Review: “Physical Education” by Joshua Bennett

Reviewed on 6/10/2025

★★★★☆

“Physical Education” navigates boyhood and masculinity. Bennett recounts the imperfect love of his father and his/the society’s twisted use of discipline. The poem opens with the father “outlawing” physical punishment in his home. His decision, however, does not stem from care but the fear of the son becoming a “bomb” in the future, witnessing his “buried brothers.” This protection is cold and rational. Violence, even when not physical, takes the form of emotional battles. The father-son relationship exists in “untamed language,” their dynamics defined by traditional masculinity (“helpless … At the feet/ of mercy or underneath them”).

This intensifies as the speaker enters adulthood. “We breathed like dancers,/ and allowed our hostility to take its form.” The choreography of their fight presents a paradox of the chaotic and the graceful, suggesting both its intensity and musicality. Bennett then ends at a realization of the outside world,  “where no one loves you enough/ to let the boy back up when he loses.” Masculine cruelty drives his father’s “education,” both physically, emotionally, and socially. A home where the speaker can “try his luck again” complicates the fatherly love and softens his figure. His protection comes from a realistic and bitter concern for the boy’s well-being in society. The poem, as a whole, criticizes the world for disciplining boys with violence only to prepare them for more.

Full Poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/1668134/physical-education