“My Father’s Back” by Edward Hirsch
While attending the University of North Carolina Greensboro, I took Advanced Poetry and one of the things I had to do was annotate some poetry. Here is one of those poems. Enjoy.
https://genius.com/Edward-hirsch-my-fathers-back-annotated
Before one even gets into the poem, there is interpretation to be had in the title. One way to look at the title is the literal meaning of it actually being the speaker’s father’s back. Then there are the connotations that come from “father’s back,” one being how a boy wishes to have a strong build like their father or the retreating form of a father’s back as he leaves. And then there is the possibly of “father’s back,” as in the father has returned but this is rarely the case. In short, there are many ways to take the title, leaving the reader with many venues for which the poem will take.
Within the first line of the poem, “There’s an early memory that I carry around,” the readers gets a feel that this poem will not be about a boy trying to be strong like his father but of his father’s form retreating, thus leaving him. Thus the speaker has already set the tone of the poem to be nostalgic and sad. There is also the idea of this memory being something tangible that the speaker carries around with him and how he is literally holding on to this memory. This idea is more realized in the third line, “like an old photograph in my wallet.” And then the speaker goes on to describe how faded the picture or memory is and how he doesn’t much like it but keeps it nonetheless and is that what a memory is, the bad ones at least, something we don’t like but keep anyway.
Then the speaker goes on to say, “Fingering it now and then like a sore tooth/Knowing it’s there/not needing to see it anymore . . .” telling the reader how painful the memory is, always aware that it is there, never needing to see it in his mind to still be able to know the memory by heart. This makes the reader feel sympathy for the speaker at how much pain this memory causes him, making the tone of the poem more sad, almost depressing and even a little bit anguished; that the speaker can never be rid of the pain of his father leaving.
However, within the next stanza, the speaker takes a turn in description and thus changes the mood of the poem. The speaker goes on to say, “The sun slants down on the shingled roof./The wind breathes in the needled pines.” Setting up the reader to believe that things are looking up now, there is some slight happiness now in the speaker’s life beyond the sad memory of his father leaving. But then the speaker surprises you or rather reminds you that this is supposed to be a sad poem by stating, “And I am lying in the grass on my third birthday,/Red-faced and watchful,” telling the reader that he has been crying while his father prepares to leave. Thus the reader feels for the speaker even more, for not only has the speaker been crying, but it is his birthday and he is young when his father leaves him. Then the reader goes on to say that he isn’t quite into hysterics yet about his father leaving and the reader admires the speaker for keeping himself together but the reader still feels for him that he has to go through such a painful experience at such a young age.
Further down we read, “A moment before he was holding me up . . .” and in the next few stanzas, “A moment before I was squealing with joy,” telling the reader how everything seemed fine and perfect, as if there was nothing wrong in the world and nothing could go wrong in these moments. And then the speaker goes to say, “I remember waking up to the twin peaks of his shoulders moving away . . . I remember the giant distance between us . . . and then I was sitting up . . . a man walking away from his family.” It started out with the speaker remember these wonderful moments, thinking his world would never change to him remembering the horror of his father leaving and that last line, “. . . walking away from his family,” shows the reader that the speaker has some resentment towards this, as though he is angry with his father for living him. This changes the tone of the poem from sadness and despair to one of resentment and slight anger.
But then the poem quickly shifts to resolution, almost completely forgetting the sorrow and the anger, with a clarity to the poem. The speaker states, “I don’t know why we go over the hurts,” as if to say there is no point in reliving the past, it will not change the future at hand. Then the speaker goes on to say that we play over these memories in our minds “again and again,” as if replaying the memories will give us some answers as to “who we are now.” It would appear to the reader that the speaker has reached a level of maturing and understanding and isn’t as bothered, or no longer bothered by the fact that his father left him. This makes the reader feel proud of the speaker of moving on and gives the poem a calm, reasonable tone.
However, in the last stanza the speaker says, “It’s drizzling/a car door slams, just once, and he’s gone/Tiny pools of water glisten on the street” and the resolution the poem once held quickly sinks back into sadness and depression. Thus the reader seems to feel saddened that the speaker hasn’t moved on as the reader had thought or hoped and the reader almost feels less sympathetic towards the speaker for having not moved forward in life. But then again, as the speaker begin at the beginning of the poem, the memory will never fade and the reader wonders, can the speaker ever truly forget?
