“Equivocations in the Plainest Sign”: Greg Williamson’s "A Most Marvelous Piece of Luck"

The essay examines Greg Williamson’s sonnet-sequence, A Marvelous Piece of Luck, and places it in relation to his previous two poetry-volumes. Questions of perception are seen as crucial to his poetry, which frequently features such objects as cameras, windows and mirrors. His poetry is also concerned with the question of how we represent reality, exploring the complex connections between language, perception and reality. Puns in his poems testify to his fascination with the ambiguities of the language we use. Although Williamson’s third volume does not show the metrical and stanzaic versatility of the earlier two books, it is as linguistically inventive as ever. The language ranges from the highly cultured to the hippest of modern demotic, together with a major input from the world of contemporary science. Many of the poems could be consider light versions of Philip Larkin’s ‘Aubade’, since they frequently glide, in the final sestet, towards the subject of death. The central paradox of the book is the combination of the sheer liveliness of its language and imagery and the underlying sombreness of its central theme.