What He Took

By Wendy Mnookin

Beginning with an auto accident that occurred during a family outing that took the life of Ms. Mnookin's father, the ensuing poems track the effect of that tragedy and loss, as the family heals from disaster, as the child grows up in a household with a stepfather and makes her uneasy way into adulthood, all under the shadow of a psychic uneasiness born of loss and impermanence.

Wendy Mnookin's poetry has received awards from journals including The Comstock Review, Kansas Quarterly and New Millennium Writings. She was a 1999 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She teaches poetry in Boston.

Also available by Wendy Mnookin
To Get Here
TP $12.50, 1-880238-73-X o CUSA

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1929918194
• ISBN13: 9781929918195
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: BOA Editions
• Length: 96 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a haunting elegy for lost father

When she was only two years old, Wendy Mnookin and her young family were involved in a tragic car accident. She and her mother survived with injuries, but Mnookin's 27-year-old father succumbed to his injuries. "What He Took" begins with this tragedy, and it is the enduring and haunting theme which carries the entire book. We follow Mnookin through the sweet and sad tenuousness of her earliest memories (Mnookin has memories of the accident which her family tries to tell her can't be true, as she was too young to remember) and on through her childhood into adulthood. Mnookin skillfully and candidly shows how the loss of a father affected every part of her life, from the conflicted emotions she felt with her adoring step-father, to the separateness she felt with other children who had living fathers (including her own half-sister), to the bitter-sweet relief she felt when doing atom bomb drills at school, knowing that if the bomb does drop, she would be guided into heaven by her father. The work is grounded and beautifully specific, giving the readers scenes and images which last well after the book is finished. Mnookin should be applauded for sharing such a rawly personal story in such a beautiful and human way.