The following selection features poems about the complex and often challenging web of relationships in our nuclear, extended, and found families. In “Family Reunion,” Jeredith Merrin emphasizes how varied the makeup and structures of families can be. The poem stresses the importance of embracing one’s personal history despite the isolation of divorce and growing apart. As Alberto Ríos tells us in “When Giving Is All We Have,” care starts and ends in the same stream of giving and receiving: These acts define our relationships. “Aunt Sue’s Stories” by Langston Hughes and “Kissing in Vietnamese” by Ocean Vuong illuminate the intimate knot of family and history and how it transmits complex experiences to new generations.
Family experiences—and our memories of those experiences—can be both isolating and joyful. They lay the cornerstone of who we become and influence how our families live on through us. At the same time, Khalil Gibran reminds us in “On Children” that our family experiences and histories need not confine us.
Check out the family, brothers, sisters, parenting, tags for more specific topics.*
“Prayer of the Backhanded” by Jericho Brown
Not the palm, not the pear tree...
“What I Mean When I Say Truck Driver” by Geffrey Davis
During the last 50 miles back from haul & some...
“On Children” by Khalil Gibran
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children...
“Knoxville, Tennessee” by Nikki Giovanni
I always like summer…
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“The Woodlice” by Aracelis Girmay
The beauty of one sister...
“Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live...
“Those Winter Sundays” by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early...
“Aunt Sue's Stories” by Langston Hughes
Aunt Sue has a head full of stories...
“Angelhair” by Angela Jackson
In the redcoat she (who is I) was...
“The Blue Dress” by Saeed Jones
Her blue dress is a silk train is a river...
“Images” by Jaime Manrique, translated by Edith Grossman
I’ve spent a whole afternoon looking at photographs...
“Family Reunion” by Jeredith Merrin
The divorced mother and her divorcing...
“When Giving Is All We Have” by Alberto Ríos
We give because someone gave to us...
“For My Mother” by May Sarton
Once more / I summon you...
“Loom” by Bradley Trumpfheller
My mother says when she is anxious she finds a seam...
“Kissing in Vietnamese” by Ocean Vuong
My grandmother kisses…
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*Explanatory text and curation by Josh Rabinovitz