Reviews & Interviews

Review:

In the Late Summer Garden , 1998
Barbara Crooker's poems show clearly and vividly how close she is to the earth and how much it nourishes and drives her joys and sorrows.
--Harry Humes

Interview:

Amazon.com , 1997
Amazon.com: How did you begin writing? Did you intend to become an author, or do you have a specific reason or reasons for writing each book?

BC: I'm a small press poet, with one poem in a Conari Press anthology, so my answers may be a little different--I guess I see myself as a writer rather than an "author." I started writing when I read a little magazine from Mansfield State University (PA) and was bowled over by some poems by Diane Wakowski. I didn't realize that magazines like these included writing by professionals--I thought these poems were written by college students. And so I began. If I had knowsn that Ms. Wakowski was a famous writer, I'd have been intimidated. Only in America, of course, can famous writer (poet) be an oxymoron. To make a long story short, one poem then followed another. Later, I started publishing in little magazines myself, then in my own chapbooks (small presses), and in over fifty anthologies, some of which are larger, popular presses. When I sit down to write, I write about what currently engages me, for whatever eccentric or quirky reason that may be.

Amazon.com: What authors do you like to read? What book or books have had a strong influence on you or your writing?

BC: Some of my favorite authors are in this anthology, For She Is the Tree of Life: Marge Piercy, Sharon Olds, Margaret Atwood, Isabel Allende, Linda Hogan, Leslie Marmion Silko--I feel honored to appear with them.

Amazon.com: Could you describe the mundane details of writing: How many hours a day do you devote to writing? Do you write a draft on paper or at a keyboard (typewriter or computer)? Do you have a favorite location or time of day (or night) for writing? What do you do to avoid--or seek!--distractions?

BC: This IS pretty mundane--I write in longhand, on lined yellow paper (with a rollerball pen, black--it has to be black). After many drafts, I'll switch to the computer, but then I'll also go through many more drafts (usually taking notes/marking things up in pen or pencil). I work best in the morning--I try and put in 2-4 hours a day. But my best place to write is away from home, at an artist's colony--the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Here, I can stop being a "Mom" (which is my other job at home)(I also teach workshops and travel to give readings) and write 10-17 hours a day--my idea of heaven.

Amazon.com: Do you meet your readers at book signings, conventions, or similar events? Do you interact with your readers electronically through e-mail or other on-line forums?

BC: Yes, I have met readers at book signings and readings. I've also had people correspond with me via the publisher, and have had a few phone calls out of the blue. [With my website up and working, I have had many opportunities to interact with readers.] I've never participated in an on-line chat group, though.

Amazon.com: When and how did you get started on the 'Net? Do you read any newsgroups, such as rec.arts.books and rec.arts.sf.written, mailling lists, or other on-line forums? Do you use the 'Net for research--or is it just another time sink? Are you able to communicate with other writers or people you work with over the 'Net?

BC: I read five newsgroups each morning, each devoted to a different aspect of autism, which my 13 year old son has. I run about 250 messages a day just in newsgroups. But I also communicate with several other writing friends who have e-mail, and I have a nice correspondance going with my middle child, who's a freshman in college.

Amazon.com: Feel free to use this space to write about whatever you wish: your family, your home town, hobbies, favorite places, where you've lived, where you went to school, what jobs you have had, your last (or planned) vacation, your favorite color/food/pet/song or movie, what books you'd take on a desert island, what you intend to do before you die, or what you think of just about anything.

BC: I have a great family: husband and best friend, Dick; daughter Stacey, who got married last June to son-in-law Eric; daughter Rebecca (Becky), the aforementioned college student, and son David, who has autism. We live in easter Pennsylvania in a development set in an old apple orchard. I went to Douglass College (Rutgers University)for my Bachelor's degree, and Elmira College for my Masters. Our last vacation had me tagging along with my husband on a business trip to Las Vegas. I liked seeing the desert, and hiking in Valley of Fire State Park. I'd like to get my next book out (Ordinary Life) before I die, and I think I should have won the Grammy instead of Hillary Clinton (Another anthology I'm in, Grow Old Along With Me, the Best Is Yet to Be(Papier-Mache Press) was also a finalist (in its audio version) for the Spoken Word Category. Somehow, if we'd won, I don't think we'd be getting the same amount of media attention.

Review:

The Lost Children , 1990
The ties that bind are soft as steamed carrots and hard as bone. With wondrous associations like these, Barbara Crooker accomplishes a nifty feat. Some poets maul the weary heart, but the Fogelsville resident more often than not acts like an emotional masseuse.

Overwhelming fear can be overwhelmingly flat on the page. Crooker keeps impressions springy by narrowing her vision and opening her senses. In "Learning to Speak Neurosurgery" she describes a baby's defect precisely and evocatively: "His head is still so soft it pulses./In the coral of his brain,/CAT scans reveal a grey fish/swimming an inland sea." Illness, she notes, twists a parent's perception of natural cycles: "Spring, with its rumor of new life,/has never seemed more false." This is fearless writing, for Crooker solidifies feelings without ossifying them.

Tracking seasonal events brings out the best in Crooker. For her, seasons assume many forms. In "American Past Time," she converts the work rites of a summer afternoon into a fleeting, clinging event. First comes the ironing--the blessing--of clothes, followed by lunch, "And then the long, long afternoons, the sun, pitched and searing as a hardball/coming at you fast and clean./Swinging hard, you connect,/hickory to rawhide,/a moment hanging in time,/stretching fresh and clean as the sheeted sky,/when days were caught, suspended,/when the dark meant only hide & seek/or time to come home." Time glistens and, for a line or two, stops. And the poet stands on third with a line drive epiphany to left.

Human and natural cycles are paralleled in "Applewood," one of several poems that float on thoughts of cocooning and molting. In this semi-suite, Crooker flits between the lives of an orchard and females. Her last picture is satisfyingly ambiguous and whole: "And, mothers and daughters,/we'll end like Amish apple dolls,/wrinkled and dried,/but turned into ourselves,/final/as red winesaps on the bough." Winesap is a heady choice, suggesting fullness and emptiness, the ups and downs of maturity.

Fitting seasonal acts with seasonal rhythms is one of Crooker's assets, and another way she maintains the intensity of powerful subjects. The title poem advances and withdraws depending on the vividness of the loss of a youngster. Those "crossed out," for example, weight more than miscarriages. According to Crooker, missing children are tangibly intangible: "We hold them, as the evanesce;/we never speak their names." This poetic low tide evaporates with the lines, "at the beach, the disappear/behind the first wave."

Crooker enters the deep end only during quasi-rhapsodies. Very few poets outside Walt Whitman can get away with a sentiment like "My little hero, it's only me you have/to save you from what's waiting in the dark . . . ." Mostly, she handles the finicky role of insider/outsider with finesse. Anyone who has been mired in a family reunion will awaken on the sparkling meditation, "how soon the rush of admiration/for how much you've grown,/how smart you've become,/passes by,/like a river parting around a stone . . . ."
--Geoff Gehman, The Morning Call