Sign-In
Cart
What Lives in Me
Hardcover
Publisher Price: $33.99
Publisher: Finishing Line Press
Published: Jul 10 2026
Pages: 160
Weight: 0.85
Height: 0.50 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
What Lives in Me is a collection of autobiographical poems that explores how a father's judgment can echo across a lifetime. The speaker's father-a 1921-born farm boy, relentless competitor, and hard-edged man's man-teaches his son early that failure is unforgivable. By age four, through sharp words and head slaps, the boy has absorbed the lessons: he is not good enough and Real Men never cry.
Through scenes of small-town storefronts, factory floors, classrooms, and family memory, the poems follow him into adulthood-law school, labor organizing, leadership, and the costs of ambition-where the same fear becomes the hidden engine of success, driving him to work harder and longer than those around him.
Taken together, the poems reveal how a father's voice can live inside a son long after childhood ends. Moving from secrecy and shame toward self-recognition, What Lives in Me examines the emotional inheritance in a culture that prizes male toughness over male tenderness.
In confronting the belief that shaped him, the speaker begins the difficult work of reclaiming his own voice shaped by another man's judgement.
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Tobias, Robert M.
Sherwin S. Stern, Petitioner, V. United States Gypsum, Inc., et al. U.S. Supreme Court Transcript of Record with Supporting Pleadings
Silber, Edward S.
Tobias, Robert M.
Paperback
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover
Ariel: The Restored Edition: A Facsimile of Plath's Manuscript, Reinstating Her Original Selection and Arrangement
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback