Father-Son Poems

main page | 20th-century literature | 20th-century poetry | about literaryhistory.com

At the request of a reader, we have put together a collection of poems about fathers and sons, with poems from the wonderful web site by the Poetry Foundation. The Foundation was established recently by Poetry Magazine, which received in 2007 an astonishing $100 million dollar donation from heiress Ruth Lily, to benefit poetry. They have put it to use by creating their excellent free, open access poetry web site, which includes encyclopedia-type articles on famous poets, old poets, classic poets, avant-garde poets, traditional poets, and emerging poets, their poems, and a steady stream of news and feature articles on poetry.

"God Loves You, and So Do I" by Michael C. Blumenthal

My Papa's Waltz by Theodore Roethke

Those Winter Sundays by Robert Hayden

The Lost Pilot by James Tate

Epigrams: On my First Son by Ben Jonson

A Poet to His Baby Son by James Weldon Johnson

It Didn't Begin with Horned Owls Hooting at Noon by Kevin Stein

The Inheritance by Stanley Moss

My Father Holds the Door for Yoko Ono by Christopher Chambers

The Princess: Sweet and Low by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Father and Son by Delmore Schwartz

My Father Photographed With Friends by William Bronk