Farther//FATHER//Further, by David Cappella

Poetry, chapbook, 48 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Farther//FATHER//Further offers a glimpse into the life of an distant (“a lone sentinel”) father as witnessed and experienced by his oldest son. The son observes his father in his various emotional states through specific memories he’s conjured of his father throughout their lives. The son’s memories range from the time he was a young boy of four up to his adulthood as a sixty-two year old professor/poet.

These poems create a portrait of a father whose strong connection to the natural world sustains him, whose horrors of his wartime experiences are kept tightly locked within, surfacing as angry facts, whose life is built around working a piece of land and raising a family, and whose Italian background is ostensibly rejected. His grief is dark and deep.  

These imagistic poems elicit emotional insight into the unique relationship between the son and the father, a relationship fraught with pitfalls as well as quiet moments of intense connection. Setting plays a large role in bringing the father’s experiences and percepritons into focus.

David Cappella has co-authored two widely used poetry textbooks, Teaching the Art of Poetry: The Moves and A Surge of Language: Teaching Poetry Day to Day. His Gobbo: A Solitaire’s Opera appeared as a bilingual Italian  edition with puntoacapo Editrice in November 2021. The English edition appeared with Cervena Barva Press  in June 2022. His novel, Kindling, has been called “a powerful and devastating coming-of-age story.” His current project is a memoir, Tugging the Mayflower Home.