Fathers: A Collection of Poems

One hundred and eighteen of our finest American poets pay eloquent homage to their fathers and the broader concept of fatherhood in this loving anthology.

In this splendid collection both daughters and sons introduce us and pay heartfelt tribute to their fathers. Whether writing of fathers who were heroes or anti-heros, defenders or pacifists, those who went away suddenly or those who reappeared after a long period of time, the poets here cast the net wide to harvest the infinite variety of the father-and-child relationship. This moving anthology includes:

Raymond Carver's "The Trestle", Gwendolyn Brooks's "In Honor of David Anderson Brooks, My Father", Rita Dove's "Grape Sherbert", Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays", Donald Justice's "Men at Forty", Hayden Carruth's "Words for My Daughter from the Asylum", Maxine Kumin's "My Father's Neckties", "Robert Bly's "My Father at Eighty-Fiver"

Judy Ray is the author of two poetry collections, Pebble Rings and Pigeons in the Chandeliers, and of The Japipur Sketchbook, a memoir of a year spent in India. The Rays live in Tuscon, Arizona.

David Ray's most recent collections of poetry include Kagaroo Paws: Poems Written in Australia, Heart-Stones: New and Selected Poems, and Demons in the Diner. He has twice received the William Carlos Williams Prize from the Poetry Society of America and was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for his fiction.