In this insightful and inspiring poem entitled “My Fathers Pigs” Roland Leach presents us with an adult speaker who is talking in the present about his fathers condition in the nursing home. The author explains that the visit to the nursing home is due to the fathers poor condition, as he suffers from some sort of mental illness like alzheimers. But as the poet reveals more about the father, it becomes apparent that in order to connect with him, he must put reality aside and join the father in his own reality. Leach displays the importance of an escape from reality as something that is an essential part of connecting through generations.

Leach presents us with the idea that people are stuck in the past to escape from their current reality. Leach uses various techniques to express his ideas, such as how he uses contrast to show the father’s personality and traits. Leach makes the reader feel as though his father was a man who values his masculinity and strength. Leach shows us this in stanza 2 when the father says “he would have preferred to have died in a bar room brawl, been abandoned in the forest that this soft finish” Contrasting these two very different ways of death lets the reader know that he would rather die in a heroic act doing what he loves than a “soft finish” and this is a key part of his character. The poet also uses visual imagery to represent the father’s condition. In stanza 1, the author says “and he looks at his hands surprised they are so clean.” I think that this is a clear indicator that the father is living in a different reality because he struggles to comprehend his current position or doesn’t want to acknowledge his current condition.

In conclusion, Roland Leach creates a warming, yet sorrowful atmosphere in the poem and clearly demonstrates the need to escape reality as an essential part of connecting through generations using contrast, visual imagery and similes. Leach also expresses how love and connecting is greater than reality.