POETRY ONCE WRITTEN IN QUIET SOLITUDE and then shared between three generations is now offered together in this first collection of poems. In A Nod to My Father, a father, son, and grandsonwith obvious differences in style and depthshow uncanny similarities in subject and vision. What ties these writers together, besides relation, are their reflections on our modern times. Influenced by his early research of Longfellow and Whitman, grandfather John McKinleys poetry centers on the irony and absurdity of the human ego and our place in the natural world. Lee, Johns son, prefers to write within the syllabic style of haiku.. Adam, Johns grandson and Lees son, cites Mary Oliver and Robinson Jeffers as his poetic influences. He enjoys the latitude of free verse but also the discipline of writing in cinquains and haiku to express his social discourse. A Nod to My Father demonstrates that although poetic styles may differ between fathers and sons, what they seek to imbibe and digest rarely does.