Child\'s Clarity: Komunyakaa\'s \"My Father\'s

¶ … Child's Clarity:

Komunyakaa's "My Father's Love Letters"

Yusef Komunyakaa's poem, "My Father's Love Letters," illustrates how children perceive and understand life more than their parents want to believe. Too often, people do not think their actions affect children or that they are even aware of them. The truth of the matter is that they do comprehend more than we would like to think. A father, lost in grief and sorrow, believes what he is saying and he expects his son to believe him, too, but clearly, the speaker of this poem looks beyond the spoken word to see the fragile truth. The child in this poem sees more clearly than the adult.

The speaker in the poem knows his place; he is still his father's child and he obeys his father and writes the letters. These letters are not just letters to the speaker -- they are glimpses into his father's soul. The process allows him to see both sides of the story. His father, broken, "would beg, / Promising to never beat her / Again" (5-7). The words, "Love, / Baby, Honey, Please" (16-7) are a stark contrast to the setting in the poem as father and son sit in "quiet brutality / Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, / Lost between sentences" (18-20). The speaker becomes aware of what brutality can do and understands the hopelessness of it. He wonders if his mother read the letters and "laughed / and held them over a gas burner (25-6). He can see both sides of the story and as he writes the letters, he is unsure of their success.

The child in this poem understands how actions have consequences and he has his father to thank for the invaluable lesson. He may not understand every aspect of his parents' relationship, but he understands why his mother had to leave and he admits he is "happy / She had gone (7-9). This sentence tells us that the child no doubt saw his mother after his father beat her. He does not blame her not does he even think to question her actions. He understands and is glad that she may be living a life without that kind of pain.

The speaker of this poem also possesses the ability to see his father in a very human way. This may stem from retrospect or the notion that within each of us lays the capacity of good and evil. The speaker does not express hate for his father; instead, he sees him as a troubled, somewhat simple man. The speaker does not express any sympathy for his father, realizing that all of the sweat and agony over the words he wanted to say could not erase the past or the pain it caused. He sees his father's anguish and can only bring himself to admit that his father was "almost / Redeemed by what he tried to say" (34-5). Here we see the speaker understands the regret and love but he still realizes the some actions do too much damage, regardless of how sorry we may feel afterwards.