SOURCE: Lynch, Doris. Review of The Father of the Predicaments, by Heather McHugh. Library Journal 124, no. 13 (August 1999): 98.

In the following review, Lynch identifies the key thematic concerns of the poems comprising The Father of the Predicaments.

National Book Award finalist McHugh tackles caregiving for a dying relative, the moon, love, the self, sex, and subjects not readily discernible in poems that focus too much on wordplay and too little on emotion [in The Father of the Predicaments]. At times her work moves toward parody, as in “Neither Brings Charges”: “When someone barks out / Author! author—thinking thinking's / in the wings, however far the furor goes / no star will come: only a fever.” “Not a Prayer,” a long poem about a relative's death, has some nice moments: “The dining room's become / a mill of business, wheel of paperwork and news. / In short, it has become the outside world.” Mentioned...