Epistolary elegies make up an abundance of my first book, Hearsay, which is a collection titled about the poems below. There are some epistles and the 1988 series which frames the four biggest gossip/narratives…the hearsay…of how my father’s life was taken. Today, October 21st, is the day he vanished. Here are poems from that first book, one that one publisher/editor said in her scrawled handwritten rejection, that it lacked “emotional resonance,” which I am lucky enough WWPH and others, myself included, disagree on. The criticism drives me. My failings drive me. I’m not this persona, but I am. Here are some poems to honor my dad, a man I never was given the chance to truly know, but whose story serves as the counterpart to how I hold myself up as a man, as a father, as a husband, as your friend:
A poem.
