Where Dads Go by Ethan Joella

Ethan Joella’s Where Dads Go dwells on moments when the chaos of child-rearing and marriage suddenly gives way to a crystalline clarity: the silence as a father and daughter, side by side on a ski-lift, rise into the stars; the glance of “my girls, their long hair / in their eyes, their hands holding / the tail of my shirt.” Paul Eluard said “there is another world, and it is in this one,” and Joella’s unflinching poems want to take us there—not by erasing the domestic and the daily, but by documenting even our most fleeting, delicate moments of grace.

–Patrick Phillips, Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and author of Elegy for a Broken Machine, Boy, and Chattahoochee.

“Poems from the perspective of the father are strikingly rare in literature—rare, too, are poems this uplifting. Ethan Joella fills that gap with an attentive grace that will make fathers nostalgic, and help children understand.”

–Timothy Green, editor of Rattle; author of American Fractal.

Ethan Joella’s Where Dads Go is an eloquent and poignant collection that celebrates the rich diversity of fatherhood. I admire the authority in these poems, how I trust the speaker’s love and even fear as he chronicles in vivid language what it means to meet a child at birth then travel life together. In the startlingly tender “Windows,” Joella says to his daughter, “I hope one day / you see somewhere / a hint of flower / and remember / the day in April when it was us, and the world / was a bit smaller / with a thousand small suns / behind you.” Those who love beautifully crafted poetry will embrace Where Dads Go with gratitude and awe.

–Edwin Romond, author of Alone with Love Songs and Dream Teaching; recipient of the 2013 New Jersey Poetry Prize.

Rating: *****  [5 of 5 Stars!]