My Father's Song

“My Father’s Song” has 26 lines that are divided into five stanzas of varying length. Like the majority of poetry written in the late-20th century, “My Father’s Song” is written in free verse, giving it a natural and conversational tone as the author works through the memory of his father. It has non-metrical, non-rhyming lines. Punctuation is limited in the poem, but Ortiz deploys some caesura in his poem, in particular in the moment where he segues from the memory of his father speaking in the first stanza: “to his son, his song:” (Line 7). That line, ending with a colon, creates an enjambment between the first and second stanzas, as the memory of his father speaking opens up for the reader into the fuller memory of working in the fields together.

For the most part, however, Ortiz’s straightforward language and phrasing create stanzas composed primarily of one sentence. Each stanza is structured to present a sequential series of moments in this memory; however, the first stanza essentially opens with the ending; Ortiz is remembering this moment in the present, and the voice of his father in Stanza 5 “saying things” (Line 26) is also depicted in the opening verses.