Kooser, Ted : Father: May 19, 1999

Literature Annotations

Genre	Poem
Keywords	Aging, Caregivers, Death and Dying, Disability, Family Relationships, Grief, Human Worth, Illness and the Family, Love, Mourning, Ordinary Life, Suffering, Survival, Time
Summary	Some readers may be caught off-guard by this elegiac love poem with its unconventionally direct thoughts about quality of life issues and family relationships. Had the narrator’s father not died twenty years ago, today would mark his ninety-second birthday. In the posthumous apostrophe to his father, the narrator remembers his storyteller voice, his “air of Old Spice,” and his fondness for lilacs in spring. The timeliness of his death prevented the miseries he and his siblings might have endured with illnesses, clinic and hospital visits, and life-saving interventions. Without specifying the circumstances, the narrator writes that his father died with his “dignity intact.”
Commentary	For study and discussion this poem should be compared to “Lullaby” by Jon Mukand (see this database). As an aside, another poem about death of a beloved figure and lilacs in spring, “When Lilacs Last in Dooryards Bloomed,” was written by Walt Whitman, who recalled, posthumously, Abraham Lincoln’s abbreviated lifespan.
Source	Delights & Shadows
Publisher	Copper Canyon
Edition	2004
Place Published	Port Townsend, Wash.
Annotated by	Nixon, Lois LaCivita
Date of Entry	12/11/06