“My Father’s Song” is a poem that was written by Simon Ortiz in the year 1976. Simon Ortiz was a Native American. “My Father’s Song” is a poem that talks about the life experiences of the poet with his father. The poem focuses on the experience the poet had with his father while they were planting corn at the farm. The poet narrates of how they found small mice, and took them to a safer place at the edge of the farm where there was shade (Ortiz, 1976). The poem shows that the father was teaching the poet lessons about the value of life.
The poet is telling the reader about the sanctity of life through the lessons learnt from his father. That is why the poem is titled “My Father’s song”. In the fast stanza the poet says he misses his father, and proceeds to describe the memories he has of his father. He also says that he remembers his father’s song (Ortiz, 1976). His father’s song symbolizes the lessons that his father passed on to him.
The voice of the poem is that of the poet, though he is relaying the lessons he learnt from his father. The tone of the poem is gentle, and signifies that the poet misses his father. The structure of the poem is open because the stanzas have varying number of lines. The sound in the poem is assonance and examples in the stanzas include “soft damp sand”, “soft moist sand”, and “sand moist clod”. Imagery is used where we are told the father trembles with emotion because of what he has said to the poet. Imagery is also used by the poet when describing the soft feeling of the moist sand in his hand. The poem uses figure of speech through personification of the plowshare. The plowshare is said to have unearthed the nest of a mouse. Symbolism is used by the poet when he describes the poem as a song of his father. The song represents the lessons he has learnt from his father.
Works Cited
Ortiz J. Simon. Going for the Rain: Poems. New York: Harper & Row. 1976. Print.
