Williams came up in Chicago, went through Cave Canem, and has spent a decade collecting the kind of prizes that usually pull a poet toward the lecture circuit: the Kate Tufts for Thief in the Interior, a Whiting, a Lambda, an American Book Award for Mutiny, then Ours in 2024, a novel-length act of conjure. Lift Every Voice goes the other way. It is short, and the compression is the achievement — three hours read aloud by the author. The poems set a mother who knew seven ways to say one word under her breath against a grandmother whose smile reflects the world, then land on what Williams calls the impossible lift of forgiveness. Nobody scores a book of poems on volume, which is why it takes the cover: the object is small, priced for anybody, answerable to no committee, and it will outlast every product announced this month. Penguin already has it flagged a best seller in pre-order, so the room is arriving. It has not arrived. Get there before the syllabi do. Published July 14 by Penguin Poets — 96 pages, $20.
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