22 pages • 44 minutes read
My Father's Hats
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"Theory" by Mark Irwin (2004)
Irwin revisits childhood’s impact on the present in this later poem. Both “Theory” and “My Father’s Hats” begin by focusing on the joy a child finds in objects while their adulthood counterparts gaze down, “trying to find the child. — To raise / memory to the vividness of the present” (Lines 4-5).
Irwin creates more ambiguity in “Theory” by quickly jumping from fragmented image to fragmented image and the introduction of a first-person speaker in the final stanza. However, the threat of time breaking bonds remains clear: “Now I’m learning to feel the invisible bones / of her face, dressing them with my own / dissolving touch” (Lines 9-11).
"Rider" by Mark Irwin (2008)
While “My Father’s Hats” delved into the loss of the father, the speaker of “Rider” copes with his mother’s mortality. “Rider,” also a narrative poem, takes place in one set moment and does not use flashbacks. The speaker shares his presumably final moments with his mother before “we said goodbye” (Line 11).
In this poem, Irwin reverses the parent-child relationship. The son cares for his mother as she indulges in play and childish wonder. Irwin’s speaker pretends to be his mother’s horse, tragically setting up when the mother’s breath “galloped away” by nightfall (Line 14).
"Passing" by Mark Irwin (2004)
Irwin featured both “Passing” and “My Father’s Hats” in his collection Bright Hunger (BOA Editions, 2004), making them mirrors of each other. Irwin plays with ambiguity and mortality in “Passing,” featured on the second page.
Like in “My Father’s Hats,” the speaker feels unsure about the nature of something in his environment. He says, “a white door is opening / maybe for nothing but wind” (Lines 9-10).
He recognizes one day, “we will all...be there,” which creates a link with death similar to the connection between the fading light and dying in “My Father’s Hats.” However, the speaker does not seem concerned about how soon everyone will get there since he adds, “I mean when opening is finally enough” (Line 11).
Further Literary Resources
"We Write to Confirm Our Existence and to Push the Moment Out of Forgetfulness" by Carbon Radio (2021)
As discussed in the biographical context section, experience and memory play an essential role in Irwin’s craft. In an interview with Carbon Radio, he discusses how imagining a memory on the page allows a person “to push the moment out of forgetfulness.”
Irwin used this technique to memorialize his deceased father in “My Father’s Hats.” By retelling a habit from his childhood, he creates “a depth within time,” where the memory can remain.
He explains that personal writing allows people to find and discuss “deep emotional pockets that are difficult or dangerous.”
Irwin also expands upon the importance of narrative toward forming an understanding of events and creativity for reimagining them as “the way they might be, instead of the way that” they are.
“The Image Confined: Twentieth-Century American Poetry" by Mark Irwin (1985)
Irwin illuminates the speaker’s strong love he possesses for his father through imagery and sensory detail in “My Father’s Hats.” He explains why these types of poetic images linger in readers’ minds long after finishing a poem in his essay, “The Image Confined: Twentieth-Century American Poetry.”
The essay illustrates how images become more concentrated and attention-grabbing in poems than in prose due to poetry’s shorter length and specific techniques. Furthermore, Irwin goes into how images subtly help readers understand a poem’s themes and feel the actions happening in the poem. In one example, Irwin uses William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow” to show how Williams’s line breaks replicate a wheelbarrow’s movements.
He illustrates compelling imagery creation by analyzing short poems by American writers like Theodore Roethke and Ezra Pound. He also provides examples from European writers, such as Rainer Maria Rilke. Irwin argues through these examples that poetry becomes most effective when it is “crystalline and compact” with “jewel-like durability."
"Three Notions of Truth in Poetry" by Mark Irwin (2008)
Irwin explores different definitions of truth in his 2008 article “Three Notions of Truth in Poetry.”
Throughout the piece, Irwin insinuates that the complexity of truth-telling in poetry results from the impossibility of capturing every detail. He uses “Goethe’s Death Mask” by Linda Gregg to elaborate. Gregg starts the poem with how Goethe’s death mask appears life-like. However, Gregg points out his death mask only preserves his physical attributes. The death mask cannot tell people about Goethe’s trips to Italy or wish to paint.
“If the greatest sources of art—truth, hope, love, joy, despair—are immeasurable,” asks Irwin, “How can the art created from them be exact?”
Even without these examples, Irwin’s prose provides plenty of resonant explanations. His comment, “It’s not what seems finished to the eye that haunts us, but what remains unfished to the heart,” feels especially pertinent to the speaker’s fear of loss in “My Father’s Hats.”
Listen to Poem
The tutoring center released an audio recording of Mark Irwin’s 2000 poem “My Father’s Hat” in 2012.
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