therapy or who was in therapy or thinks that they should be in therapy. Having to seek professional help to come to terms with the psychological damage that has been inflicted on us by our natal families is assumed to be a hazard of modern life.

But in the days before therapy was considered to be almost a requisite for living a well-examined life, people had to find other ways to work through their problems - including art. The four poets that we are studying have each tried to assess the essential relationships in their own childhood through exploration of the meaning of their interactions with their fathers. In each of these poems there is a sense of loss or disappointment (at the least) and a sense of anger even to the point of murderousness (at the most extreme) as each poet considers the ways in which his or her...
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