Six Tips for a Young Writer Whose Father Just Emailed Them a Poem He Wrote and Asked, “Thoughts?”

So, your father just emailed you a poem he wrote, and he wants your thoughts about it. You’re probably thinking: I still do not like my father. Is it normal for a person my age to still not like their father?

The answer is probably, but probably not. And what you’re also probably thinking (probably) is: I hold (or am about to hold) an MFA. Is this beneath my efforts? The answer is probably, but definitely not. And since you’ve made it here, you’re likely curious about what your tips are, so here’s the best I can do, because I, too, ask these questions:

Be nice.
Seeing as how this is the first time in your life you’ve ever seen your father create anything other than tension at dinner, it has probably taken a lot of effort for him to make this—and even more to send it to you. Even though it’s in all caps and center-aligned. And it kind of looks like a notice to hold down the handle taped above a leaky toilet in a gas station bathroom. Read it for what it is and be nice about it.

Don’t approach it like a graduate-level workshop.
He’s not asking for feedback. He’s not asking for your critical analysis. Do not respond to this the way you do your fellow writers in grad school. They don’t like the way you give feedback (which you know is harsh but believe that’s what makes a good writer better), and I can promise your father will not enjoy getting his poem back with strikeouts and notes that read “weak metaphor” and/or “Reads too much like Ashbury. Change or delete entirely.”

Don’t assume he used AI.
Despite the fact that you once asked AI to write a poem (just to test it, ya know?) and that what your father sent you reads suspiciously like what AI gave you that one time, please don’t assume that this poem was written by anything (or anyone) other than your father. Maybe he’s a hidden genius. When was the last time you talked to him about his life?

It is not about you.
Please do not go off the rails assuming this poem has anything to do with you—other than the fact he knows you like poetry and wanted to extend an olive branch via creativity. Just because he uses the line “A child pretending / to be grown,” do not assume you are the child who’s pretending. It is more than likely he is just now realizing that in his desire to mature, he has skipped past all that it takes to actually mature—and that he, in fact, has spent a great deal of time neglecting the child within. (Don’t say this to him. Again, consider the second tip. He does not need your analysis.)

Do not read the poem to your friends / therapist / person who lives in Kyzyl, Russia, whom you are romantically involved with in a social media kind of way.
You are only doing so to get a reaction that is both cruel and mocking. You only want them to laugh at it along with you, so you do not have to commit to the four tips above. But they won’t. Likely, each of them will give you a version of one of those four tips—or a variation of all four at the same time. This will only make you angry. Not at them, though, but rather at yourself.

Consider.
These are your father’s twilight years. He is old. There is a part of him that is scared and exploring aspects of himself that he has neglected his whole life—including the reality that he will soon be dead and will no longer be able to send you poems he wrote with AI. None of it is worth the regret you might feel later. Get it together, knucklehead.

Now that you have gone through these tips, read the poem again. See that—maybe—it isn’t so bad. Or maybe it still is because it is objectively bad. But that’s okay too. He’s new to the whole writing poetry thing. And besides, no poem you’ve ever written has been published. The horse is high, and it might be time to step off, cowboy/-girl/-person.

Hope these tips prove useful as you read through the poem again and spend the next six days trying to formulate a response that feels authentic without being cruel. You can do it.

I did.