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.