What Lives in Me is a collection of autobiographical poems that explores how a father's judgment can echo across a lifetime. The speaker's father-a 1921-born farm boy, relentless competitor, and hard-edged "man's man"-teaches his son early that failure is unforgivable. By age four, through sharp words and head slaps, the boy has absorbed the lessons: he is not good enough and Real Men never cry.
Through scenes of small-town storefronts, factory floors, classrooms, and family memory, the poems follow him into adulthood-law school, labor organizing, leadership, and the costs of ambition-where the same fear becomes the hidden engine of success, driving him to work harder and longer than those around him.
Taken together, the poems reveal how a father's voice can live inside a son long after childhood ends. Moving from secrecy and shame toward self-recognition, What Lives in Me examines the emotional inheritance in a culture that prizes male toughness over male tenderness.
In confronting the belief that shaped him, the speaker begins the difficult work of reclaiming his own voice shaped by another man's judgement.
