From the Publisher: “This is a collection of poems about life—its imperfect beauty, its poignance, and the forces that propel it forward. Toggling among life stages—from a child’s recollections of school with its ‘blue-lined grainy first-grade paper’ to an adult’s look back through shared reminiscence with a boon companion, these poems resonate with a sense of time’s passage, its transience and elasticity. Grief and disappointment compete with an indomitable will to continue despite setbacks and loss. Whether through the eyes of teenage Holocaust survivor, Dora, and her quest to live, or the ‘jobless-wounded-welfar-ians’ who dream of the windfall that will make it all better, the human beings in Judith R. Robinson’s poems may be beaten and bruised by life’s hard knocks—but they are not down for the count…”
“Nothing on the page is better than plain speech elevated by lyricism and truth. Judith R. Robinson is at her best with Buy A Ticket. She reminds us, again and again, how language coming through the heart can change us forever, making us believe in ourselves and in poetry. These stories trust the past and redeem experience restored by good writing. Robinson shares what we feel too—making us less lonely—proving there’s nothing to fear if we can just find the exact language.” —Grace Cavalieri
Author Website
About the Author: Judith R. Robinson is an editor, teacher, fiction writer, poet and visual artist. A 1980 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 100+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. She currently teaches poetry for Osher at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.Judith R. Robinson will read poems from Buy A Ticket at the Pittsburgh Festival of Books, May 14, 2022, and for the Hemingway’s Poetry series at White Whale, July 26, 2022.
April
They weep,
the sweet unsprung buds.
They cringe
and hide, perilously
bent beneath skies restless and dark
as widow’s weeds
as rivers rise
in western Pennsylvania.
Does this gloom
portend a raging death
or will it yield to
something tender?
Shall we weep with them
Or wait? When I was young
And clear and wise
I knew the answer:
Hold fast, I’d say, tomorrow
Comes in green and gold
And you and I will lust
And live forever.
A Gift
An old scene wafts in
on fumes of mill sulphur:
thin November sunlight breaks
through scudding clouds
above our swaddled heads, and we move slowly,
over-bundled like babies, but that is our lot:
our anxious mother, a flapping hen;
our hardworking father, always silent.
Our warm child’s breath mingles,
we puff at each other
and on the ice drops suspended
from twigs, caught mid-freeze;
then we set to digging down in the new snow,
sweating in cold joy, determination,
our whole hearts in the work.
We will measure the snowfall,
create great white piles,
and find the real bottom of things.
Larry is stronger, but I am older, smarter.
He listens to me, lets me direct.
This is how it happened when we were small.
Now a wisp of late afternoon
Skylight rushes me back,
And in a magic snatch of time
Before the fade, we are together again.
These poems appear here courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted without permission.
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