In this haunting, elegantly written memoir, W. S. Merwin recalls his youth, growing up in a repressed Presbyterian household in the small river towns of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The complex portrait of a family without language or history transforms the story of their isolated lives into the development of a writer's conscience and a warning about the fate of a middle class eager to obliterate origins. Unframed Originals brings the reader complex and intimate family portraits from an award-winning poet.