SOURCE: “A Variegation of Styles: Inductive, Deductive, and Linguistic,” in Georgia Review, Vol. XXXVII, No. 4, Winter, 1983, pp. 894–905.

In the following excerpt, Stitt concludes that Tar is Williams's “best book,” noting that the poet is at his finest when observing the concrete external world, and at his worst when looking inward at the psyche.

The sentence has increased our awareness of how the meaning of a thing may be changed by the manner of saying it. Life is transformed into style, and we are no longer at the mercy of accidents—the infidelity of a mistress, the treachery of a friend.

—Louis Simpson

I.

In the passage I have chosen for an epigraph, Louis Simpson notes how “the meaning of a thing may be changed by the manner of saying it. Life is transformed into style. …” The first clause is clear and accurate; the second is a bit fuzzy...