In C. K. Williams' "Grief," the speaker explores the all too common experience of losing a loved one. The speaker describes the pain involved in sitting helplessly by, only able to watch, while another human being slowly withdraws into death. The poem "Grief," like many of C.K. Williams' poems, is a maelstrom of memories, thoughts, emotions, and other human experiences. In this particular poem, the speaker is torn by the slow death of his elderly mother. His attempts to console himself and his family leads him to believe that she has lived a full life, and is now released from her suffering, headed toward a place of serenity and repose. How does this phrase "peace of the earth," (32) suggest a release from the suffering of dying?
             In the poem entitled "Grief," by C. K. Williams, the reader is taken through one man's painful experience of watching his mother's slow death. Williams is renowned for his ability to capture the emotions and concepts of the human spirit. Perhaps The Boston Globe's critic, Jonathan Aaron, put it best in his review, stating:
             A matchless explorer of the burdens of consciousness, C. K. Williams has always written brilliantly about human pain, that which we inflict upon others and upon ourselves, and that which we experience in dreading what we're fated for.
             Williams does not dispute that death is not a natural thing, in fact it is something that we are all "fated for", however he attempts to illustrate the pain and human emotion that are associated with death. In the poem "Grief," Williams is also successful in demonstrating the transition from the anguish experienced while a loved one withdraws into death, to the eventual rest the deceased enter. The phrase "peace of the earth" is suggestive of the body's final resting place, in which the soul is liberated from the body in death, and the individual experiences a release from suffering.
             Throughout the poem, the speaker attempts to
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