As part of a new series, the 'Prince' will feature interviews with prominent people on campus. Pulitzer Prizewinning professor C.K. Williams is one of today's features.
Prince: What is your favorite food?
Williams: When I was twenty and traveling alone through Spain, I ate a potato omelet in the dining car on a train; it was exotic and delicious, and remains in my mind the best meal I ever had.
P: What one book do you think everyone would benefit from reading?
W: "The Singing," my new book of poems.
P: What one piece of music do you think everyone would benefit from listening to?
W: Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites.
P: What is your favorite way to relax?
W: Playing the piano. Chopin and Bach and Mozart mostly.
P: What word or phrase are you most guilty of overusing?
W: "Wonderful."
P: What is your favorite slang word or phrase?
"No way."
P: What is your favorite bookstore?
W: There are two: Micawber's, in Princeton, and The Village Voice, in Paris.
P: What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?
W: An old painter I knew in Mexico told me when I was in my apprenticeship days that you have to work at your art every day, and that you have to make clear to everyone you know that during the hours you're working you're not available, for anything else.
P: If there were a ballot for sainthood, which person, living or dead, would you nominate?
W: I think everyone at some time in their life does something, or some things, that are informed with a grand, often unconscious charity. If everyone could be allowed to acknowledge that sublime generosity in themselves, the world human would be much better off.
P: What did you think you'd most likely major in when you entered college, and what did you ultimately major in?
W: I had no idea what I wanted to do when I started in college, then I thought I might go into architecture, then I became a philosophy major, and ended up, once I'd started writing poems, in English.
P: What sorts of occupations other than the one you have now do you think you'd be best suited for?
W: I used to imagine I'd have been a good painter, but now that I have a son who is one, I know I had no genuine talent for it. To be frank, I don't think I'm suited for much beside writing and teaching, but that's not so bad.
P: Did you consider yourself a reckless teen?
W: Not reckless, but incredibly restless.
P: What is your clearest memory?
W: There are many, many, many of equal intensity; that's part of the poet's business, remembrance.
P: If you could be transported back to any decade in the 20th century, which would it be?
W: I suppose the middle sixties, in which so many unlikely things were happening, and before the Vietnam War got out of hand.
P: What is a childhood dream that you have gotten to live out?
W: I'm not sure . . . To drive a car?
P: What is a childhood dream that you haven't?
W: To be a cowboy.
P: What question would you like to ask every person that you meet?
W: Are you in love?
P: When did you last write a letter by hand?
W: Do love notes to my wife count? If so, fairly lately.
P: What is something surprising about yourself that the world doesn't know, but should?
W: After forty years of writing, I can't imagine there's much about me I haven't already revealed.
P: Do you curse frequently/when do you curse?
W: When some practical matter doesn't work out, which, when I'm acting as the handyman for our household, happens all too often.
P: Do you have any unusual eating habits/generally quirky habits?
W: I like to eat breakfast and lunch alone. Fortunately my wife does, too.
P: What topic could you discuss for the longest period of time?
W: Poetry.
P: What causes you to get visibly emotional?
W: Manifestations of excellence, usually artistic, but other sorts as well.
P: Who do you consider to have been your most significant mentor?
W: Louis Kahn, the architect. I wasn't his student, but knew him, and learned from the example he gave of absolute dedication to his art, and an unswerveable patience towards each work.
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