My Father's Song

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1976

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“My Father’s Song” has 26 lines that are divided into five stanzas of varying length. Like the majority of poetry written in the late-20th century, “My Father’s Song” is written in free verse, giving it a natural and conversational tone as the author works through the memory of his father. It has non-metrical, non-rhyming lines. Punctuation is limited in the poem, but Ortiz deploys some caesura in his poem, in particular in the moment where he segues from the memory of his father speaking in the first stanza: “to his son, his song:” (Line 7). That line, ending with a colon, creates an enjambment between the first and second stanzas, as the memory of his father speaking opens up for the reader into the fuller memory of working in the fields together.

For the most part, however, Ortiz’s straightforward language and phrasing create stanzas composed primarily of one sentence. Each stanza is structured to present a sequential series of moments in this memory; however, the first stanza essentially opens with the ending; Ortiz is remembering this moment in the present, and the voice of his father in Stanza 5 “saying things” (Line 26) is also depicted in the opening verses. As such, the poem has a circular structure, referring back to itself at the beginning.

Setting

The setting of the poem is essential to the narrative, giving the moment important context for the reader. In Stanza 2, the reader learns that they are planting corn in a field “at Acu” (Line 8), and here Ortiz uses the name his tribe uses for the Acoma Pueblo lands rather than the Spanish and English adaptations. In situating it on his reservation, the reader can surmise that the planting takes place on the land of his people where he grew up, and that they are planting their own lands. This land is characterized primarily by the moist, sandy soil that Ortiz mentions repeatedly, as the Acoma Pueblo reservation is in western New Mexico. They plant corn together, which would be a major staple in their tribe’s traditional cuisine. As a whole, the setting reminds the reader that the boy is learning from his father in a space that has been occupied by his tribe for centuries, if not millennia, and the lessons passed to him today are the same that have been passed on this ground for generations.

Tone and Repetition

There is a particularly delicate, if melancholic, tone to the poem that is achieved through repetition of certain images. Ortiz repeats the image of the soft, damp sand, which appears towards the end of four out of five stanzas. The memory of “the soft damp sand in my hand” (Lines 11-12) returns in the speaker’s mind as a tactile sensation of the moment, which varies with each stanza becoming “in the soft moist sand” (Line 17) and “in the shade of a sand moist clod” (Lines 22-23).

This repetition has an effect of softening each stanza with the yielding grainy, damp sand. The word “soft” and “softness” is itself repeated three times in the poem (Lines 11, 17, 24), along with images that speak to the delicate fragility of the mice and this moment between the father and son: “tiny pink animals” (Line 18), “tiny alive mice” (Line 25), “thin” (Line 4), “tremble” (Line 5), and “touch” (Line 20). Each of these words adds to the overall tone of the narrative, presenting this interaction in an extreme close-up focused on the small sensations that leave a large impression on the boy.