Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

"Father Son and Holy Ghost" by Audre Lorde wrestles with the complex relationship between a father and a son, considering the themes of presence and absence, recognition and oblivion, love and estrangement. The poem explores the haunting emptiness that follows the death of a father, invoking imagery that spans the tangible and the emotional, the past and the present.

The poem starts with a candid admission: "I have not ever seen my father's grave." This sets the tone for the psychological distance between the father and the speaker, a distance maintained through death. As the poem unfolds, we learn that this distance is not just physical but also emotional and existential.

The father's presence is evoked through memories of everyday life-his "judgment eyes" and "great hands' print / on our evening doorknobs." These seemingly mundane details, like a half turn of a doorknob each night, become laden with significance, signaling his routine return home, "drabbled with the world's business." The father is described as "massive and silent," suggesting his imposing figure and his quiet authority. He arrives home "as the whole day's wish," perhaps an indication that his return is both expected and feared, a moment where the family members' "shapes" could be "redefined" by him.

However, after his death, the "evening doorknobs wait and do not recognize us as we pass." This personification of the doorknobs underlines the weight of the father's absence, as if even inanimate objects notice the void he left. The doorknobs, once turned by the father, are now repositories of absence.

The poem then delves into the father's relationship with the mother, depicted through different women who show up each week to pull up the grass on his grave, "calling it weed." These women, each taking on the face of the mother, suggest an eternal cycle of forgetting and remembering. It raises questions about fidelity, the nature of love, and the ever-changing roles we play in the lives of others. The father, who is made "changeless" by time through his death, must be "amazed" by this revolving door of faces.

The father's death is said to occur "in silence," a reflection of his personality-"massive and silent." The speaker mentions that the father "died knowing / a January 15th that year me," leaving readers to ponder the significance of this specific date. It could mark a significant event between them or simply serve as a temporal marker, a finality.

The poem closes as it began, with the speaker stating, "Lest I go into dust / I have not ever seen my father's grave." The refrain suggests that this admission might be a lament or even a form of resistance against oblivion. It encapsulates the complicated feelings of love, resentment, and yearning that color the relationships between fathers and sons, the living and the dead.

Audre Lorde uses nuanced, evocative language to plumb the depths of family dynamics, especially the often fraught relationship between a father and a child. "Father Son and Holy Ghost" serves as a meditation on the transformative nature of death-not just for those who die, but for those who are left behind, living in a world redefined by absence.

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