Thank you to everyone who joined for this session!

Our text for this session was the poem Men at My Father’s Funeral by William Matthews, posted below.

Our prompt for this session was: “Write an elegy about someone lost.”

More details on this session will be posted, so check back!

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Friday July 16th at 12pm EDT, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions page.

---

Men at My Father’s Funeral
By William Matthews

The ones his age who shook my hand
on their way out sent fear along
my arm like heroin. These weren’t
men mute about their feelings,
or what’s a body language for?
 
And I, the glib one, who’d stood
with my back to my father’s body
and praised the heart that attacked him?
I’d made my stab at elegy,
the flesh made word: the very spit
 
in my mouth was sour with ruth
and eloquence. What could be worse?
Silence, the anthem of my father’s
new country. And thus this babble,
like a dial tone, from our bodies.


William Matthews, “Men at My Father’s Funeral” 
from Time and Money: New Poems. 
Copyright © 1995 by William Matthews.