SOURCE: A review of A Dream of Mind, in American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 149, No. 12, December, 1992, pp. 1745–47.

In the following positive review of A Dream of Mind, Michaels concludes that Williams is “an important poet.”

“I couldn't put it down” is a phrase not often associated with a volume of poetry. This book is an exception. C. K. Williams, who won the 1988 National Book Critics Circle award, is one of the nation's most gifted poets. He writes about the themes that tend to interest psychiatrists—sex, love, jealousy, anger, aging, disease, and dying. Like many psychiatrists, he is also interested in the workings of the mind, turning his attention inward and creating a sort of poetic metapsychology of dreams, meditation, prayer, and abstractions about mental life. His genius is most striking when he observes and communicates the moment, the incident, the image of a person. For example, in...