas Moschovakis and David Roessel (co-editor, The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes) in their introduction to The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams. Williams (1911-1983) wrote verse throughout his life, which is fully collected for the first time in this anthology. In the Winter of Cities and Androgyne, Mon Amour, the two collections Williams published in his lifetime, are here, as are uncollected pieces, verse from his plays and fiction, early works from the 1930s indebted to his hero Hart Crane, and even juvenilia by "Thos. Williams, 9th gr." (Apr. 24) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
