Letters to My Father

In Letters to My Father, poet and storyteller David Kherdian expands the possibilities of poetry through his sensitive exploration and investigation of the joyous and sad, tumultous and transcendent relationship he shared with his father. He illuminates the cool distance and the warm intimacy that defines the relationship between fathers and sons. This is an excellent Father’s Day poetry selection.

Reviews and Endorsements

“Kherdian’s a poet of importance but in this world of the inconsequential where verse is far from poetry and poetry is mostly nonexistent, well, what are you going to do with a real poet like Kherdian? The man’s been writing free verse in the form of letters that often read like elegies for more than forty years. Letters to My Father reminds me of the Greek poet Cavafy, or perhaps Seferis, maybe Rumi. It isn’t contemporary. William Saroyan wrote prose the way Kherdian writes poetry. Naturally, the rhythm of Kherdian’s writing stems from old Armenian songs that laugh and weep at the deepest sorrows of life–the inability to communicate with loved ones, primarily–and those unpredictable moments of joy and transcendence and foolishness that seem to rise above tragedy. There is a truly memorable poem in the book about someone falling down some stairs, a moment lost in time but preserved by the poet forever. Few modern poets deal with feelings as deep as Kherdian’s longing for his father. It’s as if these letters were really aimed at going beyond the grave,and possibly, they have done just that. ” — Gerald Hausman

“The poems are pregnant with feelings and thoughts which are individual and universal at the same time. The father-and-son clash is perennial to the human condition, but here that scenario is burdened with genocide, with exile, with two individuals who are trying to survive in alien waters: the Armenian father in America; the Armenian-American son trying to fit in mainstream society without losing his Armenian identity. ” — Keghart.com