Knock Knock

The phrase “knock knock” has different implications in various parts of the poem (see Symbols and Motifs). In the first stanza, it refers to the game the speaker plays with his father as a small boy. The father knocks on the door as the boy pretends to sleep, and then the boy jumps into his father’s arms wishing him good morning (Lines 3-7). Then, “my papa he would tell me that he loved me” (Line 8). The game embodies the love between the father and the son and their pleasure in each other’s company. This brief and evocative description of a favorite childhood memory sets the scene for the poem’s main themes: the value of an affectionate bond between father and son, and the pain of its loss.

In the speaker’s experience, that loss occurs early and abruptly. One day “the knock never came” (Line 11), marking the rupture of the bond that means so much to the boy. His confusion grows when his mother takes him on a journey through an unfamiliar and uninviting landscape, riding “past corn fields / On this never ending highway” until they reach “a place of high / Rusty gates” (Lines 12-14). The scene is described from the boy’s uncomprehending perspective, but the reader might already suspect that the boy and his mother have arrived at a state or federal prison, which is likely outside of urban areas. The following line confirms that suspicion and reveals the family’s race: “We reach a room of windows and brown faces” (Line 18). Now it becomes clear that the poem is not about parental loss in general but specifically about Black fathers lost to incarceration, a serious problem in the United States (see Social Context).

The boy cannot understand why his father is behind a window. He wants to jump into his father’s arms like he did every morning at the end of their Knock Knock game, so he tries “to break through the glass” (Line 23). Here the title phrase gains a different connotation. In the first stanza, the knocking symbolizes the father-son bond; it signals the father’s arrival to the boy’s room and anticipates the gestures and words of affection that follow. Here, however, the knocking implies that their bond has been forcefully severed; it signals the father’s removal from the boy’s life and a lasting separation that the boy cannot prevent by pounding the window with his small fist. Because of his outburst, the mother takes the boy away before his “papa even says a word” (Line 26). For whatever reason, there is no further communication between the father and the son for the next 25 years. The father’s absence and silence have such a powerful and painful impact on the speaker that he, now in his late 20s, decides to voice that pain and loss. He writes from the perspective of “the little boy in [him] who still awaits his papa’s knock” (Line 29).

The speaker’s words to his father reflect typical concerns of a young boy who contemplates what it means to become a man. The boy misses his father’s love, but he also needs his father to teach him how “to shave [and] to dribble a ball [and] to talk to a lady [and] to walk like a man” (Lines 34-37). This list of common concerns related to masculinity reminds the reader how important it is for a growing boy to have a masculine model (the father or a father figure) to facilitate the boy’s transition into manhood. The absence of such a model can cause disorientation and anxiety, as the speaker’s words poignantly express: “I wanted to be just like you / But I’m forgetting who you are” (Lines 39-40). The boy, and even the adult speaker 25 years later, feels the impact of that absence intensely. The speaker sheds the little boy’s tears now, perhaps because he has previously suppressed the pain out of fear that it would be unmanly to acknowledge it. However, now he realizes that the opposite is true. He needs to express that pain so he can “try to heal” (Line 42) and keep growing as a man. He must father himself (Line 43) and “dream up” (Line 44) the advice and encouragement that his father might have given him had he remained in the boy’s life.

The next part of the poem verbalizes the speaker’s dream of his father’s words. The father is sorry for being absent from the boy’s life and offers belated advice. These are, in fact, the lessons that the speaker has had to learn on his own, and what they have in common is an emphasis on confidence. Whether in shaving, in writing, or in his relationship with women, he must be strong and believe in himself (Lines 48-50; see “Self-Fathering” in Themes for more on this passage). Significantly, the earlier reference to sports is replaced with a reference to writing. Instead of worrying about how to “dribble a ball” (Line 35), the adult speaker cares about how to “Dribble the page with the brilliance of [his] ballpoint pen” (Line 49). Because the poem is largely autobiographical, it is appropriate to read this line as the poet’s own concern about the power and impact of his writing.

The father’s words, in the speaker’s mind, then turn to the future. The father will never again knock on the speaker’s door (Line 51); he will never be there to provide love and support. Thus, the speaker must encourage and motivate himself, especially as he begins to engage with social problems that have everything to do with his personal experience but also exceed his individual life. He must defy “racism and poverty” (Line 53) while opening “doors of opportunity” (Line 54) for himself and for others whose access to it is unfairly obstructed or constrained. That includes his father and all “the black men who crowd these cells” (Line 55), people whose potential and hope were nipped in the bud by incarceration. The speaker believes that his remaining free would comfort his father’s spirit in prison (Lines 57-58). He imagines his father telling him, “The best of me still lives in you” (Line 59), which suggests that the son knows that his father has many qualities despite whatever he did to deserve incarceration. However, he also knows that his father made bad choices, which is why he has his father say, “you are my son, but you are not my choices” (Line 60). The speaker’s goal is to live up to what he values about his father yet to avoid the temptations and mistakes that took his father in the wrong direction.

In the last segment of the poem, the speaker’s “I” turns into “we” as he aligns himself with many other “sons and daughters” (Line 61) who have escaped their fathers’ bad choices and overcome their fathers’ absences (Lines 62-64). The speaker emphasizes the importance of joining forces and working together to “change this world / One little boy and girl at a time” (Lines 65-66). These agents of change are not children any longer, but they remain inspired by the hardship they had to endure because of parental absence and the social ills that led to it. At the same time, the poem offers hope to any child who is still coping with parental absence: You are not alone! There are many of us, and you can join us. We are stronger and more confident together. The final lines play with the title phrase one more time to reaffirm that message of communal power: “Knock knock / Who’s there? / We are” (Lines 67-69).