About ten years ago, I witnessed Hal Sirowitz read his Mother Said schtick before a poetry slam in New Hope, Pennsylvania. His monotone delivery and nasal voice commanded attention. I was unsure how such expressionless vocals could halt a room until I truly listened.

This volume, Father Said compiles the paternal philosophy and events which shaped Sirowitz’ wit and craft. Unified by the title chorus, Sirowitz elegantly weaves between the awkwardness of heartfelt advice and the hilarity of his father’s seriousness. The vignettes shake the reader either into convulsions—both from laughter and from discomfort.

Sirowitz writes of lovingly teetering familial relationships. The reader can visualize the poet’s cheeky leer and flopping coif while reading the lines: “He claimed she made him/talk too much, which lessened the amount he could drink./ He never had any trouble finding livers to ruin.”

The same collection of poetry features Father’s echoes of the Holocaust and the consequences of his ancestry: “Whenever a little old Italian/or Irish lady knocked on my door asking for donations/ to help the parents of those who lost their sons/ I gladly gave more than I could afford/ even though I knew every Italian or Irish guy/ who died had a fifty/fifty chance of surviving./ He could always shoot first. But the Jews/ who were cremated in the ovens—all they had/ to defend themselves with were their prayers.”

Despite these terrors, during the majority of reading Father Said, a machine gun-like cackle is unavoidable. It is the paucity of words that conveys the allure of such straight-forward cynicism. Unpretentiously Sirowitz expresses more in spare tomes than any epic poem. Delve into his paternal realm of dysfunction, illustratively and cohesively illuminating his ancestry.