(1942-2019)
Intro by Ted Kooser
(from January 10, 2010)
The trauma of war, the disruption of illness, encroaching dementia or perhaps the accumulated impact of alcohol or drug use. These realities or some combination of them can become too much. Some fathers retreat to a grey chair and are beyond reach even from their children. This poem sees the resulting hardship through the eyes of a child which makes the yearning more heartfelt.
The Other Fathers
would be coming back
from some war, sending
back stuffed birds or
handkerchiefs in navy
blue with Love painted
on it. Some sent telegrams
for birthdays, the pastel
letters like jewels.
The magazines were full of fathers who
were doing what had
to be done, were serving,
were brave. Someone
yelped there’d be confetti
in the streets, maybe
no school. That soon
we’d have bananas. My
father sat in the grey
chair, war after war,
hardly said a word. I
wished he had gone
away with the others
so maybe he would
be coming back to us.
A word about the poet: Lyn Lyfshin was a poet who had written over 130 books and chapbooks and edited four anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines. She has given more than 700 readings across the USA and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum and Huntington Library. Lyn also taught poetry at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award, she is the subject of the documentary film "Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass."
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