I’m a bit betwixt and between on The Same Man, a poetry collection by Bobby Elliott. On the one hand, I responded pretty strongly to the macro aspect of the collection, the twin fatherhood theme represented by the speaker’s father — an unreliable parent and a source of constant and abiding emotional blackmail — and the speaker himself, full of love for his own two children and desperate to be a different father than his own. The haunting nature of his own father, the way it shades and shadows his life and his own joy in his children is a powerful theme throughout.

On the other hand, on the micro level of the individual poems themselves, while there were a decent number of lines that particularly struck me, none really leapt out at me in their wholeness. And they were often a bit more “prose-y” than I prefer, lacking a sense of sound or musicality or startling language/metaphor that I often look for in poetry. It’s not that those elements were entirely lacking — as noted, I did mark a number of lines/passages (see below), but they didn’t happen frequently enough for me. And a few of the poems felt a little too obvious to me in how the statements didn’t sound all that different from what I’ve heard any new parent (including myself) say. It’s a collection worth reading for sure, mostly for that overarching theme that unifies it all and, in some ways, makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts, but also for those stronger passages. I was just hoping for more.

A few of my favorite lines:
I remember the money vanishing but not
Where I’d kept it —the black heels
Of the eviction lady,
My mother maiden name in her mouth.

All night you wade into the body’s flooded house to reach him

I know
The sound they made when they fought.
I know how afraid we are to raise
Our voices. I know a sweetness
In us was once in them.

I get up
And leave him on the couch
He still thinks we’ll share one day when he’s
Too old
And too broke to live on his own
And we have no choice but to let him in

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this collection of poems in exchange for an honest review. Thank you so much.

Mr. Elliott's collection of poems touch on family, his relationship with his father, and describes himself being a father as well. I can relate to so much of this material. In one section, he mentions about how his father would ask his family if they're mad at him and if he has been a failure. I remember hearing this same line so much growing up. It's almost like I was being emotionally manipulated. The sad part is that I also feel this way sometimes about being a father as well although it's always been more of a thought, never spoken out loud. This is just one highlight of the many that I took away from this collection. I really enjoyed it even though it brought back some memories of childhood trauma!