Arlene Kramer Richards

The Laundryman's Granddaughter Arlene Kramer Richards

wish the title were not about a woman being some man's wife, daughter, or even, as this is, granddaughter - but it was a different time, and this is how we all saw ourselves. At any rate, the child we see in these poems, trundling along in her grandfather's laundry cart, is a charmer, and so are the poems that follow her through her growing up. As for the poems, they are strongly in the tradition of what is called "working-class" poetry, usually showing the strength that comes from that early experience and the resilience that enables one to move on through socio-economic hierarchy to a solidly middle or upper middle-class life. It was easier then than it is now.

Re-reading the poems, many favorite lines leap out at me again, as if from memory itself. In "Retired" on p. 3, the speaker says to an old man, "all your senses retired before you did. "Post Office" (p.7), "I walk my loneliness, my excuse for a dog ..." This whole short poem one of my most loved in the book. On p.8 we meet Bag Lady, who "birdwings her fingers/over the bags/under her eyes." Wonderful image. The whole poem Sauna on p. 16 gives us a scene that will be familiar to all who have shared such an experience, but the stanza that ends with "how to wait until the rings under her eyes are slipped out onto the finger of death" is brilliant, as are the lines in Dying (p.18): "I made you the man who pulls brilliant tomorrows/ from the leaves ..." And finally, in Tell Me (p. 20): "Got any Halloween-headed kids around?/ I'm ready for a fright."
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