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Father Said: Poems

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Hal Sirowitz, the former Poet Laureate of Queens (who now lives in another boro), offers us this funny look at his father's sayings and life philosophy. It is a follow up to "Mother Said" and "My Therapist Said." Just as Sedaris is better read with a Carolina accent, these are better read with a dry, montone, slightly whiny Queens accent.

In one poem:
When your mother tells me don't I think /
it's time we got a better washing machine, /
Father said, I tell her, Let it decide. /
If it breaks down, we'll get a better one.

Or his father compares the young Hal to ants
("I've never seen them being idle. I /
wish I could say the same thing about you"),

He writes, "The only/ good thing about dying is that I / won't be around if something goes wrong./ You'll have to take care of it."

In "Saluting The Bull", Hal's father feels for the bull in a bullfight, one that did not deserve an early death after having a stranger wave its least favorite color in front of its face, trying to make it look silly. In "The Lost Friend", his father recounts a game of hide and seek, in which he never found his friend. He hopes one day, now decades later, that he will find him.

Nearly all are gems to be savored.

I did not grow up in New York; I grew up in Iowa. I am not Jewish; I was raised in a Baptist church. In spite of these cultural dissimilarities, I found so much to relate to in this book. Perhaps the position of fathers in families is more universal than one might think. All I know is that, when reading these poems, frequently I could hear my own father speaking, and that made me smile.

and not edgewise. With the same neurotic quirkiness of the poems in his first volume, these poems delight with the difference manifested in the father-son relationship. Despite the brevity, Sirowitz manages to capture those funny, annoying, sad moments in tiny memories of intimate verbal exchanges. It is as if we had a chair, listening in the next room.

Award-winning poet Hal Sirowitz presents Father Said, an anthology of his one-page free-verse poems, written in an almost conversational style, that distill the connection between father and son into bits of wisdom, large and small, that strengthen a lifelong bond. A compelling and eminently readable compendium of ageless wisdom, wry insight, and catch-one's-eye phrases make Father Said a superb giftbook even for individuals who may be unaccustomed to reading poetry - the words speak with a plain-terms, everyman spirit that one does not need years of literary education to wholeheartedly appreciate. Highly recommended. Mother of Invention: They say necessity is the mother / of invention, Father said, but you / don't feel the necessity of inventing / an excuse for why you don't visit us anymore. / Your sister, who has given less than you, doesn't / visit us much either but at least she invents a new excuse / every week that she's unable to come.