In the 70’s, as historical destiny redefined the roles men and women play as husbands
and wives, a few men found themselves single parents. Suddenly, the child was more than a
discontinuous being to whom the father gave his attention during his free moments. With
its insistent vitality and dependent needs, the child became his foremost reality. The
situation which once evoked in the mother her unceasing personal commitment and the daily
maintenance of a home were now evoked in the father. His values were no longer exclusively
objective – his professional ambition and success outside the home-but were also
subjective-and those values, as they shifted in terms of roles, were no longer male or
female. They became human values. It is these values that shape the intellectual,
emotional, and poetic territory of The Helen Poems. Never wavering in their
honesty, the poems ignore restraint and confront the inevitable questions arising in a
close relation- ship between father and daughter, questions that have been ignored before
in our society and are bravely addressed in line after line.
"These poems are an autobiography of fatherhood-a father divorced, raising a girl,
a girl from the first wholly herself, elusive and powerful: a Helen. As ’Bath
Time’ says, ’It’s awkward with a daughter.’ None of this awkwardness
– so unpoetic, so telling-is excluded. In ’Father Moon,’ the father
manages, ’like rope burns, clumsy rappel,’ to ask, ’Is it your
period?’ These poems include so much, with such difficult grace. We’re lucky to
have them."
– Angela Ball
"This is a stunning book, narrating a father-daughter relationship from the moment
the wife exits (’The child was in my arms and you were leaving’) until the
daughter departs for college (’I ask myself, free of my yoke-1ease/what will I do?
’). Depta explores familiar but seldom-mapped terrain-guilt over babysitters,
disaster imaginings, the parent’s need for the child-and he goes farther, charting
the rich and difficult work of a man raising a girl. It’s a world of spontaneity,
carefu1 boundaries, loss.
Brave and funny, tender and terrifying, The Helen Poems are words we need. From
a particular joy and anguish, they speak to us all."
– George Ella Lyon
"The Helen Poems of Victor Depta is a remarkable sequence depicting the
intimate ebb and flow of a father-daughter relationship after a marital separation. The
direct honesty, vivid dramatization, and structural imagination of this sequence reveal a
rare emotional power, and mark Depta as a poet to watch."
– Jim Schevill
