Category: Essays: Poems and Songs with Commentaries

Image:  Audre Lorde 

Audre Lorde’s “Father Son and Holy Ghost”

In Audre Lorde’s “Father Son and Holy Ghost,” the speaker revisits memories of a beloved father, who has died and who served as a rôle model for moral and ethical behavior.  The speaker reveals her deep affection for her late father as she relives special features of her father’s behavior and her reaction to them. 

Introduction with Text of “Father Son and Holy Ghost”

Although Audre Lorde is well known as a black lesbian poet, who wrote on issues of identity, she also wrote more personal pieces that address themes common to all of humanity.  The death of a father is one such theme.

In her elegy “Father Son and Holy Ghost,” Lorde creates a speaker, who is remembering various aspects of her father’s behavior while he was alive.  But she begins by strangely emphasizing that she has not as yet visited her father’s grave. 

That admission alerts the reader that the poem is focusing on earlier memories.  While that first impression prompts questions in the reader’s mind, answers begin to form in the second movement.  Another question might be begged regarding the title and what it implies. 

By invoking the Christian Holy Trinity, the speaker is implying that the spiritual nature of her memory will include three levels of understanding of the father:  he was the progenitor of the speaker (Father), he lived a life of consistent, respectable, and moral behavior (Son), and he revered his wife, the mother of his children (Holy Ghost). 

Her admiration for her father is displayed in a Dickinsonian, elliptical style; the poet has not added any unnecessary word to her drama.

For example, instead of merely stating that her father arrived home in the evening, grasped the doorknob, and entered the home, she shrinks all of that information in “our evening doorknobs.”  

Because doorknobs remain the same whether it be morning, noon, evening, or night, the speaker metaphorically places the time of her father’s arrival by describing the doorknob by the time of day of his arrival.

Father Son and Holy Ghost

I have not ever seen my father’s grave.

Not that his judgment eyes
have been forgotten
nor his great hands’ print
on our evening doorknobs
            one half turn each night
            and he would come
            drabbled with the world’s business   
            massive and silent
            as the whole day’s wish  
            ready to redefine
            each of our shapes
but now the evening doorknobs  
wait    and do not recognize us  
as we pass.

Each week a different woman   
regular as his one quick glass
each evening
pulls up the grass his stillness grows  
calling it weed.
Each week    a different woman  
has my mother’s face
and he
who time has    changeless
must be amazed
who knew and loved
but one.

My father died in silence   
loving creation
and well-defined response   
he lived    still judgments  
on familiar things
and died    knowing
a January 15th that year me.

Lest I go into dust
I have not ever seen my father’s grave. 

Commentary on “Father Son and Holy Ghost”

In her elegy to her father’s memory, the speaker is offering a tribute the demonstrates a special love and affection, along with her deep admiration for his fine qualities.

First Movement: An Unusual Admission

The speaker begins by reporting that she has never visited her father’s grave.  This startling suggestion has to wait for explanation, but the possibilities for the speaker’s reasons assert themselves for the reader immediately.  

Because seeing the grave of a deceased loved one is customarily part of the funeral experience, it seems anomalous that the speaker would have skipped that part of the ceremony. 

On the other hand, because she does not tell the reader otherwise, she might have skipped the funeral entirely.  But whether the failure to visit the grave is associated with a close or distant relationship with the father remains to be experienced.  

And oddly, either situation could be prompting that failure to visit the grave or attend the funeral:  if there is resentment at the parent, one might fail to visit in order to avoid those feelings.

Or if there is deep pain because of a close, loving relationship with the parent, then seeing the grave would remind the bereft that that relationship has been severed.

By choosing not to explain or even assert certain facts, the speaker points only to the facts and events that are important for her purpose.  And her purpose, as the title alerts, will be to associate her father’s death with profundity and devotion stemming from his deep religious dedication.

Second Movement:  Not Forgotten 

The speaker now asserts that just because she had not visited his grave does not mean that she has forgotten her father’s characteristics; she still remembers his “judgment eyes.”  

Her father demonstrated the ability to guide and guard his family through his ability to see the outcome of certain situations, likely retaining the ability to encourage positive results. He was able to steers his children in the right direction.

She also remembers his arriving home from work in the evenings, turning the doorknobs just a “half turn.”  It was likely it was the sound of that doorknob that alerted the speaker that her father was home.

The father’s work has left him “drabbled,” but he was a large man and remained “silent,” indicating that he was a thoughtful man, who likely entertained a “whole day’s wish” to return home to his family.  

He apparently paid attention to his children, likely instructing them to “shape” up, assisting them in becoming the respectable people he knew they could be.

Now, those same “evening doorknobs” that sounded out under the grasp of her father’s large hand simply “wait,” for he will no longer be grasping them and entering his home every evening. 

Oddly, those doorknobs can no longer sense the household members as they pass them.  This personification of “doorknobs” indicates that the speaker is asserting that anyone seeing those family members would see a changed lot of people—changed because of the absence of a father.

Third Movement: Consistency of Behavior

The speaker then reports that her father brought home a “different woman” every week, and his act of bringing home that different woman was always the same. He also remained consistent in taking only one glass of liquor and a small amount of marijuana.

That the father grew in “stillness” suggests that he took the alcohol and weed simply to calm his nerves from the day’s work, not to simply get high.

The speaker seems to be suggesting that those women supplied the “weed,” pulling a bag of the herbage up out of their bags.  (The terms “grass” and “weed” are slang labels for marijuana, along with “pot” and “Mary Jane,” and many others.) That the women suppled the weed is in perfect alignment with the father’s character: he likely kept legal alcohol in his home but not illegal products like “weed.” 

That the father took only one drink and a limited amount of “grass” or “weed” becomes a characteristic to be understood and admired, even emulated.  His consistency has made a positive impression upon the speaker, and she remains content in observing with respect his even-tempered behavior.

Repeating the claim of a “different woman” every week, the speaker remarks that each woman had her “mother’s face.”  She then asserts the reason for the women with her mother’s face is that her father “knew and loved / but one.” 

She is likely employing the term “knew” in the biblical sense; thus she may be implying that her father’s relationship with those women remained platonic.  The speaker remains cognizant of the father’s consistent personality and behavior.  

While it may be expected that a man would engage with other women after his wife’s death, that he remained attached to his wife’s visage and engaged sexually only with his wife because he loved only her remains unusual and makes its mark on the speaker’s memory. Her father’s respectability and morality have caught the speaker’s attention and those qualities remain in her memory of his behavior.

Fourth Movement: A Well-Lived Life

The speaker says that her father “died in silence.”  She asserts that he loved “creation,” and he lived in a way that appropriately corresponded with that love. 

Because of the positive, admirable aspects of her father’s personality and behavior, she understands the appropriateness of his “judgments” especially “on familiar things.”  As he judged his family, he was able to guide them in appropriate and uplifting ways.

That he died on “January 15th” signals that everything he knew about his daughter stopped on that date, and the speaker/daughter knows that anything she accomplishes after that date will remain unknown to her father.  Likely, she is saddened, knowing this limit will remain, and she has no way of controlling that situation.

Fifth Movement: Life’s Fulfillment

The speaker then asserts again that she has never visited her father’s grave, but in concluding, she claims that she had never done so because it might make her “go into dust.”  The biblical passage in Genesis 3:19 asserts, 

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

The speaker seems to imply that she fears her strong reaction to visiting her father’s grave might result in her own death. And while she may also be remembering the Longfellow quatrain from “A Psalm of Life,” featuring the assertion, “‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest’, / Was not spoken of the soul,” she is not ready to leave her physical encasement just yet.

The ultimate atmosphere of the poem “Father Son and Holy Ghost” suggests a certain understated fulfillment in the father’s life:  he strived to live a moral, well-balanced, consistent life, which the speaker can contemplate in loving memory, even if she may not be able to celebrate openly by visiting his grave.  

Image:  Audre Lorde and Gloria Joseph 

Brief Life Sketch of Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde was born on February 18, 1934, in New York City to Frederic and Linda Lorde, who came to the USA from Grenada.  Her father was a carpenter and real estate agent, and her mother had been a teacher in Grenada.  Frederic Lorde was known for his nature as a well-disciplined man of great ambition.

Their daughter Audre became a prominent American poet.  Her works are filled with passion, making her lyrical verses a riot of emotion.  But she also took an interest in social issues, seeking justice for the marginalized members of society.

Lorde began writing poems as a high school student; she published her first poem  [1] while still in school.  After high school, she attended Hunter College, earning a B.A. degree in 1959.  She then went on to study at Columbia University and completed an MLS degree in 1961.

Publication

Audre Lorde’s first collection of poems, The First Cities, was published in 1968 [2].   Critics have described her voice as one that has developed though profound introspection, as she examines themes focusing on identity, the nature of memory, and how all things are affected by mortality.

She followed up The First Cities in 1970 with Cables to Rage.  Three years later she published From a Land Where Other People Live. Then in 1974, she brought out the cleverly titled New York Head Shop and Museum.

Lorde continued to focus on personal musings as she broadened her scope with criticism of cultural injustice.  She often created speakers who run up against unfair modes of behavior.  She also touches on issues that reveal the nature of individual sensuality and the power of inner fortitude in struggles with life’s trials and tribulations.

In her first mainstream published collection titled Coal, which she brought out in 1976, she experimented with formal expressions.  In 1978, her collection, The Black Unicorn, earned for the poet her greatest recognition as critics and scholars labeled the work a masterpiece in poetry.

In her masterpiece, Lorde employed African myths [3], coupled with tenets from feminism’s most widely acclaimed accomplishments.  She also gave a nod to spirituality as she seemed to strive for a more universal flavor in her works.

Legacy and Death

Audre Lorde’s work has received many prestigious awards, including the Walt Whitman Citation of Merit.  She also earned a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  She served as poet laureate of New York from 1919 until her death.

Lorde died of breast cancer on November 17, 1992, in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, where she and her partner Gloria Joseph had been residing since 1986.  Lorde’s physical enactment was cremated, and her ashes were scattered over the ocean [4] around St. Croix.

Sources for Life Sketch

[1] Editors.  “Audre Lorde.”  Poetry Foundation.  Accessed June 29, 2025

[2] Curators.  “Audre Lorde Collection: 1950-2002.”  Spelman College Archives. Accessed June 29, 2025.

[3] Njeng Eric Sipyinyu. “Audre Lorde: Myth Harbinger of the Back to Africa Movement.” Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research. May 2024.

[4] Curators.  “Audre Lorde.”  Find a Grave.  Accessed June 29, 2025.

Tricky Lines

As Robert Frost admitted that his poem “The Road Not Taken” was very tricky and admonished readers “to be careful with that one,” the following lines of the third movement from Audre Lorde’s poem “Father Son and Holy Ghost” have proved tricky:

Each week a different woman   
regular as his one quick glass
each evening
pulls up the grass his stillness grows  
calling it weed.
Each week    a different woman  
has my mother’s face
and he
who time has    changeless
must be amazed
who knew and loved
but one.

Scouring the Internet for analyses of Lorde’s poem, one finds a particularly absurd interpretation of those lines has taken hold.  That misreading states that every week a different woman comes to the father’s grave to pull up weeds, thereby keeping the gravesite neat, and each woman’s face reminds the speaker of her mother.

However, that reading misses the mark for several reasons:

1. Misreading of the Terms “Grass” and “Weed”

It is quite obvious that the terms “grass” and “weed” are not literally referring to the botanical herbage, growing in abundance on the soil virtually everywhere, but are slang terms for marijuana.  

Notice that the terms are used in juxtaposition to the father’s having “one quick glass,” an obvious reference to an alcoholic beverage.  Also note that the speaker uses the term “weed” not “weeds” which would be the plants excised to keep a gravesite neat.

2. Misreading the Time-Frame  

The speaker is looking back to when the father was alive and how he behaved.  The different women pulling weeds (“weed”) at a grave jumps forward to the father being dead and in his grave.  

But the speaker is reporting that the father brought home a different woman each week, have one small drink, and engage a small amount of marijuana—all while he was alive.

3. Forgetting the Speaker’s First Claim

The speaker begins by stating that she has never seen her father’s grave.  There is no way she could have seen these different women pulling up weeds (“weed”) at his grave if she has never been there.

4. Misreading or Forgetting the Setting

All of the images in the poem point to the speaker’s setting the poem in the home, not at his gravesite. For example, “evening doorknobs,” “one quick glass each evening,” and “his stillness grows” all place the father in the home, not in a cemetery. 

Stillness in this sense after death is an absolute, not a situation in which stillness can grow. If anything the decaying body might be thought of as the opposite of stillness with the activity of bacterial organisms ravaging the flesh.  

It bears repeating because it must be remembered that the speaker has claimed she has never seen her father’s grave; so reporting on any activity at a his gravesite is impossible.

5. Father-Daughter Relationship

According to Jerome Brooks, Frederick Lorde, Audre’s father, was, in fact, “a vital presence in her life.”  Her father provided “the solid ‘intellectual and moral’ vision that centered her sense of the world.”

Unfortunately, feminist critics have so overemphasized Audre Lorde’s identity as a “black lesbian” that they can assume only a railing against the patriarchy for the poet.  Her true personal feelings for the first man in her life must blocked in order to hoist the poet onto the anti-patriarchal standard.

But as Brooks has contended, 

In Zami, Lorde implies that her father, who shared his decisionmaking power with his wife when tradition dictated it was his alone, was profoundly moral. She also felt most identified with and supported by him as she writes in Inheritance—His: “I owe you my Dahomian jaw/ the free high school for gifted girls/ no one else thought I should attend/ and the darkness we share.”

Reading vs Appreciating a Poem

Reading and appreciating a poem are two distinctive activities. While it may be unfair to claim absolute correctness in any interpretation, still some readings can clearly be flawed because poems can remain Frostian “tricky.”  It would seem that it is difficult if not impossible to appreciate a poem if one accepts a clearly inaccurate reading of the poem.

Still, it is up to each reader to determine which interpretation he will accept. And the acceptance will most likely be based on experience both in life and in literary study.