And in the case of these poems in this book the unsayable was quite simply what the - the brutal, horrible, and cruel reality of the - the violence that has been a part of so many homes. LINDA McCARRISTON: Poetry’s about saying what we don’t want to know. ‘A man is king in his own castle,’ he can still say, having got what he wanted, in a lifetime of used ones, second-hand, one girl he could spill like a shot of whiskey, the whore only he could call ‘Daughter’.”

Laughter, mocking, the elemental voice of the cock unhearted in its own quarter. ‘I got there before the boys did,’ he knows, hearing back to her pleading, back to her sobbing, to his own voice over like his body over hers.

His cap hangs on a peg by the door, plaid wool of an elderly working man’s park bench decline. No one can take this from him now ever, though she is for years a mother and worn and he is too old to force any again. Now hand, square hand, cruel as a spade, splits the green girl wood of her body. LINDA McCARRISTON: “Now hand is the hard bottom of the girl. Her prize-winning book EVA MARY is a collection of poems that attempt to confront and heal here childhood agony. She, her brother and their mother were brutally abused by her alcoholic father, whose violence often drove them from the home. And obviously he was expecting a great big wicked amazon, you know, like “fee-fi-fo-fum.” (Laughs.) And …īILL MOYERS: Linda McCarriston now lives and teaches in Anchorage, Alaska, but she grew up in a working class family in Lynn, Massachusetts. LINDA McCARRISTON: When this book was first out they invited me to read it. Sandra McPherson and Linda McCarriston, theirs is the language of life. In this hour we will hear from Linda McCarriston, and we will meet Sandra McPherson. Every two years, thousands of people gather to hear some of the world’s best poets at the Geraldine R. Nowhere is the renaissance of poetry more vivid than in the historic village of Waterloo, New Jersey.

Poetry readings are flourishing across America in many different places in wondrous variety. They are have come to celebrate language. BILL MOYERS: They are here to celebrate life.

Shades of Winter by Linda Fallon