Barbara Crooker – författare

Some Glad Morning, Barbara Crooker’s ninth book of poetry, teeters between joy and despair, faith and doubt, the disconnect between lived experience and the written word. Primarily a lyric poet, Crooker is in love with the beauty and mystery of the natural world, even as she recognizes its fragility. But she is also a poet unafraid to write about the consequences of our politics, the great divide. She writes as well about art, with ekphrastic poems on paintings by Hopper, O’Keeffe, Renoir, Matisse, Cézanne, and others. Many of the poems are elegaic in tone, an older writer tallying up her losses. Her work embodies Bruce Springsteen’s dictum, “it ain’t no sin to be glad we’re alive,” as she celebrates the explosion of spring peonies, chocolate mousse, a good martini, hummingbirds’ flashy metallics, the pewter light of September, Darryl Dawkins (late NBA star), saltine crackers. While she recognizes it might all be about to slip away, “Remember that nothing is ever lost,” she writes, and somehow, we do.

Barbara Crooker's new book Gold focuses on one of the most profound life-altering experiences possible: losing one's mother. This collection is an elegy, not just to the speaker's mother, but to a lost Eden that cannot be reclaimed. Beginning with a series of lyrics set in autumn, the poems become more narrative, recounting the long illness of Crooker's mother, her death, and the profound journey along the shores of grief. Throughout, Crooker is aware of the complexity and strength of the mother/daughter relationship and the chasm that this loss opens. The book includes other themes: poems about aging and the body, the loss of friends, the difficulties and joys in a long-term marriage, and always, the subtle ways faith influences the way Crooker experiences life. Her work has great scope, spanning the globe from rural Pennsylvania to Ireland, and reaching not just within herself but also outside of herself, to ekphrastic poems on the paintings of Gorky, Manet, Matisse, and others. This is the book of a mature writer, one who demonstrates an awareness of our own impermanence, our brokenness, and one who knows that if our parents go before us, we will have to learn to live with loss. In this book, we see the redemptive power of poetry itself to heal and to console.