The Writer’s Center welcomes poet Robert Tobias for a reading from his newest collection, What Lives in Me.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Robert M. Tobias, a debut author at 82, completed his fourteen-year career as the General Counsel of the National Treasury Employees Union successfully suing Presidents Nixon ($533M in back pay) and Reagan (reversing his cancellation of all federal appointments from the time of his election to the date of his inauguration), and several federal agencies concerning violations of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. He then served as the union president for sixteen years leading federal employees as they lobbied for increased federal employee pay and benefits. His third twenty-four-year career involved creating the Key Executive Leadership Certificate Program at American University, targeted toward increasing career federal supervisors’ leadership capacity. What Lives in Me, is career four
About What Lives in Me
What Lives in Me is a collection of autobiographical poems that explores how a father’s toxic masculinity can echo across a lifetime. The speaker’s father—a 1921-born farm boy, relentless competitor, and hard-edged “man’s man”—teaches his son early that failure is unforgivable. By age four, through sharp words and head slaps, the boy has absorbed the lesson: he is not good enough and Real Men don’t cry.
Through scenes drawn from small-town storefronts, factory floors, classrooms, and family memory, the poems follow him into adulthood—law school, labor organizing, leading others, teaching others about leadership and the cost of secrets. Along the way,the same fear of failure becomes the hidden engine of success, driving him to work harder and longer than those around him.
Taken together, the poems reveal how a father’s voice can live inside a son long after childhood ends. Moving from secrecy and shame toward self-recognition, What Lives in Me examines the emotional inheritance of masculine toxicity in a culture that prizes toughness over tenderness.
As the speaker confronts the beliefs that shaped him, he begins the difficult work of reclaiming his own voice through developing the courage to name his fear, feel it, and ultimately develop the courage to face it. These poems seek to give language to experiences that often remain unexamined by men.
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