A father sees a son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.

Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use amongst other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
    Then he may understand Shakespeare
    and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
    Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
    He will be lonely enough
    to have time for the work
    he knows as his own.
        -From 'The People, Yes' Carl Sandburg

Langston Hughes'
Mother to Son

---

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Both of these poems are inspiring parents' letters to their sons'. In Carl Sandburg's, "A Father to his Son, he uses a metaphor in each line to meticulously break down what he would like to become of his son as he approaches manhood. In "A Father to his Son", Sandburg recites:

"Tell him too much money has killed men
And left them dead years before burial:
The quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
Has twisted good enough men
Sometimes into dry thwarted worms."

Sandburg uses foreshadowing in the first two lines to express how the greediness that coincides with money has rotted the souls of men before they've physically died. He then goes on by personifying dead worms to the unsuccessful attempts to riches that men have had. Sandburg says:

"'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum and monotony
and guide him amid sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting."

Sandburg explains the qualities and benefits that come from being "hard" as well as "soft" in certain situations in life. He personifies "slack moments" with needing to be "tightened" by his sons' toughness and how gentleness will prevail when "lashes" or tough blows in life strike him. Although this presented as an intimate letter from a father to son, the generality of the message Sandburg is portraying can be beneficial to anyone. He poetically summed up a lot of things my parents were trying to tell me since I hit puberty like learning to be yourself, how to independently make decisions and becoming comfortable with who I am.

In Langston Hughes 'Mother to Son', the mother metaphorically explains how her life wasn't easy but she didn't give up and asking her son to have the same perseverance. Hughes surrounds this poem around

"And life for me ain't been no crystal stair."

he extends this metaphor by detailing the rough condition of these "stairs", for example:

"It's had tacks in it, And splinters, And boards torn up"

Hughes then continues to describe his "walk" up these "stairs" like so:

I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landin's, And turnin' corners, And sometimes goin' in the dark Where there ain't been no light. So boy, don't you turn back. Don't you set down on the steps"

I think Hughes wants me to understand that success is a journey, not a destination.

I feel everything that we learn through our teenage years, our parents are constantly reminding us in a condensed way. I know there are a few things that my parents have told me when I was 12 that I didn't completely grasp for myself until I was 15. Sandburg was more articulate about the lessons that can be learned while Hughes wrote more about the struggle itself.

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© Arielle Pena 2010