Daddy Issues

Happy Father's Day from Sylvia Plath and Robert Hayden, two poets who apparently had very different experiences with their paternal role models.

Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" has long made me think of my own father. It's the work ethic depicted in the piece, the quiet attention to duty that you don't always, as a kid, recognize as love.

Plath's, while I recognize its lacerating genius and amazing sonics, these days mostly makes me giggle. Terrible, but true. It's the hyberbole ... and the fact that it seems like an early example of all the arguments that inspired Godwin's Law.

Here's a lovely one from Li-Young Lee, to tip the balance toward the good, graceful, non-Hitler dads everywhere.