Time and the Tilting Earth shows Miller Williams at his sharpest. When he tells us ""it's hard to be understood and make that look easy,"" he describes his own poetry perfectly. This latest effort from Williams provides a collection of rhythmical poems in conversational language about the nature of human beings and the world in which we live. In poems covering topics such as science, religion, and marriage, Williams displays in plentiful measures the qualities that have made him a cherished and long-admired poet: mordant and trenchant wit, expert, light-fingered technique, quick understanding of character, and skillful use of irony. In Time and the Tilting Earth, each poem, says the author, begins as the poet's and ends as the reader's.