C K Williams

Vocation

Notable

Family

American poet. A liberal Democrat who takes politics personally, he is a top American poet. He won the Pulitzer Prize in April 2000 for "Repairs," his collection of poems on hurt and healing. Williams grew up in South Orange, New Jersey in a Jewish family. His father sold office machines and encouraged young Charles to pursue his literary ambitions. He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania. On a summer vacation in Florence he realized he could "speak" poetry. He soon changed his major from Philosophy to English, and began to read and write more poetry. "A Day for Anne Frank," his first five-page poem, took five years to write and wasn’t published until 1968. His career began in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and he later worked in Brooklyn, New York. Known for his long, Whitmanesque sentences, he is a deeply serious man who becomes involved in politics. Williams defines his calling as that of a witness of "exactly the relation between the most intimate self and the most public." The subjects of his early work were politics, the Vietnam War and the horrors of the nuclear age. But in recent years, his poems have become more personal and introspective. He is arguably American poetry’s leading voice for the new Clinton political age. As a top-ranked poet, his works are published: six collections of poems, one anthology and three translations. He has won numerous awards, including the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award. On 04/11/2000 he won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for "Repairs," a collection of poems on topics ranging from the Holocaust to American race relations. He lives part of the year in Paris and teaches Humanities at Princeton University. Williams’ first marriage began and started to end in 1966, with a torturous five-year parting. The couple had a baby girl in 1969, but that didn’t help. Williams began a series of brief, unfulfilling affairs, enjoying the sexual freedom of the 1960s. His marriage ended when he left his wife for someone else who promptly left him. He became depressed and renounced poetry. Eventually a surrealistic experience with his young daughter in a butcher shop gave him the opportunity to regain his career. Williams is now married to a Frenchwoman. Link to Wikipedia biography