The Poetry of Fatherhood: ‘Figuring in the Figure’

We can’t think of a better way to celebrate April as National Poetry Month than by encouraging you to read the work of one of our own City Dads Group members.

Ben Berman, a member of our Boston Dads Group, recently had published  his second collection of verse. Figuring in the Figure (Able Muse Press) covers many topics in its 88 pages but the final section of the book covers fatherhood, including birthing and baby care classes, the arrival of his child, and those first precious months of life. His work, including the non-parenting poems, is filled with wry humor and familiar scenes like this one that opens the piece “Nothing Archaic about It”:

“She walks and cries out with an onslaught
of needs, beckons us like the torso
of Apollo: You must change your daughter.”

Figuring in the Figure has garnered great reviews. “Both expansive and structured, the interwoven stanzas allow him to form and reform probing questions of identity without ever forsaking a deep musicality,” raved Beth Ann Fennelly, the poet laureate of Mississippi. “His observations are enriched with various kinds of humor … This book is wise and wonderful.”

Berman, a high school teacher and poetry editor for Solstice Literary Magazine, also writes a monthly “Writing While Parenting” online column about how the two jobs overlap and intersect.

Berman lives in the Boston area with his wife and daughters. His poetry collection, Strange Borderlands, won the 2014 Peace Corps Award for Best Book of Poetry and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Awards.

You can purchase Figuring the Figure here.