Accents on Books: Dear Youngstown: A Love Letter Home

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Dear Youngstown: A Love Letter Home

The poems in Karen Schubert’s Dear Youngstown are deeply rooted in a sense of place, and brimming with animated detail: they might be stamped on the city’s concrete sidewalks, leading the reader on a guided tour of its neighborhoods and landmarks.

Through the poet’s plain-spoken narratives, we enter the atmosphere of the Old Ward Bakery with its “filmy windows stuck shut;” every sense responds to “rat-tail beets, blueberries, basil, muffins and tie-dye” mingled with “jazz, sultry” and banter at “Farmer’s Market.” 

The poet’s affection and concern for her adopted  hometown resonate throughout. We raise a glass at Cedars in “Closing the Bar,” pass an abandoned house with “swayback porch roof/gutters choke and hatch saplings,” in a row of homes slated for razing in “kitty corner from the empty high school.” 

Dear Youngstown is a wonderfully crafted love letter to the beautiful grit of a city on its knees, but rising.

DEAR YOUNGSTOWN
41 pps
retail price $15.00
ISBN #978-1-64092-999-9
Night Ballet Press, February, 2019

 

Barbara Sabol

Barbara Sabol is the author of the poetry collection, Solitary Spin, and two chapbooks, Original Ruse and The distance Between Blues. Barbara’s awards include an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council and the Mary Jean Irion Poetry Prize. She reviews poetry books for the blog, Poetry Matters.

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