The first five lines of “My Father’s Love Letters” appear to set a sentimental tone, relaying a sweet recollection of a childhood bonding experience between father and son as the son writes a letter to his mother on his father’s behalf. The poem takes an immediate turn with Lines 6 and 7, as the speaker remembers his father “[p]romising to never beat her / Again.” The poem changes from a narrative of a father-son connection to a demonstration of the consequences of domestic violence.

The speaker’s mother has left the family, ostensibly to escape her husband’s abuse. No matter how much the speaker’s father labors “over a simple word” (Line 35), the speaker-son imagines his mother laughing at the letters and holding “them over a gas burner” (Line 27). In the poem, the speaker demonstrates how spousal violence has upset the balance of his entire family, as his father, who “could only sign / His name” (Lines 28-29), must “ask me to write a letter to my mother” (Line 3). The love letters of the poem’s title are not a private communication between a husband and his estranged wife, but a family affair.