Includes index

"The essential poetry of C. K. Williams (1936-2015), winner of the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize"--

Invisible Mending: The Best of C. K. Williams is the essential collection of the great poet's work. Selected by his family and friends and with an introduction by the award-winning poet Alan Shapiro, this book charts Williams's path from gifted young poet to his status as one of the most consequential poets of his--or any--generation. "If American poetry today is, as I believe it is, more diverse than ever," Shapiro writes, "more open to any and all forms of life, more vitally engaged with a world external to the self and shared with others, it's because of what the poems in this volume accomplished." This collection distills the prolific poet's body of work into one indispensable volume, through which one can trace the shifts and innovations that Williams's work bore on American poetry