Intimacy

francesrichey.com

Intimate. It is the best word available in the English language to describe Frances Richey. It describes everything about her – from her demeanor to her stories, and especially to her presence in a room. Her intimacy was recently put on display at a recent reading at the Macaulay Honor College. She read several selections from her new collection of poems, entitled The Warrior. These poems chronicle the ever-changing emotions that she felt when her son, Ben, was deployed to fight in Iraq.

As told to the audience by Richey before she began reading her poems, this collection of poems was a way to talk to her son Ben – a way to tell him things that she could not tell him face-to-face. The reading took place at the intimate downstairs cabaret room in 35 West 67^th Street. In addition to conveying her purpose for writing these poems, Richey began by thanking the people who had made the event possible – Zoe Sheehan and Roslyn Bernstein. It was an extremely intimate beginning. Not only did Richey reveal two of her close friends, but she also told the personal story of how these poems came to be. She said that she had a lot of emotions rise up in her when her son was deployed to Iraq and that writing poetry was her medium for releasing what she felt inside her.

The result of her efforts was spectacular. During the reading she read several poems from the collection including “The Aztec Empire” and “Letters.” One of her most insightful poems was entitled “Kill School.” It related an experience in which Richey had asked her son about the training that he underwent to become a Green Beret. After he told her about a gruesome training exercise involving a rabbit, she writes that he said, “You said you wanted to know.” This single phrase describes everything that has to do with this collection. Richey wrote it for her son to express to him the emotions that he wanted to know about, but that she could not talk about. These poems allowed a bridge of communication to be built between the two so that finally, they started talking again instead of simply saying things.

After reading several of the poems, Richey went into a detailed discussion on her views of poetry. She believes that “poetry is really music and sound.” Richey revealed that cafés were her favorite places to write because by drowning out the bustle of a busy coffee shop, she is able to focus on the harmony of her poems. Poems do not have to rhyme, she said, but they do need to flow like small symphonies.

Richey spoke a lot about how she became a writer. She had written in college, and when she chose a career in business, it also involved a more concrete, but still descriptive form of writing. Then, her father died and she decided to begin writing poetry again. She took several writing classes and established poets as her mentors. With this reawakening, she quit her job in the business industry and became a full-time writer, with a small job as a yoga instructor on the side. Then, she revealed the real reason that she became a writer when she said, “I want to go out doing something I really love,” and love is a fitting reason for Richey is a woman of emotion and intimacy.