Husbandry Poems

Guided by acclaimed poet Matthew Dickman’s “deft and buoyant [intelligence]” (Tracy K. Smith), Husbandry is a love song from a father to his children. Written after a separation and during overwhelming single-fatherhood in the early days of COVID-19 lockdowns, Husbandry refuses romantic notions of parenting and embraces all its mess, anguish, joy, fear, boredom, warmth, and work. Dickman composes these poems entirely in vivid couplets that animate the various domestic pairs of broken-up parents, two sons, love and grief. With tender, aching clarity, Husbandry reveals the poet’s hunger to be a husband without ever being one, and his search for a father that ends with becoming one himself.