When I heard that Joan Larkin had a new book of poems coming out, I asked her if she would come over to my place so I could record her reading from it. Although she lives in New Jersey, she is often in the city, and among her many admirable traits, she is a trooper, so getting her to the East Village was easy enough to arrange.
The poems in Joan Larkin’s earlier books, Cold River, My Body: New and Selected Poems, and Blue Hanuman are adventurous enjoyable heartfelt reads. Cold River, poems about friends with AIDS and the deaths of family and friends, struck a chord in me especially and were as knowing as a friend’s reassuring hug. I knew them and they knew me. In her newest, Old Stranger, the poems look back on memories so clearly and closely seen they’re almost hallucinogenic. I think this has to do with the poet’s humble noble striving to get at the truth until the sounds and thoughts of the words she’s writing are wrought so perfectly and honestly they say what she wants to say. Truth is beauty and truth is light also. The poems in Old Stranger gleam remembering and when we read we see.
In the video below Joan Larkin reads from Old Stranger. The four poems that follow aren’t in the video. Read them and get to know Old Stranger a little more. All poems here are printed by the permission of the author. Enjoy.
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Floor Sander Next Door
Someone’s gloved hands steer
the heavy body. I hear it
through my naked wall
whining, lurching—grotesque
dance of an angry thing
that cries as it eats. I
seethe as the noise dies down
then roars to life again.
My hand writhes in its mouth
I’m made of it. Dream-
canceled, smithereens.
Don’t say I asked it in.
Ask what I am when comes
the dead shock of quiet.
Labyrinth
oak so thick underfoot
I can’t see where to enter
step over monk-picked stones
and walk between….I want
to arrive at the center….want
but leaf-clogged paths take
me where I started….what
did I wrong….spirals wind
around me….under me
nowhere to nowhere….climb
over stones blooming with lichen
look at the heaped cairn….what
am I….don’t know….bottle cap
pen….shine in cold sun
Daylily
Tangerine star face,
unscorched even in hellstrips
you nod on your path to nothing.
Tongues sprung from your throat
are brushed purple,
ruffle-edged, up close.
Crowds of you bow and flicker
in fields beside the road.
This day
is my chance to bow—
shall we dance until
your thin dress wilts
beside your bed? Until
you cede your dust to the wind
Cold Air
I lost a small wool child
that fit my swollen hand
as close as one I’d lost before,
smooth leather with a useless clasp,
mine for a week. It fell
without a cry and blew to limbo.
I looked back up the sloping street.
Too late to retrace my steps.
But let me tell you about my hand,
its joy at being naked again,
touched by such cold air
I no more needed any thing.
Will there be time (the thought
blew past) to own another pair?
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Old Stranger is published by Alice James Books. You can check it out here:
https://www.alicejamesbooks.org/bookstore/old-stranger
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Joan Larkin and Steve Turtell in my apartment, August 24, 2024
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To find out more about Joan Larkin, you can check her out here:
https://joanlarkin.com/
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Copyright © 2024 by Joan Larkin