Places That Are Gone

I love the joy and heartbreak in Karen Friedland’s Places That Are Gone. Bachelor apartments, Man Ray, that glorious music of the “early 90s,” the trees in an old man’s yard: all impermanent in a world that the speaker mourns and embraces. We know this world, where in early spring, there’s “far too much tenderness” and yet, we persist by “pounding and pruning and hoping again.” The imagery is immediate and real; the animals, the people, the trees with all “the desperation of the roots,” are still capable of love. Karen Friedland creates a holy space in Places That Are Gone with a concentration that never loses sight of the fact that “. . .all you ever really wanted/was a home. . . .” — Jennifer Martelli, author of My Tarantella