My intention was to ‘peek’ at I Wish My Father, but I couldn’t put it down, and after the last poem, I started again from page one and read to the end. This collection is so moving and plain-spoken, that the careful attention to the ingredients of sound and prosody baked into each line might go unnoticed, which is what we, as poets, hope for. I got to know the author’s dad in all his humanity; he is now part of my family. A wonderful companion to I Carry My Mother; in both volumes, Newman captures the moods and personalities beautifully . -Richard Michelson, author of More Money Than God I Wish My Father is a study of a father-daughter relationship, full of daily expressions of love, loyalty, and devotion that passes between the two. In this book-length verse sequence, a partner to Newman’s previous collection I Carry My Mother, the poet bears witness to her father’s life, post losing his wife/her mother, and brings forth their shared grief in finely wrought observations of domestic moments that resound with larger meaning. With Newman’s trademark clarity of language and her matter-of-fact tone mixed with tenderness, these poems offer moving reflections on facing the vicissitudes of aging, loss, and mortality.
-Shara McCallum, author of No Ruined Stone
This collection speaks eloquently to the dictum that if you write fully about one person, you write about all people in their humanity. Leslea Newman deftly enumerates situations that in their beautifully observed wrinkles and folds give forth the feeling of an aged man’s life and his relationship with his daughter, who, in dealing with his crotchets and quibbles, to saying nothing of pure stubbornness, is ‘on the edge / of a nervous breakdown.’ Droll and sad, these poems possess an abundance of insight, a precious empathy that rises out of the depths of exasperation into the bemused heights of love.
-Baron Wormser, author of Unidentified Sighing Objects
