E-mail this site to a friend . Williams' trademark long lines are usually of two minds-either they try to gather in every detail, not pausing to digest them, believing that the accretion will not overwhelm in the end, or they follow an idea relentlessly, turning it over and over, until some sense can be shaken out. Indeed, in a departure from his poems, he works hard to avoid them. This is not a confessional or tell-all endeavor but a meditation on a child's access to his difficult parents over time. Misgivings doesn't seem like a poet's book.
Details are sparse.
We do not learn, for example, his parents' names or the towns where the family lived or hear anecdotes richly described. A child's eternal question, after his parents' deaths, is to wonder how conscious they were of the cruelties and inconsistencies that molded his childhood. Relationships are constructs, fed as much by will as by accident. Misgivings is a series of short recollections, each followed by a short meditation, rendered in italics. Williams ranges freely among his memories and impressions, not following any sort of chronology.