POETRY MONDAY: June 4, 2011
Arlene Kramer Richards
Our poet today is someone many of you already know as a colleague. A practicing psychoanalyst in Manhattan, she is a Training and Supervising Analyst, New York Freudian Society; Fellow, Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research; member APsaA and IPA; co-editor of Fantasy, Myth and Reality: Essays in Honor of Jacob Arlow (IUP, 1988), and author of numerous papers on female sexuality, perversion and gambling.
What you may not know is that she is also a poet. Full disclosure: Arlene and I became friends through poetry back in the 1970’s, in a workshop at the 92nd St. Y in New York City. The workshop was led, brilliantly, I might add, by Erica Jong, who, as younger readers may not realize, was a well-known, prize-winning poet well before the launch of Fear of Flying. Later, because of our shared interest in psychology and education, Arlene and I decided to collaborate on a book for young adults, which became How to Get It Together When Your Parents Are Coming Apart, first published in 1976 by David McKay Co., then by Bantam, by Scholastic, in Japanese by Shobun-Sha Publishers, and re-published in 1986 by Willard Press. It’s still in print, still in use and, I’m happy to say, will have a new life before long. By invitation of another publisher, we went on to write three more young adult books together, one of which, Under Eighteen and Pregnant, was voted a “Best Book for the Teenage” by the American Library Association. It also, some years later, had the honor of appearing on another list: those banned, (along with Catcher in the Rye), by the Racine, Wisconsin public school system.
Although she has continued writing poetry since those early workshop days, Arlene, for a variety of reasons, has not submitted p oems for publication. Now, however, IP Books has brought out a first chapbook of her work, The Laundry-man’s Granddaughter, which I’m pleased to introduce with the three poems below.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
Brighton Laundry
Sheets 9 o’clock, pillowcases 12,
shirts 3, tablecloth 6,
all the flatwork round the clock
builds a timescape on a raw floor.
Mrs. Goldberg has a mountain of flat this week.
Grandfather Laundryman and I sort her mountain
into four orderly hills. You and I.
My playground is here in your laundry
You let me do the 7:30 napkins myself.
I plane wetwash, clock center,
into a black-green sliced off mesa
with my toes. I skate
on socks, shorts, undershirts
in the middle of time’s kingdom.
Banished to the corner, dry stands of towels,
Eyelet-edged teddies and pale buckets of handkerchiefs
wait for sorting.
Twenty years later, the son stands on my pale wool carpeting,
asking to come into my sorting room.
I measure him out a comfortable chair.
He sits in the gold corduroy chair.
He, magician, pulls stacks of linen
from his sleeves. I wonder at the colors.
He starts to make a mountain.
I help sort out. Some belong to table, some to bed.
He calls himself shocked at the smells,
eyes me to see if I gag, smiles back at my chin.
I sit simple here.
He pulls out sheets stained with piss.
Damp wash, I say. Damp goes to the middle.
We dance on the piles under the moon.
Whirling on shrouds, we pout on the soap.
Bubbles splash, tickling our nipples, the milk comes.
Around, the long minute hand sweeps past,
closes a circle,
leaving others. We’ll go around again.
Giddly with dancing, flushed peach with moving,
we bow, shake hands and part,
We’ll collect again next week.
We pick up Monday.
Halloween
Your ghost ate chocolates and refused to ski.
Mine drank music and wore boots.
Yours loved to shop, to throw furious pots.
Mine finally removed his red toupee.
Our ghosts dance on the shaggy green rug,
between us.
We’ll fold their sheets, top and bottom,
to make our bed
The Husband
A long woman green as pale trees
Stands in my doorway
Going in or coming out
She waits there as if
For a signal
To push her
One way or
The other.
Poised between she sways
And I wonder
Can she stop
Over a threshold.
She goes
I come
Apart.