The Song Poet: A Memoir of My Father

Kalia explains that her father, Bee, does not identify as a poet. In fact, when asked he identifies himself as a husband and father, and “on his gravestone he wants it known that his wife and his children are his life’s work” (1). Nevertheless, he “composes, day and night, in Hmong, our language, his kwv txhiaj” (1). Kalia describes how she and her siblings would sit on the floor, listening to their father’s songs. These songs transformed the poverty of their lives into unimaginable beauty: “The mold growing wild becomes the backdrop of the beautiful paintings we see on television, the peak of this mountain, the descent of that river, the sliver of tree that clings to life on the edges of the rocks, open and exposed” (1).

Kalia explains that though her father might not think of himself as a poet, that even though it took her many years to even describe him that way, his skill is undeniable. He shapes his poetry “into long, stretching stanzas of four or five, structures them in couplets, repeats patterns of words, and changes the last word of each verse so that it rhymes with the end of the next. He is a master of

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