Abstract
Yusef Komunyakaa’s, “My Father’s Love Letters,” is a tender, painful inside look into a broken family. More startling is it is given from the view of a young child who does not understand the situation. The mother has fled to the desert, evidently after being abused. Now alone and left to parent on his own, the father has decided to turn to drinking and ask his child to write pleading letters to his wife, asking her to return. Interpreting the situation is difficult for the child. He remembers his father during a more tender time, when he would bring his mother flowers at sunset, not scream at her or beat her, and not drink. It is difficult for him to process what is going on. While he continues to write his father’s letters, however, he is somehow happy his mother is gone. Still, he is unable to draw a distinction between love and abuse in the situation, as he refers to the drunken appeals as love letters, becoming more confused by the “quiet brutality,” and the tranquil memories he has of his father.
“My Father’s Love Letters,” is an arguably dark look at a first experience of love concerning family and functionality. The reader is afforded a peak into a family through a child’s perspective. It is the child’s first experience with the dark side of love and the ill-fated circumstances they find themselves in while misunderstanding said situation and simultaneously not having anybody to explain the situation to them. The child’s parents’ marriage is failing; the mother and father have been consistently fighting and not the father is a drunk and the mother is absent. Understandably, the child becomes emotionally confused, allowing even the title of the poem to be heart wrenching. The child’s father’s “love letters,” are always filled with drunken please for the mother to return to her family. They are promises of a better life, or the life she once had, though the child may not understand these are not affectations of love at all. They are simply empty words that are usually spoken by a miserable drunk who has lost his way. Essentially, the poem is a look inside the damage a poor example of family relations can set for a child when not explained properly, and how the confusing emotions experienced by adults can be interpreted by a child when left to their own devices.
Love is sometimes dysfunctional, and has a tendency to by brutal. Adults can prepare themselves for this chance when they enter into relationships. Children, unfortunately, are innocent bystanders in these situations, as the poem shows. They have no experience with love, or its backlash. They also will not understand the difference between love and manipulation unless it is explained to them or they learn it for themselves. Unfortunately, the child in the poem learns it for himself, as many of us do. The poem may strike such a chord for this reason: it is relatable. For example, the father has the child write to his mother that he promises, “to never beat her/ Again. Somehow I was happy/ She had gone.” The child is forced to write this message of “love” while the father gets drunk. He is told it is a love letter to his mother, who has fled the home and in the child’s eyes, he understands his father wants his mother back. However, even the child understands it is a good thing the mother has fled to the desert. The confusion of the family dysfunction is further represented by the simplicity of the child being asked to write the letter in the first place.
Oddly, despite the warring battle of emotions, the poem is also somehow tender. Perhaps this lends to its emotional conflict especially on behalf of the child. For instance, there is a repeated “quiet brutality,” about the father, as well as the room in which he and the child compose the letters. However the description of the scenery around them is quite tranquil. Sunsets, roses, and hyacinth are all mentioned with affectionate remembrances, however. The child appears to remember, also, how his father was once a loving man who did not beat his wife, the child’s mother, or yell at her. The child remembers a man who apparently brought his mother these flowers in this setting sun that eventually became a quiet brutality. We see the child is unable to distinguish the difference between these feelings, as the father attempts to regain the love he had with the child’s mother. “Laboring over a simple word, almost/ Redeemed by what he tried to say,” suggests the father had tried to control himself, and the child may interpret this as love because the father is so inept at parenting, and the mother has abandoned him.
Komunyakaa’s, “My Father’s Love Letters,” is a sad and devastating look into a broken family through the eyes of a child. An emotionally manipulative father involves a child more so than he should be involved. A mother abandons her child to a maladaptive drunk who appears incapable of explaining adult feelings to the child. As a result, the child is left to his own devices, barely understanding the situation between his parents was not ideal. He is able to hint as feelings of happiness that his mother is gone, but also continues to write letters for his father, suggesting he still does not understand the full gravity of the situation. The line between functional and dysfunctional is not drawn in his mind yet, and his father’s drunken please sound like love letters to the child. When compared to the almost romantic scenery described during the father’s gentler times, it is understandable why the child may be confused, or may be waiting for his father to become the man he once was. Regardless of the reason, the poem is a painful look inside a damaged family through the confused eyes of a child.
Works Cited
Komunyakaa, Yusef. "My Father's Love Letters." 29 April 1974.
