The Cave

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"The Cave" was first published in the Summer 1975 special issue, "Talking American Poetry," and was later substantially revised for publication in C. K. Williams's With Ignorance and in various subsequent books, including Poems 1963-1983 and Selected Poems. At the poet's request, we have included the revised version here. WILLIAMS recently wrote to us about the circumstances which led him to write the poem:

I wanted to write a poem about the fact that I never seemed to see anything that I was supposed to see: never a naked woman in a window, a couple making love in a park, etc. The first versions of the poem, one of which was published in Chicago Review, was manifestly about this, but then l felt, revising the poem again, that the subject had grown beyond …