Frances Richey

Frances Richey seems like the typical mother. She is the mother of a Green Beret and feels like most mothers would feel – concerned and distressed because her son’s life constantly faces perilous situations, especially during war time. After her son, Ben, decided to be a soldier and serve in Iraq, she filled the void in her life by writing a collection of poems that portrayed her feelings to his being a soldier in an attempt to reestablish the mother-son relationship.
The reading started off with a poem in which she made a comparison between her son in Iraq and the Aztec Empire exhibit of the Guggenheim in 2004. She praises her son in that even though Ben was a soldier, he was also very much like a warrior during the Aztec civilization. In each poem she read from her book called “The Warrior”, Richey expressed the consistent emotion of worry that she might never be able to see her son again. According to her, writing poems was her way of coping with the physical absence of her son. My favorite poem was “Waiting”, in which the mother and son had a brief connection despite the physical boundary. When she was praying here at home, he thought he had seen her in Iraq with him. Richey even claims that she “would know even if he died” at the other end of the world. Richey’s brief comparisons and juxtapositions of the different time zones here and in Iraq goes to show that although they are separated physically, they are still connected spiritually.  As her son was being deployed in Iraq, writing was her way of praying.
Richey’s philosophy is “poetry is really rhythm and sound”. What matters to Richey is not what others think but that Ben can understand her feelings and thoughts. To Richey, reading her words aloud was like “getting in touch with [her] own music”. Not only did Richey’s musical collection of poems bridge the distance between her and Ben, but it also reached out to other military moms who is still currently feeling the same way while waiting for a loved one to return.