Frances Richey

Frances Richey with son, Ben

Frances Richey is an author who writes poetry.  Her first book of poems was published for her father. The second book she promised to write to and for her son, Ben, who is in the army and who served two tours of duty in Iraq. He is an army captain and a Green Beret. Richey worked in business for two decades, and raised a child by herself, as a single mother. She started writing when she volunteered with people who had less than six months to live. This inspired her to write because these people told her to do what she wants to do, and not waste time, because in a single moment everything could disappear as if it was never there.

“Poetry is really music and sound. These are poems that my son can understand. That’s what’s really important to me.” When her son left to war, instead of joining “Mom against war” organizations, she wrote poems. She was trying to be closer to Ben when their relationship was strained. They disagreed on the war; she felt that they shouldn’t go into Iraq, and he felt that it was his duty to go and that it was the right thing to do. She criticized the administration and she didn’t realize how much it was hurting him because he was about to go into combat. Through her poems she expressed herself and helped her son to understand her feelings, her emotions, and the tough time she was having while he was away from her. She knew he might never come home and they might never heal their relationship. Poetry healed her relationship with her son.

Richey’s new book The Warrior: A Mother’s Story of a Son at War includes poems about her son, her only son who went to serve in Iraq.  She read a few of her poems, and the substance, the emotion, all caught my imagination. The stories she tells are powerful and compelling.  She expresses the love fore her son and the helplessness she feels at being unable to help him while he is in danger. A few lines form her poem The Aztec Empire, “They use blood the way we use money, to keep their world going.” I found her poetry full of imagery and deeply moving.  Richey said that poetry changed her life, I understand why. Even the smallest things, like her son packing, she describes the contents of his suitcase in full detail while commentating on them, “These don’t belong to me,” “I have no place here. This is not my life,” “He can’t bear my worry. Like the rucksack he carries on his back, it seems to suck the life out of him,” “I can’t protect him.” While describing an event that is taking place in the present, she also recalls facts about her son as he was growing up, like the constant nosebleeds he would get when she was packing for business trips, “Tissues fell from him like crumpled doves… He tilted his head back, pinched his nose between thumb and index finger: ‘Don’t worry, I know what to do.’”

Another poem that moved me was Kill School, it was a poem about training to kill, even something as innocent looking as a rabbit, “The trainer showed him how to rock the rabbit like a baby in his arms, faster and faster, until every sinew surrendered and he smashed its head into a tree.” The poetry read to us by Frances Richey was full of imagery, and emotions every one of us can relate to. Even if we don’t have any sons or relatives who is/was in the war, I think we can all relate to the poems.