So, today is my son Gavin's birthday--dude turns 2. Armistice Day seems like an apt holiday for celebrating entrance into the world. An acknowledgment of peace; a remembrance of violence. It's all there. Here's hoping my guy veers toward the former . . .
On Tuesday, I gave a reading at the fabulous Albany Library Series and I was asked by two different people if I had written poems about my son. I confessed that for two years now, I'd thought about it a lot, even tried a couple of times, but had, in my mind at least, failed miserably. I admitted to them that I had never really found poems about sons that I loved--certainly not the way I love poems about lovers, spouses, or, for that matter, parents. This bothered me but intrigued me.
I don't know about the rest of you, but for me, writing poetry about a child--especially a young one--is incredibly difficult.
In general, it's hard to reach the emotional register commensurate with your feelings for your child without being sentimental. This is especially true for celebratory poems.
There are a few other good poems about sons (are they harder to write about than daughters?), but not as many as you might think. Galway Kinnell's "After Making Love We Hear Footsteps" is memorable, as is Yeats' "A Prayer For My Son." Fabulously laced with fear, that poem always makes me think of Ben Johnson's wrenching "Epigrams: On My First Son," which, if I'm honest, scares me so thoroughly I often can't finish the poem. Similarly, David Ray's Sam's Book, a collection of poems about his son's death is a fantastic book. It's tragic but riveting.
I channeled my interest in writing about (and celebrating) my son through blogging, but that project is beginning to lose its charm. My goal, then, is to write a poem about Gavin before he turns 3. Perhaps I'll check back in with an update in a year or so.
In the meanwhile, I'd love for folks to post poems about sons that they find particularly compelling or enjoyable. Poets.org has gotten us off to a pretty good start, but we can certainly add to the list.
Along those same lines, I was struck by how struck I was when I came across this sculpture of Silenus and Dionysus not long ago. Is it just that there are so few non-commercial images of fathers and sons in what we have come to think of as high culture? Or is this just a particularly well-done piece? Emotionally bold without being manipulative.
I envy that.
I love that Kinnell poem, so much.
My son is 11 months old and I've been writing a poem a week almost since he was born. (I think I've written 49 poems over the 11 months and a bit since his birth day.) I've been posting them at Velveteen Rabbi, under the tag "mother poems." The first six weeks' worth are pretty bleak; the most recent ones may veer more toward sentimentality than I'm strictly thrilled with. (Revision will help.) But on the whole, I've found the exercise to be a really good one for me -- it's kept me writing, kept me connected with poetry, and helped me crystallize my experience of parenthood. I'd like to think that at least some of the 50ish poems I've written since I first birthed my son are really good ones, worth sharing widely. *shrug* We'll see; I figure, once the first year is up, I'll collect the poems and spend some time reading and revising them and we'll see what arises...
Posted by: Rachel Barenblat | November 11, 2010 at 08:17 PM
Wow, that's impressive, Rachel.
Posted by: Dean Rader | November 12, 2010 at 12:12 AM
I'd kind of thought Self Portrait at 30 had something to say about fatherhood.
Posted by: Jessica Cordova | November 12, 2010 at 02:39 PM
I like all of those, and also like "Changing Diapers" by Gary Snyder.
Posted by: Stephanie Brown | November 12, 2010 at 07:30 PM
See the anthology Swings and Roundabouts, Random House, for several poems about parenthood, fatherhood, sons...
Posted by: Lemon Peel | November 13, 2010 at 03:51 PM