WEDNESDAYS WITH DENISE: August 21, 2024

Joan Larkin’s Old Stranger was published yesterday by Alice James Books.  I first became a fan of Larkin’s after reading her exquisitely painful “Blackout Sonnets” from A Long Sound (1986).  It’s fascinating to me how the themes displayed in this early sonnet crown—alcoholism, recovery, rape, abortion—are revisited in Old Stranger, urgently, beautifully, almost forty years later. Her sonnets have loosened in terms of rhyme but not in terms of their power. Decidedly feminist, these poems are what readers need in these regressive times. Larkin also deals with mortality—hoarding, pain, canes—with aplomb and candor while remembering the indignities of youth.  Here is the sonnet that opens the book:

Girls Department

I stared at my shameful flesh in the three-way mirror.

Mother, my guide, my witness, pinched me between

her fingers, thinking aloud: could she work

with the skimpy seam allowance? Get it to fit?

My model-thin cousin Nancy sent me a box

of hand-me-downs: soft wool skirts, an orchid

sweater-set a size too small –– another girl’s raiment.

My sister meant well, Mother instructed,

then took me to Brigham’s for a treat: hot fudge

melted breast-like pyramids of peppermint-stick

ice cream, and I crunched the small clear candies.

I sang in a talent contest once, “Indian Love Call”

in a green tulle gown Mother grabbed from a bin.

She had an eye for a bargain. She took up the hem.

Congratulations, Joan!

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Comments

[Cindy Hochman]

Joan Larkin was my poetry professor at Brooklyn College in the early '80s. An amazing writer and person. I definitely need to buy a copy of this book. Thanks for posting, Denise.

And everyone should check out the current issue of my journal, FIRST LITERARY REVIEW-EAST, which contains several of Denise's wonderful haiku: www.rulrul.4mg.com

[Judy Ireland]

Thank you for acquainting us with Larkin’s new book! I’m definitely going to read it.

[Raymond Hopper]

Is she related to Philip Larkin?

[Susan Aizenberg]

Thanks, Denise! -- snd thank you Cindy Hochman -- I've got the Larkin on my to-get list now. Denise -- I loved your haiku! And I'm happy to discover First Literary Review-East -- really enjoyed the other poems, as well. best, Susan