My Father's Song

Simon J. Ortiz originally published “My Father’s Song” in his poetry/story collection entitled A Good Journey (1977). Ortiz is a major writer in the Native American Renaissance, a movement which began in the 1960s and marked a significant increase in the production of literary works by Native Americans in the United States. The poem was written at a time when Ortiz was collecting and recounting stories from Indigenous tribes across the United States, and his poetry was beginning to reach a broader audience. In “My Father’s Song,” Ortiz explores themes such as the father-son relationship, farming and caring for the earth, compassion for living things and the family, and the fragility of death and life. It reflects Ortiz’s career-long interest in honoring the natural world and landscapes, a rejection of the mechanized world, remembrance of the dead, and the preservation of tribal and familial traditions.

Poet Biography

Simon J. Ortiz was born on May 27, 1941, in New Mexico. He is a member of the Acoma Pueblo tribe and spoke Acoma as his primary language until he entered grade school. He attended Fort Lewis College for Chemistry, served three years in the US military, then studied at the University of New Mexico before going on to earn an MFA as an International Writing Fellow from the University of Iowa in 1969. His literary career gained momentum in the 1970s after he embarked on a cross-country journey to gather stories from Indigenous people across the United States. In 1976 he published his first collection of poems, Going for the Rain, and went on to become one of the most widely read Native American poets, publishing books of poetry, children’s books, memoires, non-fiction, and short stories.

Ortiz has taught creative writing and Native American literature since 1968 at various institutions, including the University of New Mexico, the Institute of American Indian Arts, San Diego State University, and the University of Toronto. He has also served as an editor for various anthologies and books. Ortiz has received a variety of awards, including a New Mexico Humanities Council Humanitarian Award, a Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Discovery Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His book From Sand Creek, received the Pushcart Prize in poetry in 1982. Ortiz was an Honored Poet at the 1981 White House Salute to Poetry, and he later received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Returning the Gift Festival of Native Writers in 1993. He is currently an Emeritus Professor at Arizona State University and is married to activist and writer Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

Poem Text

Ortiz, Simon J. “My Father’s Song.” 1977. The Writer’s Almanac.

Summary

In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker misses his father, wishing he could talk to him. He remembers a specific moment between them, just after his father said something meaningful to him, recalling how his father’s voice caught with emotion. The speaker says this was his father’s song, as he transitions to a different memory in the second stanza.

In the second stanza, the speaker remembers a specific time he planted corn with his father at Acu (the Acoma Pueblo name for their land), which was something they did several times. He remembers the soft, damp sand in his hand. In Stanza 3, he recounts how his father stopped planting to show him a disturbed mouse nest that the plowshare had exposed. In Stanza 4, his father gently scoops up the pink baby mice, and encourages his son to touch them. Together, they take the mice to the edge of the field and put them in the shade of a clod of earth.

In Stanza 5, the poem ends with the speaker remembering specific sensations of the moment with his father, such as the soft sand, the mice, and his father speaking to him.