Wtf: Poems

Laura Foley’s WTF refers to her father’s initials and, slyly, to the abbreviated colloquial exclamation, in a pun that laughs and cuts, in this reckoning with a fraught father-daughter relationship. These spare poems communicate more like snapshots than narrative lyrics, beginning with sympathy and gratitude, moving through disappointment, anger and resentment, without ever losing compassion, as Foley examines her father’s formative WWII experiences and, consequently, how he shaped her experience and character, ending with a positive recognition of her father in herself.

I liked ‘The Long View’ (in the collection ‘WTF’) for its abundance of precise and effective details: an exact location, many poignant indicators of the subject’s confined and increasingly lonely life. The tone is restrained (no pleading for sympathy) but the lines move urgently, and the pity grows with them. Many years and much sadness in the spacious apartment are made palpable in the confines of verse. -David Constantine

Laura Foley’s poetry is almost unprecedentedly direct, simple, devastatingly clear… So convincing about experience. -David Ferry

Laura Foley, a master of memory as poem, brings us a portrait of tragedy, loss and longing. For those of us whose fathers were strangers, Foley’s ‘WTF’ provides a perfect commiseration through the ‘survivor’s eyes’ in her beautifully understated language. -John O'Connor