All Comments on 'Fathers Lament'

A heart-wrenching, kick in the gut poem that builds towards the lines "the cries are the cries of silence/screaming an echo of tinnitus/she is still as a porcelain doll." I've been thinking about it and coming back to it since I first read it. It reminds me of walking inside old churches and cathedrals, unable to avoid stepping on the graves of those buried there.

I'm afraid I am unable to say more about it - there but for the grace of luck go all parents...

The story here is what happens in the space of a moon cycle. That can make for a poem that is balanced and cohesive as well as shocking. Most important (for me) is the shift from expectation and the birthing struggle to great horror and sadness. That really shakes me as a reader. And for that reason I would lose that first section and put more hope into the poem up to "push that last push."

To me, if you keep that first section as is, it is kind of like telling how the story ends before it begins. And while the worm metaphor works in some ways, it doesn't do anything additional to support the theme of sacrifice. I'm assuming the family did not know about the baby's condition in advance, so (if that's true) there was a huge crash from joy to sorrow. That's what I see in the poem. I may be totally off, and if so well it wouldn't be the first time!

Of course I gave it a 5 because it's such good writing: but I think you can make it a 10. <3

I don't know why it came up anon.

Powerful and wrenching.

Unapologetically true. My favorite kind of writing.

Father's (possessive) unless you are referring to more that one father