Praise for Father and Son

“This is not only a fine book, it is a worthy one.”

—Charles Harper Webb, author of Sidebend World

William Trowbridge takes on a mythic task here, that of a son carrying the emotional weight of his father, in memory, of course, but infused with the spirit of Aeneas, carrying his own father, Anchises, out of Troy as it burned. So Trowbridge bears up with a father who is emotionally shaken from the effects of war and life. This poet, as “begotten son” from “Wartime, 1942”—on the father’s shoulders, then—brandishes his characteristic haunted humor, helmets on, he says, metaphorically, for his entire family. To read these poems is to understand the ground many families occupy but few address. Let these poems deliver you, through confrontation and compassion, to a bright and lucid present.

—Robert Stewart, author of Working Class, poems.

In Father and Son, William Trowbridge, one of our country’s most accomplished and entertaining poets, draws back the curtain on the conflicted father-son relationship he had written about before, but never in such detail. Here he provides all the context: the soldier father returning traumatized from the War, taking out his rage and disappointment on his family, including his infant son who had been prepared to worship him: “When he hugged, / his cheek / scraped like sandpaper, how I thought / a hero’s face should feel; his slaps / could blur my eyes.” The elder Trowbridge remains a controlling bully, treating family as if they lived in a barracks, yet the poet’s trademark wit and flair leaven the darkness with understanding and humor, as in “Wrestlers” or the hilarious “My Father’s Laugh.” Though he and his father never truly reconciled, he writes movingly of the old man’s final years of mental and physical deterioration. Readers can be grateful for – indeed relish – the humanity and craft this survivor brought to his brilliant poetic exorcise.

—Bruce Bennett, author of Navigating the Distances: New and Selected Poems

William Trowbridge’s ninth poetry collection,Call Me Fool, came out from Red Hen Press in 2023. His poems have appeared in more than 50 anthologies and textbooks, as well as on The Writer’s Almanac, American Life in Poetry, and in such periodicals as Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Crazyhorse, The Georgia Review, Boulevard, The Southern Review, Columbia, Rattle, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, and New Letters. He has given readings, lectures, and workshops at schools, universities, bookstores, and literary conferences throughout the United States. His awards include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Pushcart Prize, a Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference scholarship, a Camber Press Poetry Chapbook Award, and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, Yaddo, and The Anderson Center. He is a Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Northwest Missouri State University, where he was an editor of The Laurel Review/GreenTower Press from 1986 to 2004. He was Poet Laureate of Missouri from 2012 to 2016. He is currently a faculty mentor in the University of Nebraska-Omaha Low-residency MFA in Writing Program. For more information, see his website at williamtrowbridge.net.

Father and Son
William Trowbridge
Perfect Paperback: 54 pages
WSC Press (2023) $12
ISBN: 979-8-9892196-1-2