lola ridge

i've been reading a lot of lola ridge lately not least because, after a little biographical detail, she seems to have disappeared so completely. i'd need to hit the books but i don't think she appears in any of my larger anthologies of the time and i'd be lying if i said i could recall her from any poetic biography. i think i maybe just saw her picture and thought - she's a one.

and reading her poetry, not wrong! the ghetto and sun up are handily available for nothing on kindle and while yes, there's a certain whitmanesque quality about them i'm hardly going to complain about that. what does come across very clearly is her writing on childhood in sun up and her representation of the working class existence. comparisons to whitman and sandburg drift up easily but she seems much more in touch with the lived experience somehow.

check her out. maybe you'll like her, maybe not - either way she's interesting. and it's always a timely reminder to look behind the canonical names and see what else was going on