A History of Western Music: Poems by August Kleinzahler

As the title suggests, Father's Father's Father, is concerned with, among of things, an investigation of masculinity and family histories, the legacies of the past and the long shadow of the future. This finds expression through various modes, voices and cultural figures (such as private detectives, professional wrestlers and bodybuilders) but always in a poetic style that resists narrative completion and instead makes the reader question the desire for ‘closure'. The generative moment of the narrative is often the aftermath of tragedy—be it ecological, personal or social. As such, these poems seek to ‘act' a personal and public grief through a resistance to its standards of expression via deflection, displacement and refraction of voice. However, as the title also suggests, the collection begins to move away—move farther—towards an exploration of the formation and disillusion of various communities and the performances of masculinities therein. The poems attempt to expose how tender and brittle such communities are.