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Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself
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 father was an "ordinary businessman"--angry, demanding, addicted to the tension he created with the people he loved; a man who could recite the Greek myths to his son yet vowed never to apologize to anybody. Wiiiams's mother was a housewife, a woman with a great capacity for pleasure, who was stoical about the family's dire early poverty yet remained affected by it even when they became well-off. Together, these two formed what Williams calls the "conspiracy that made me who I am." His account of their life together and of their deaths--his father's in a final abandonment of the will to live, his mother's with calm resignation--is a literary form of the reconciliation the family achieved at the end of his parents' lives, composed as a series of short takes, a double helix of experience and recollection.
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 father was an "ordinary businessman"--angry, demanding, addicted to the tension he created with the people he loved; a man who could recite the Greek myths to his son yet vowed never to apologize to anybody. Wiiiams's mother was a housewife, a woman with a great capacity for pleasure, who was stoical about the family's dire early poverty yet remained affected by it even when they became well-off. Together, these two formed what Williams calls the "conspiracy that made me who I am." His account of their life together and of their deaths--his father's in a final abandonment of the will to live, his mother's with calm resignation--is a literary form of the reconciliation the family achieved at the end of his parents' lives, composed as a series of short takes, a double helix of experience and recollection.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
C.K. Williams
70 books72 followersC.K. Williams was born and grew up in and around Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he majored in philosophy and English. He has published many books of poetry, including Repair, which was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, The Singing which won the National Book Award for 2003, and Flesh and Blood, the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Prize in 1987. He has also been awarded the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the PEN Voelker Career Achievement Award in Poetry for 1998; a Guggeheim Fellowship, two NEA grants, the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin, a Lila Wallace Fellowship, the Los Angeles Book Prize, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He published a memoir, Misgivings, in 2000, which was awarded the PEN Albrand Memoir Award, and translations of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Euripides’ Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, Adam Zagajewski, as well as versions of the Japanese Haiku poet Issa.
His book of essays, Poetry and Consciousness, appeared in 1998. and his most recent, In Time, in 2012. He published a book about Walt Whitman, On Whitman, in 2010, and in 2012 a book of poems, Writers Writing Dying. A book of prose poems, All At Once, will be published in 2014.
He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.
He published a memoir, Misgivings, in 2000, which was awarded the PEN Albrand Memoir Award, and translations of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Euripides’ Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, Adam Zagajewski, as well as versions of the Japanese Haiku poet Issa.
His book of essays, Poetry and Consciousness, appeared in 1998. and his most recent, In Time, in 2012. He published a book about Walt Whitman, On Whitman, in 2010, and in 2012 a book of poems, Writers Writing Dying. A book of prose poems, All At Once, will be published in 2014.
He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a chancellor of the American Academy of Poets.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 24, 2022
Brilliant and also disturbing. Such focus on seemingly inconsequential occurrences, yet, we all know how such small acts can scar or embolden us forever. But very odd that, as the oldest of three children, there is no mention of any interaction with his siblings. It is ALL about himself and his parents.
His sentences tend to be very long and often need rereading. Here's an example (p. 166):
I think to myself that I'll find a way later when I'm less drained to say a fuller goodbye to her; someday I'll thank her for how much of herself she risked to have divided herself when she was so young, so unprepared, so vulnerable, into the doun]ble creature she and I were those first years, and the linked beings we always would be.
That's ONE sentence! Very heavy with the semicolons.
I think this book will stay with me for a long while. The thoughts will turn over, exposing different aspects of themselves.
His sentences tend to be very long and often need rereading. Here's an example (p. 166):
I think to myself that I'll find a way later when I'm less drained to say a fuller goodbye to her; someday I'll thank her for how much of herself she risked to have divided herself when she was so young, so unprepared, so vulnerable, into the doun]ble creature she and I were those first years, and the linked beings we always would be.
That's ONE sentence! Very heavy with the semicolons.
I think this book will stay with me for a long while. The thoughts will turn over, exposing different aspects of themselves.
January 10, 2008
Such a beautiful, haunting look at this triad of family relationships. The language is as beautiful as you'd expect from a poet, but Williams also looks deeply at the family dynamic and really examines them, assigning blame occasionally, reluctantly, and never without striving to see his parents first as people.
March 24, 2008
This book was painful to read, but glad I did.
April 25, 2010
I honestly couldn't get past the first 10 pages. Sorry, Charlie. I gave it an honest effort.
November 18, 2015
I mostly just kept wanting to tell ckw to get over it and grow up. The writing I suppose pretty flawless, but I'm not sure what it is he wanted to say.
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April 5, 2013306.87409 W7221 2001
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews