Superheroes

Mark this is a great poem.
It could have been ended after " But action figures are what we need right now" The last line, as you know, is what stays in the mind and that is so powerful.
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Thank you for this feedback. I am struggling with where to end this poem. I was going to stop it after television, or the end of the dialogue, but I left the last of it there. I'm interested in feedback about ending this poem. :)

"Poet father" is a very interesting notion, but complicates the surface view of making "sure he's ready for the corporate world". Unless you want to alter the character of the father, I connect - because of the poet reference - with the corporate world of literature, not commerce. To view corporate in a material sense disturbs my view of father as poet. Your placing the word Poet - capitalized - at the start of the final line emphasizes this view of the father. This is how I read the poem on a certain level – first time through.

For me, I like the poem ending with the child finishing the cereal in front of the blank television. I do like this notion of the child being more successful than the father - but I think you should do a bit more show there than tell. The final stanza also moves away from the first person point of view of the rest of the poem.

And now you find me - Kerouac style, forging ahead with the discussion, patching as I go - working out my own salvation. Maybe the final stanza is still in the first person. Because I'm male & a father, I want to read the “I” of the poem as father, and that's probably my mistake. That skews my reading – as shown in my first paragraph here. But that’s not a problem in the poem, that’s the problem of the reader not focusing enough. The I is not the father if the point of view in the poem never changes. That's great. I like that. Now the poem becomes more complete for me - and I see the darkness of "corporate world" in a material sense. This is a disturbing aspect in the poem. Good.

There is this idea – a bit sinister - in the poem of shaping a life … the parent-figure shaping, ordering, deciding the life of the child. That's strong here. Yet, the title, in some way, reflects the father as, in a way, superhero. This would soften my view of the narrator – making the narrator more conflicting in this determining process. Don’t know. That’s an interesting idea.

I still think I would end with the blank television. I like that image to close. And move the notion of the child being more successful than Poet father a bit earlier in the poem - maybe just after the dialogue.

This is a good poem, Mark – so whatever you do, don’t weaken it in the revision. Keep in mind that I’m talking aloud to the computer screen as I’m typing, so I hope my comment here makes sense in some way.

Nice.

Great stuff, Mark. For me, ending on the image the last line presents seems right.