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Nostalgia's Thread: Ten Poems on Norman Rockwell Paintings
Randall R. Freisinger
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>> Shipping & Download Information >> About our E-Books "A classic American subject, rendered here with passion and immediacy." —Patricia Hampl, author, The Florist's Daughter Accessible and engaging, the poems in Randall R. Freisinger's Nostalgia's Thread are provocative reconsiderations of the American experience as depicted in ten of Norman Rockwell's best known paintings. Arguably the only serious collection of poems inspired by Norman Rockwell's images, they were conceived just prior to the attacks of September 11, 2001, and written in their wake. These poems remind us that visual art is never static, the beholder's eye never innocent. They bear witness to the fact that each cultural era must inevitably reinterpret its rich artistic inheritance within the context of its current collective experience. The publication of Nostalgia's Thread coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Norman Rockwell Museum as well as recent critical reappraisals of Rockwell's as an illustrator and artist. These poems, in keeping with the venerable, centuries-old tradition of ekphrasis, give eloquent voice to Rockwell's art, but they refuse to remain fixed within the paintings' frames. Instead, the poems explore alternative narratives, setting aside simplistic readings of the images and opening them up to a more nuanced response. With unflinching honesty and deep compassion, these poems present a personal and collective past which is both comforting and disturbing, both "nostalgia's thread" and "the barbed wire / of memory." Advance Praise For Nostalgia's Thread“I believed—before reading these wonderful poems—that I knew a thing or two about nostalgia. About how ‘a painting invites you to step into/its frame and complete the story…’ Which Randall Freisinger does. And, as with all essential ‘telling,’ this collection reverberates in ways so wholly unanticipated that I hauled out the art books, enchanted, really, by the remarkable transformation that had just occurred. Freisinger is a poet of insight and originality, and this is one terrific read!” —Jack Driscoll, author, How Like an Angel “The poem ‘Freedom of Speech (1943)’ alone is worth holding onto this small book forever... Other readers might say the same of any other poem here, each one a song to the tough, sweet, enjoyable, and painful battles of our lives. Read this. Freisinger’s lyricism, narrative drive, and wit of language make sure we understand that this book is less an art critique than it is a literary tour de force.” —Robert Stewart, editor, New Letters About the AuthorNostalgia's Thread is Randall R. Freisinger's third chapbook-length collection of poetry. His two previous chapbooks are Hand Shadows (Green Tower Press, 1988) and Running Patterns, which won the Flume Press Chapbook Award in 1985. His full-length book, Plato's Breath, won the May Swenson Poetry Award from Utah State University Press in 1996. His poems have appeared for over forty years in numerous literary magazines and anthologies and have been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. He is Professor Emeritus of Rhetoric, Literature, and Creative Writing at Michigan Technological University and lives with his wife, Jill Burkland, on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Upper Michigan. |
20th-century, American, Fall 09, Norman Rockwell 
Reader Comments (2)
I anxiousy await the arrival of October!
We yearn for a return to Eden; we yearn to return to commune with the untarnished world, a world that lacks pain, ugliness, and evil. Nostalgia's Thread by Randall R. Freisinger takes another look at the perfect world illustrated in Norman Rockwell's paintings. Freisinger constructs words that eloquently juxtapose the imperfect world we live in to the perfect 1950's presented in Norman Rockwell's paintings.
He speaks to the desire to be
"young again, and clean
of conscience, returned to the embrace
of a loving family that never truly existed
and which you mostly now visit
only in fading photos or rote prayers
at church when the liturgy's script
cues you in time for the dying to remember
the dead. You want to recall the vanished home
of childhood without the collateral damage of wrath
and uneasy laughter." (Page 24-25)
Freisinger's thoughtful poems are an invitation to remember our childhood dreams of a more perfect place. We at one time in our lives thought that life could be endemic. We are now older and have hung up those childhood dreams in our walk in closets; and yearn for prelapsarian dreams. Freisinger is a master of creating images by selecting pertinent words: "postman's pouch heavy with grief." Freisinger's book is small, but is a compacted punch, of literary power that knocks the reader out.
A definite Cluck, Cluck, Cluck.