Homeless at Home

by Gloria Frym

Poetry. HOMELESS AT HOME is a series of letters addressed to a deceased father whose life was shattered and fragmented by war, loss, and economic instability, and further splintered by generational strife and estrangement. With an emotionally complex voice that intercuts global events and personal history, these letters strive to speak with the father, to bring him up to date with "current" events and with the poetic life of the speaker. "Gloria Frym's HOMELESS AT HOME is an elevated triumph. A deeply moving, astutely passionate work of the highest integrity and poetic presence. These poems not only grieve the past that was and can never be, but focus with alacrity on present states of debris and possibility. Their measured rage and acceptance unfold a stately and alarming poetry, understated yet overt, compassionate yet resistant. A deeply intelligent work of profound demand and reward from a writer of immense principle and engagement" - David Meltzer.

54 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2001

Reviews

[Patrick Duggan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This recommendation could easily start with, "In the Rabbinical tradition of John Cage...," but it won't. Frym's poems are letters by design and device but pure cutting verse in image and breath. Frym is creating and burning originality and emotion, tradition and defiance.

There's both politic and eulogy in every movement, joy and disgust in the layering and shifting of forms. Poets both young and old could learn the possibilities and power of verse from Gloria Frym. Each refrain becomes a philosophy of the body as history, and history as the cultural, racial, and feminine wound it is.

I know I'm piling on generalities, but the spectrum of language, intelligence, and fire going on within Homeless at Home is so humbling I could go on for weeks. Her rhetoric is smart and funny, her juxtaposition startling and insightful. Her poems are meditations on mortality and death, and the life often lost and muddy that leads to it. Really, an amazing volume of poetry from one of San Francisco's most kick-ass poets.