Frances Richey

Frances Richey’s collection of poems “The Warrior” reflected the feelings about her son and the difficulties they faced. Their clash of ideas and her concerns for him are very vividly talked about in the poems. The reality that he may not return from his chosen path is a strong theme. She described the book as her “attempt to talk to him”.
Her poetry was very heartfelt and the audience could tell that this was her outlet for all of her pent up emotions about her son’s situation. There was a lot of her soul in the poems that she read us and it was interesting to hear the story behind each poem. This greatly helped to relate the poems to her life. Knowing where they came from and how they came to be really deepened their meaning. These poems were especially important to her because she explained that they “changed the way that he (her son) felt about me, about our relationship”. They were telling the story of her life with her son and the difficulties of being a “Military Mom”
Her view on poetry was that it is “really music” and that it is “made of music and sound”. This could not be truer of her poems. They had a lyrical somewhat melodic sound to them when she read them aloud. They had a rhythm although they had no specific form or rhyme scheme. Their free form reflected how they were a sort of stream of consciousness. Anything that came to her in that moment could have become a poem.
During the question and answer session she was not exactly as candid as the audience may have liked. Her answers were very methodically thought out. It was hard to get a sense of what she was really thinking. She seemed to dance around the questions but never quite pinpoint the heart of the questions and really give direct answers. She was fairly politically correct, too much so even, It would have been more interesting if she hadn’t thought out her answers so much; if she had just said what was on her mind instead of so formulaically answering the audience would have been able to connect more with her.
Frances Richey’s poems came from her heart and that was evident in her tone and the look of pride on her face, both for her poems and for her son.  Hearing the words from the mouth or the writer enhanced the poems greatly. Her poems were not just part of her craft but really a release for any pent up emotions. If I had just read “The Warrior” on my own, I would understand the poems but as she said “reading is one thing, hearing the person who wrote them is another thing.”