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Dear Sal
The poems in this series are based on Lanford Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Talley's Folly." The play takes place in rural Missouri on July 4, 1944 in a boathouse belonging to the Talley family. It is the ninety-seven minute courtship of Sally Talley, a nurse's aide from a Protestant family, by Matt Friedman, an accountant and German-Jewish refugee. One year before the events of the play, the two had met and had a week-long affair, during which they'd fallen in love. However, each being the keeper of great secrets and intense private traumas, they'd decided to part ways. Over the course of the play it is revealed that Matt, unable to fully let go, had been writing and sending a letter per day to Sally before finally deciding to come back, confess his love, tell his story, and ask her to marry him. These poems come out of the rehearsal process of the play in which the author worked on the role of Matt. They were intended as a way in which to generate a greater understanding of the character, but ended up taking on a life of their own; exploring the space between actor and role, and as communion between withheld desire, perceived unlovability, Jewishness, loss of faith in the body and the spaces the body occupies, and ultimately, a tremulous sort of hope.
- GenresPoetry
69 pages, Paperback
Published May 8, 2017
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79 people want to read
About the author
Jeremy Radin
4 books17 followersJeremy Radin is a poet, actor, and teacher. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Gulf Coast, The Cortland Review, The Journal, Vinyl, Passages North, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012) and Dear Sal (not a cult press, 2017). He lives in Los Angeles where he once sat next to Carly Rae Jepsen in a restaurant. Follow him @germyradin
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 10, 2020
Actor and poet Jeremy Radin’s DEAR SAL is a mighty collection of poems that fashions a bridge between genres. Radin enlists the narrative of Talley’s Folley—a play by Landford Wilson—to build a world where he muses on family, generational genocide, history, desire, and the absence of love.
Radin knows what it is to want. He writes of longing as if it’s his second language. I’m thankful to him, for I am fluent. One thing about Jeremy Radin is, he knows how to write a damn poem. From the beginning, Radin rendered my astonishment audible—I sat gasping at his sharp use of enjambment, and how he uses it as a tool to make his metaphors sing: “I drift through/streets with eyes closed, grasping/at stars. I wish to catch one, take it/in my hands & press/my hips to its boiling/sex. How I wonder what you are/doing now.” (Unbelievable!)
Radin’s has the rare gift of being able to write from a specific sphere, all the while writing from the pit of universal experience. So universal that I—a 25 year old Black girl—connects so deeply to Radin’s—a Jewish actor—writings on desire and its body.
I see myself in these poems. I am always thankful to Radin’s poetry, for serving as a mirror for me to see myself. Read DEAR SAL and allow yourself to see you in a new reflection.
Radin knows what it is to want. He writes of longing as if it’s his second language. I’m thankful to him, for I am fluent. One thing about Jeremy Radin is, he knows how to write a damn poem. From the beginning, Radin rendered my astonishment audible—I sat gasping at his sharp use of enjambment, and how he uses it as a tool to make his metaphors sing: “I drift through/streets with eyes closed, grasping/at stars. I wish to catch one, take it/in my hands & press/my hips to its boiling/sex. How I wonder what you are/doing now.” (Unbelievable!)
Radin’s has the rare gift of being able to write from a specific sphere, all the while writing from the pit of universal experience. So universal that I—a 25 year old Black girl—connects so deeply to Radin’s—a Jewish actor—writings on desire and its body.
I see myself in these poems. I am always thankful to Radin’s poetry, for serving as a mirror for me to see myself. Read DEAR SAL and allow yourself to see you in a new reflection.
December 14, 2017
Dear Sal consists of letters and persona poems, shining a powerful light on characters as well as voice.
Jewish culture (language, food, etc.) and history fill these pages while room for story and poetic language is also allowed.
With lines like “through the gate with Mama & Papa./Harvesting sound for the silent winter” and “a darkness dragged/through a darker darkness.//Heavy/as a forgotten language” filling the pages, each poem is a deafening silence and a death cry all at once.
To read the full review visit: https://biasedbiographer.wordpress.co...
Jewish culture (language, food, etc.) and history fill these pages while room for story and poetic language is also allowed.
With lines like “through the gate with Mama & Papa./Harvesting sound for the silent winter” and “a darkness dragged/through a darker darkness.//Heavy/as a forgotten language” filling the pages, each poem is a deafening silence and a death cry all at once.
To read the full review visit: https://biasedbiographer.wordpress.co...
November 27, 2018
Dear Sal is by far the best execution of persona poetry that I have been introduced to. The Jewish culture is heavily sprinkled through out, a gift in poetry I find myself searching for and holding onto dearly. If you know the spoken word work of Jeremy, or have seen him read in person, than the power of the poems are even greater. The words come off the page audibly, a sort of magic that needs no explanation. A brilliant, unique, original collection of poems that I am confident I will be returning to.
April 4, 2021
Wow, wow, wow. Theater and monologue and character pieces and jokes and surrealist delights. This is an empathetic book of the people An observer watching the world and the characters it inhabits. A great introduction into the work of Radin, and a book I see myself returning to for years to come.
March 8, 2022
I adored this poem/play/epistolary by Jeremy Radin about love, longing, and home. With its backdrop of war and the Jewish diaspora, theatrical feel, and love story, plus a fabulist cast of characters, Dear Sal reminds me of Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic in all the best ways.
Abacus, “the letter-composing klutz,” writes to Sal, “the stubborn beloved,” a year after their brief affair, and the others chime in—in sympathy, distraction, or encouragement that he once again find “stars and the beginning of your darlingsong” (my favorite line, right up there with “the animal of my solitude.”) The letters to Sal are delightful, as well as the distinct voices of each of the personae poems, as in this one from his pants:
“But o you bleary
and bumbling thing!
O you brimming
and bumbling marvel!
What is all this [he indicates my bumbling]
but proof
that all this [he indicates the mysteries]
is working?”
Abacus, “the letter-composing klutz,” writes to Sal, “the stubborn beloved,” a year after their brief affair, and the others chime in—in sympathy, distraction, or encouragement that he once again find “stars and the beginning of your darlingsong” (my favorite line, right up there with “the animal of my solitude.”) The letters to Sal are delightful, as well as the distinct voices of each of the personae poems, as in this one from his pants:
“But o you bleary
and bumbling thing!
O you brimming
and bumbling marvel!
What is all this [he indicates my bumbling]
but proof
that all this [he indicates the mysteries]
is working?”
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews