Armadillo: Selected Works 1979 to 2009

by Deborah L. Fruchey

My most impossible ambition has always been to understand human nature. So when I discovered poetry at 17, it naturally evolved into a way to express my puzzling findings. Granted that it is often myself I end up studying (the easiest and nearest subject), the focus has always been to observe and report the quaint, illogical, stubborn and silly things we continually do. The journey has included explorations into odd corners: child abuse, addiction, mental illness, religious fanaticism, and a whole host of other issues that have come up over the years. This book contains 30 years of these observations, originally spread out in 8 chapbooks, plus some bonus material that has never appeared anywhere. Here is the world seen through the lens of a peculiar and unexpected life.

Genres: Poetry

182 pages, Paperback

First published November 11, 2013

About the author

Deborah Fruchey was born in California over 50 years ago. Her first novel, The Unwilling Heiress, was chosen as a Best Book by the American Bookseller's Association in 1987. She has attended several colleges just for fun, never earning a degree, and has worked at everything from international banking to selling light bulbs over the phone.

In 2005 Deborah married musician Robert Hamaker, and settled in as a full time author. She no longer knows why she bothered with anything else in the first place. She also speaks for the National Alliance of Mental Illness in their In Our Own Voice program, as a result of her own experience with Bipolar Disorder.

Her newest joy is publishing the books of other worthy authors with her micro-press, Last Laugh Productions, at www.lastlaughproductions.org

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm immensely proud to reveal that poet's poet Deborah Fruchey is a friend of mine. Her poetry collection Armadillo: Selected Works 1979 to 2009 completely blew me away. She's a member of the Babar Poets, a group of San Francisco cafe poets who started reading together in the (late 1980s?) at the Cafe Babar in the Mission. Many of them were published by Bruce Isaacson of Zeitgeist Press. This particular volume, however, is published by Cyborg Productions, run by Mel C. Thompson.

The poems are original, earthy, witty and sometimes biting:

"That's love. Yes, love. The subject you're so tired of.
The horseshoe nail
for want of which
the kingdom
has always been lost."

The poet is the child of people "who creep each night between sanctified sheets,
and give birth to a child
with strange unholy thoughts."

"[T]he ledgers of the heart" charge "[i]nterest rates too obscene to mention."

In "Mental Illness Has No Manners" we learn that
"One can smile and smile
and still be a whacko."

Among my other favorites are "Poets Have No Gender," "The Love of Strong Spirits," "As If Red were a Color," "His Lingering Death," "Thoughts While Going Deaf," and "You Look Perfectly Fine to Me." Just buy the book. It's a terrific read.

[Teresa Kowalski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Raw unfiltered poetry. A window into the universe of a mind. I especially appreciated the
blunt truth of, "You Look Perfectly Fine to Me".
I silenced my religiosity when my prudish moralism balked at, " His Lingering Death."
I Had Never Seen His Bedroom". I thought delightful.
These are just a few of the thought provoking prose within Armadillo.
This is not a book of whimsical cotton candy. This is a book that speaks from the soul tortured and true to itself.

[Deborah Fruchey · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Totally candid and refreshing poems…inspired memoirs of the moments when angels take a cloud latte break and discuss the important things, however few, that happen on the grubby planet Earth that day.”

Marvin R. Hiemstra, East Bay Seasonal Review