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, dema…