Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself

by C.K. Williams

Book Overview

Winner of the PEN/Voelcker career achievement award in poetry

Misgivings is C. K. William's searing recollection of his family's extreme dynamics and of his parents' deaths after years of struggle, bitterness, inner conflict, and, finally, love. Like Kafka's self-revealing Letter to His Father, Misgivings is a full of doubt, both philosophical and personal, but as a work of art it is sure and true.

Williams's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374527288
• ISBN13: 9780374527280
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux-3pl
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

A family history that is also a poem

This spare, 170-page prose work is not a memoir in the usual sense of the word: it is a collection of visceral memories, some extended, some quite brief, all of which hinge on the author/poet's intensely felt relationship with his mother and father. A wide-ranging portrait of a mid-century East Coast Jewish family, Williams calls his work an "autobiographical meditation." I began reading quite skeptically, wondering why a man of age 63 would still be so caught up with family issues -- especially his unblinking descriptions of his long-dead parents' worst characteristics. But as I proceeded, I was surprised to find this seemingly self-centered meditation seeping into the musty recesses of my own memory and experience. His language is burnished to a luster; he can conjure memories of a child's-eye view from the top of a see-saw or a momentary parental rage that has stayed with you over decades. Thus I came to find the work transformative; persuasive in the way that a poem can take you somewhere you weren't planning to go. I am going to recommend "Misgivings" to all my grown-up men friends.