What he Lived, What I Wrote: Telling My Father's Life Story Through Poetry (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798869388766)

What He Lived, What I Wrote is a powerful, intimate exploration of a working man's life, told through the eyes of his son-a poet and writer seeking to understand the quiet complexities of a father who spoke less with words and more with deeds. Blending personal reflection, imagined voice, and poetic craft, Don Iannone constructs a compelling tribute to his late father, Donald Lowell Iannone-an Ohio Valley mechanic, Navy veteran, husband, father, and quiet poet in his own right.

Structured in eight thematic chapters, the book traces Donald Iannone's journey from his hardscrabble boyhood in Benwood, West Virginia, through his years of military service in World War II, and onward through marriage, fatherhood, work, faith, relocation, loss, and aging. Each chapter begins with one of Don's father's own poems, grounding the reader in the lived textures of a life shaped by steel, faith, family, and silence. What follows are poems written by the author in response-poems that imagine, interpret, and honor the internal world his father may never have fully shared aloud.

But this is more than a collection of poems. It is a memoir-in-verse, a dialogue across time, and a deeply human attempt at reconciliation. With lyric honesty and emotional precision, Iannone explores the emotional distances and inherited silences that often pass between fathers and sons-especially in working-class families shaped by hardship, stoicism, and cultural expectation. The book delves into themes of emotional absence, inherited trauma, spiritual awakening, and the search for meaning within the everyday.

Set against the backdrop of the industrial Ohio Valley and the American Southwest, What He Lived, What I Wrote speaks to a broader audience of readers who have known the challenge of understanding a parent, the ache of missed connections, and the beauty that can arise from telling hard truths with grace. It also invites readers to reflect on their own family legacies, and the healing power of giving voice to stories long unspoken.

Don Iannone, author of more than two dozen books across genres, brings his signature blend of poetic insight, narrative clarity, and compassionate truth-telling to this deeply personal work. The result is a resonant and timeless collection that honors the labor, love, and limitations of one man's life-and how a son, through the art of writing, learns to see and understand it more fully.