My dad's poetry

Oh... and I began a blog-based website (elsewhere) for my dad's poetry a few days ago. (If you're really interested, you can ask me for the URL). I've been trying to type up a few poems every night. Some of them are quite disturbing (but remember, most of what I'm looking at now are from the 1970s). I don't want to edit him just yet. It's a cleansing experience to finally type all these things up.

I've sometimes wondered at our job as scholars, especially those of us whose work involves historical figures in one way or another. We study a lifetime's worth of work, sometimes published in a spare volume or two. The book on the shelf contains the person more so than their grave somewhere. I almost feel like setting a stone on top of collected works, to say, "I've been here. This person was loved, respected, thought about."

Compiling and writing up my father's words is a ritual of containing him, embracing him, far more tangible, more involving than his burial.