“Willie James King’s poems probe, dig, and tunnel. But THE HOUSE IN THE HEART resists easy epiphanies even as King asks for—insists on—all the complexities and trials of insight, of self-knowledge. “I was the fractured one/double-visioned,” he writes, “foaming/ like a beast, while it,/ the true beast, was calm/ as a hard-handed teacher. His lessons may be “hard-handed,” yet they are also touching, arresting, perhaps even true.”
—Robert Polito
“Willie James King writes poems that seem to have been in our midst all along; his words “touch air.” His unweaving and reassembling of the natural world and his black male southern life, in such a wondrous, meditative vernacular makes The House in the Heart more than a worthy read; it is as nourishing as a rainbow glimpsed briefly on a sunny Sunday afternoon.”
—Major Jackson
“From an Alabama boyhood to an adulthood of serious soul-searching, the poems of Willie James King roam but never wander. These focused blasts of lyricism combine tones and dictions and hit the high Cs. Whether in the sweet-potato field, at the lectern, or gazing into the waters of the Cahawba river, King learns where he is most himself, “in this deep / lull of love.””
—Alan Michael Parker
“Anyone who enters this house, so sturdily constructed by the poet’s art and craft, his wisdom and childlike awe, will find himself at once both chilled and warmed by King’s far-reaching vision, his deep passion, his immense and inspiring talent.”
—Cathy Smith Bowers
