My Father's Love Letters

Published in his 1992 collection Magic City, Yusef Komunyakaa’s narrative poem “My Father’s Love Letters” is based on the poet’s own experience writing love letters to his mother, who was estranged from the family due to her husband’s abuse, from his father, who could not write beyond his name. Through the words of the poem’s speaker, the poet explores the dynamics between father, mother, and son, and strives to illuminate the warring impulses within the speaker’s father, who longs for his wife when she is gone but abuses her when she is present. The speaker of the poem does not look down on his father, whose skill as a carpenter he admires; instead, the speaker seeks to understand why his father behaved abusively towards his wife.

Through his speaker, Komunyakaa explores the father-son dynamic, pulling back to consider his mother’s reaction to the love letters he writes on his father’s behalf. The speaker even ponders whether or not to include messages of his own to his mother to encourage her to stay away from her abusive husband. By the end of this oft-anthologized poem, the speaker decides that his father’s effort in dictating the contents of the love letters “almost / Redeem[s]” (Lines 35-36) him.

Poet Biography

Born James William Brown in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1947, Yusef Komunyakaa later changed his name to honor his Trinidadian grandfather. He grew up as the oldest of six children with a carpenter father who, like the one in “My Father’s Love Letters,” who was unable to write and could only sign his name. After growing up in a lower-class neighborhood of Bogalusa, Komunyakaa enlisted in the army and served in Vietnam, where he worked as a journalist and military newspaper editor. His exceptional service in these roles earned him a Bronze Star.

After Vietnam, he earned a B.A. at the University of Colorado Springs and, later, an M.A at the University of Colorado and an M.F.A. at the University of California at Irvine. These years mark the beginning of his life as a poet, thanks in part to time spent studying with noted poets Charles Wright and C.K. Williams at UC-Irvine.

Komunyakaa’s first book of poems, Dedications & Other Dark Horses, was published in 1977, only two years after he completed his undergraduate degree. He gained critical attention with the publication of Copacetic in 1984, which blended everyday language with jazz rhythms and musicality. His 1988 book, Dien Cai Dau, which explored his time in Vietnam, won The Dark Room Poetry Prize and is rated among the best creative work on the Vietnam war.

Komunyakaa has published numerous other collections, including Vernacular: New & Selected Poems 1977-1989, Magic City, where “My Father’s Love Letters” first appeared, and Pleasure Dome. In addition to other poetry collections, Komunyakaa is also the author of Blues Notes: Essays, Interviews & Commentaries and several theatrical works, including Gilgamesh: A Verse Play and Slip Knot. He also translated The Insomnia of Fire by Nguyen Quant Thieu with Marth Collins and coedited The Jazz Poetry Anthology with J.A. Sascha Feinstein. Other poems by Komunyakaa include “Facing It” and “Slam, Dunk, & Hook”.

Among the poet’s many honors are a Pulitzer Prize, the Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and The Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, as well as fellowships from the Louisiana Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts. Komunyakaa became a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 1999 and is currently Distinguished Senior Poet at New York University.

Poem Text

Komunyakaa, Yusef. “My Father’s Love Letters.” 1992. Internet Poetry Archive.

Summary

Like many narrative works, “My Father’s Love Letters” begins with a description of the setting: “On Fridays he’d open a can of Jax / After coming home from the mill” (Lines 1-2). The speaker does not provide geographical markers beyond the brand name of beer that was popular in the southern states of the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. The poem continues as the speaker’s father asks the speaker to write a letter to his mother; the speaker hints at a tense situation between the speaker’s parents, who are estranged, including the ominous lines that demonstrate his father “Promising to never beat her / Again” (Lines 6-7).

Next, the speaker, who writes love letters to his mother on behalf of his father, considers sabotaging his father’s plan by slipping “in a reminder, how Mary Lou / Williams’ ‘Polka Dots & Moonbeams’ / Never made the swelling go down” (Lines 9-11). He quickly abandons the thought of cautioning his mother to stay away and focuses on describing his carpenter-father and his equipment as well as the speaker’s own efforts to transcribe his father’s letters.

The speaker acknowledges that though his father is a skilled carpenter and builder, the man struggles to express himself through words. To the speaker, these efforts to communicate verbally are futile, and he “wonder[s] if she laughed / & held them over a gas burner” (Lines 26-27). In the end, no matter how hard the father tries to find the right words for the speaker-son to write to his mother, the speaker cannot completely forgive his father for his father’s violence toward his mother.