Steve Tills wonders at my enthusiasm for the David Shapiro poem "Father Knows Best." It's a fair question, why do I find the poem so compelling? I'm glad you asked. First of all, I should clarify that "near perfect," in the way I'm using it here, refers to a quality of a poem that might have some minor imperfection, but that manages to convince me that it can do no wrong. In other words, one could easily quibble with a few details in the poem (as Steve does) but these details do not seem to damage the poem's luminous power. (I did make a typo, replacing the word "which" with "without" at the beginning of last line of penultimate stanza.)

I like the poem's transparency and emotional openness: you have no doubt at all about what the poem is about. Yet nowhere do you feel that the poem is stating its point in too unsubtle a way. It has the oddness of a dream, and demonstrates that Freud was wrong: you don't need to interpret dreams: their meaning has a transparent luminosity: it is only a matter of seeing what is there. Yet the language is oblique enough to avoid the flat obviousness that such a poem could easily acquire.

The reference to the 50s sit-com introduces a campy element. The Mary Poppins umbrellas too. There is a knowingness to the poem, but this element is not overdone either. The balance between the childlike dream and the adult knowingness of the autopsychoanalyst is "near perfect."

There is also that delicate balance between the "universal" and the "particular." In other words, the poem could only be about David Shapiro; it is his experience, his voice. And yet my identification with the experience is unproblematic. It could easily be my father in the dream!

Also, the tension between narrative transparency and lyric opacity, the way the poem builds and maintains the mood of strangeness.

In short, for me it is a "near perfect poem" in the exact technical sense of the term--if such a reckless hyerbole can have an exact meaning. I cannot oblige anyone to feel the same way about it, but I'm glad for the chance to explain what I meant.