C. K. Williams, one of the most treasured American poets of the past century, was also one of the most surprising. From poem to poem, his voice shifts in register and style, yet a certain essence remains: his conviction, his ethic, and his burning gaze. As William Deresiewicz wrote in The New York Times, "Williams's scorching honesty has always been his calling card … Everything, in his work, is held up to the most exacting ethical scrutiny, beginning with the poet himself." Invisible Mending: The Best of C. K. Williams is the essential gathering of the great poet's work. With an introduction by the award-winning poet Alan Shapiro, this book charts Williams's path from gifted young poet to his status as one of the most consequential poets of his-or any-generation. "If American poetry today is, as I believe it is, more diverse than ever," Shapiro writes, "more open to any and all forms of life, more vitally engaged with a world external to the self and shared with others, it's because of what the poems in this volume accomplished." This collection distills the prolific poet's body of work into one indispensable volume, through which one can trace the shifts and innovations that Williams's work bore on American poetry.