I had an incredibly hard time connecting to this poem because my experience with the objects and the type of people the poem describes are so limited. My father has never, ever hit my mother. He would rather drive a knife into his heart. The objects in the poem are also not typical of objects which I would have found around my house or at my dad’s office. The hammer and nails are obvious, but the voltage meters and pipe threaders are things which I would probably not be able to recognize. In my opinion, this takes away from my ability to understand the poem because I cannot fully identify with the images through which the poet is functioning.

I also have a limited experience with illiteracy, but I think the poet does an incredible job of bringing out the father’s dependence upon the speaker. The poet also makes the embarrassment of the father obvious, for the father needs alcohol and closed eyes in order to commit himself to the letter writing process through his son. The closed eyes is key for me. The father needs to pretend that he is not in the room, not relying on his son. He is like a child who, when he closes his eyes, believes that he is no longer visible to the people in the room. "..stood there / With eyes closed & fists balled, / laboring over a simple word, / Opened like a fresh wound, almost / Redeemed by what he tried to say" (Peacock, How to Read a Poem…, P. 126-7). The father can be seen in an even more sympathetic light because of his obvious skill in carpentry, as related by the boy. "…he’d look at blueprints / & tell you how many bricks / Formed each wall" (Peacock, How to Read a Poem…, P. 127). So skilled in one area, yet humbled by his own son to the point where closed eyes hide his soul.

The poem, "My Father's Loveletters," by Yusef Komunyakaa is extremely powerful in a mysterious way. I'm not really sure what to make of the young child's plight. It seems obvious that he's scared or unsure about his (illiterate?) father. The old man is described, along with his tool shed, in a grotesque and dark fashion. The youngster sets the intimidating scene:

On the concrete floor. (Komunyakaa, "My Father's Loveletters," in Peacock, How to Read a Poem, p. 127)

The cold description of the tools and other surroundings points to a distant relationship between the parent and the child. Simply put, there doesn't seem to be much love in the room. To me, it seems like the father is a simple man, one who doesn't know how to show emotion in person, but who uses letters to express his true feelings. One problem: he's stuck with a hole in his heart after his wife left him alone with the child, due to his physical abuse. In some ways, I want to severely hate the father. He takes out his problems on his wife and then wants to use his child to help get her back. Quite frankly, it's a pitiful scene. My stomach turns thinking about growing up in such a household. Mother goes away, the child has nowhere to turn, the future is dim. But I also feel sorry for the father. No doubt, he grew up in a similar situation. It's likely that he was treated horribly at home, missed out on an education (I'm assuming the child writes because the man cannot), and saw his own father beat his mother. He doesn't know the proper way to treat another human being, but he can still feel the pain and sadness of being left alone.

The sadness is probably even more intense because the mother, we are told, "sent postcards of desert flowers / Taller than a man. (Komunyakaa, My Father's Loveletters," in Peacock, How to Read a Poem, p. 126) This signifies that she has found a better life away from the family. Compare beautiful and tall desert flowers to the current scene in the dusty and unfeeling tool shed. I can't. There is no real comparison. I think the newfound happy life for the mother eats away at the husband. Now that she sends postcards showing how beautiful life is, the man can't stand her being away. It's like a nasty break-up with a girlfriend. You probably don't want your former love to get hit by a bus the next time she's crossing the road, but you don't exactly want to see her win the Miss America pageant either. Well, this man didn't feel the need to treat his wife with respect while she was around, but he just wants one more chance to make her unhappy. The fact that she found peace elsewhere, without him, ruins the whole plan. She no longer feels that she must stay. She's no longer dependent and scared.

But I shouldn't be so harsh. In a sense, it feels like the child still has some respect for his father. He explains that the father could "look at blueprints / & tell you how many bricks / Formed each wall. That seems to say that he's good at his chosen craft. Respectable. And don't forget the last four lines, when the child sums up the situation by writing,

With eyes closed & fists balled,

Redeemed by what he tried to say. (Komunyakaa, "My Father's Loveletters," in Peacock, How to Read a Poem, p. 127)

Unfortunately, I don't think there will be any redemption. The father has missed his chance. But where does that leave the child? He appears scared of his father, yet he also recognizes that he's only human. At one point, the child seems to side with the father. The child writes, speaking about his mother, "I was almost happy / She was gone, and sometimes wanted / To slip in something bad. I'm not really sure what to make of this. Is the child feeling abandoned by his mother? From the looks of it, he's tense around his father, but it could be that he also has tremendous respect for him. Maybe he doesn't realize that beating a woman is a gross act. On the other hand, perhaps he's happy for his mother because she's gone to a better place, regardless of where that leaves the child. He wants to slip in something bad so she'll never be tempted to return to the sad and brutal home.

Just to be sure that Komunyakaa is a male, I checked out this site to find out that he surely is. I like how Yusef is so clever with his words. In this one poem I truly see depth in his words.

(Komunyakaa, "My Father’s Loveletters," in How to Read a Poem…, pg. 126).

In these lines I see the translation of his want to "slip in something bad" directly correlating with the images proceeding it. I see Yusef imagining himself using these carpenter tools to kill his dad. I can see him using his dad’s nails and hammer to beat his dad more severely than his dad beat his mother. I can see Yusef imagining his dad’s neck hanging by the extension cord coiled around his feet. The fact that he’s supposed to be writing what his dad is telling him but instead is daydreaming and looking around the room tells the reader that something else is happening here.

Maybe Yusef’s hate for his dad is not this severe. But there definitely is some amount of resentment to his dad seeping out of this poem. As we read on we read: "Words rolled from under / The pressure of my ballpoint:" (Komunyakaa, "My Father’s Loveletters," in How to Read a Poem…, pg. 127). This is a tiny, yet important clue. A ballpoint pen should write without hardly any pressure or effort from the writer. The fact that he is applying pressure and even mentions pressure signals that Yusef is tense when writing these postcards. He’s not doing this out of free-will. Repeatedly writing letters to his mother is not exactly how he wants to be spending his time.

The setting also clues us in on the tension in the room.

(Komunyakaa, "My Father’s Loveletters," in How to Read a Poem…, pg. 127).

The word "brutality" just somehow doesn’t fit with "quiet." The fact that he is describing the wedge on the floor as "heartless" maybe signals his relationship with his dad. Could Yusef feel lost between his mom and his dad just like he feels lost between sentences and between the voltage meters and pipe threaders? Finally, I have one other piece of evidence to support my claim that Yusef has a deep hate for his dad. Yusef never refers to his dad as "Dad." Yusef mentions his dad impersonally as "This man / who stole roses & hyacinth…" (Komunyakaa, "My Father’s Loveletters," in How to Read a Poem…, pg. 127). His dad is almost a stranger to him as a thief!

Each time I read the poem My Father's Love letters I gleaned slightly more from the text. My first translation was quite literal. I read a poem about an incredibly sad situation with a man forced to write letters for his illerate father to his mother who left. The evidence for this interpretation are readily available in the text. The second and third times I read this poem though, I took some meanings differently and spent more time in the imagery of the poem. For instance, the line "the heartless/Gleam of a two pound wedge/On the concrete floor" as a physical manifestation of the division and conflict between the father, mother and child of this poem. The second interpretation I decided upon changed the nature of this item. I read this poem the second time to be a metaphor for writing poetry and the power of language. The wise old man, a poet, was victimized by the world in which he found his inspiration. The poet's tools are manifestations of his words, the tools of his creation. The poet has not audio language, but the tools and abilities to create. The conflict in this new story then becomes the poet's inability to reach his audience through the means he knows: construction. The condescendention to depend upon another person and another language must be very difficult for the poet, and the trust he puts into his son unimaginable. Also, the line about beating his wife may not be literal, but a metaphor for understanding, e.g. his "abuse" of his wife stems from his inability to communicate. In this second interpretation, the imagery of the wedge is not a symbol of his separation, but the ineffective "heartless" tools which are now useless to him in accomplishing his goal of connecting his audience.

The final readings I experienced in this poem support what I decided upon as a interpretation earlier, but with new imagery. Bear with me, this is only a theory and I am probably VERY wrong. Here goes. I believe that this poem is still about poetry, but encompasses a greater breadth of topic. I think the character of the rough hewn carpenter is somehow connected with the ancient Greek god Hesphastos (I think this is right), the inventor/creator of the gods. Hesphastos was deformed and quite ugly, although he had an incredible talent for making anything, and longed for a wife. The carpenter in his shed in the center of the earth, the shed in the poem, is cut off from the beautiful outside world, the sun shining through the door, and represents the creator spirit in all people. This spirit longs for connection with its creation, with beauty, and desire for love. All these desires are embodied by the carpenter in the poem who can create, but is unable to communicate and is therefore shut off from the rest of the world. The conflict again is that the incredibly talented creator's talents are not sufficient for the deed at hand and a great sense of helplessness occurs. Dependency follows, and all that the Hesphastos figure has to offer is his name and fame.

The first time I read "My Father's Letters," I felt a lot of sympathy for the woman/mother who left her abusive husband. I liked the line where the author/boy writes: "I wondered if she'd laugh/As she held them over a flame" (Peacock, "Letters from Two Fathers," pg. 127). Those lines painted the visual image in my head, and I could imagine the woman burning up her desperate husband's letters. I do not have a lot of sympathy for abusive spouses. I also could feel the mother's cold/distant heart in the line, "The same letter to my mother/Who sent postcards to desert flowers/taller than a man" (pg. 126). The use of the word desert makes me think of a dry place, a place of no feeling. This woman has left her family, has left her son, and she has left her husband who is still in love with her.

The estranged relationship between the mother and son intrigues me. The son is glad his mom is gone, he is relieved the stressful relationship between his parents is no longer present. "I was almost happy she was gone and sometime wanted to slip in something bad" (pg. 126). This boy does not seem to miss his mom at all, for he has had to grow up quickly to be a "man" for his dad. I feel sad for the boy because he doesn't seem to have that close connection with his mom. Personally, I am quite close to my mom, and when she was gone for over 2 months, it was hard for me, but I knew she was returning. The mom doesn't sound like she is returning, and the boy doesn't seem to care. Is he perhaps bitter that she left him or is he just relieved he doesn't have to witness the conflicts between his parents? I think he lost something, he's lost his mother's love, and he's lost his childhood.

This poem portrays the terrible situation of a child whose mother has left the family because of an abusive father, that much is plainly obvious, what isnt so obvious is how the boy feels about both of his parental figures. We can assume that the father still loves the mother, by the way he writes her letters every friday, but perhaps not enough to write the letters himself or to get help for his abusive nature. And we can also assume that the mother is quite happy being gone and has no intention of coming back.

I think the child (are we to assume its a boy? im not sure.) does not feel very connected to his mother. I was almost happy she was gone, and sometimes wanted to slip in something bad (My Fathers Love Letters, Komunyakaa, qtd in Peacock, 126) He/she is happy the mother is gone because that means she will be safe from the abuse, but by the same token, the mother does not make much of an effort to remain a part of the childs life. The poem discusses the way she sends the same or very similar postcards all the time. It also talks about the mother burning the father's letters, and i have no problem with that at all, but i think that is something that she would not do if she loved the child, because after being married to the husband, she would know he cant write and must be having the child do it. Thus, why would she burn something she knew was coming from the child? It seems clear to me she has moved on and left all parts of her former life behind, including her offspring.