Old Stranger: Poems

In this sixth collection from a beloved American poet, the reader is asked to reflect on the stranger within others--and ourselves.

The speaker in Old Stranger: Poems begs to be seen and known, even when faced with her aging and her own mortality. Even as we age, there’s a looming space for the mysterious stranger we embody without realizing it. Do we ever truly know who we are?

In the book, familiarity takes so many forms, as does the stranger: sometimes the stranger is a loved one, sometimes it is the speaker to themselves, and other times it’s one who might seem like a stranger in the poem but turns out to be recognizable in one or more ways.

We are looking back, but at the same time we are so much in the present, there’s an in-betweenness of the temporal that is so dreamlike and delicious. The poems are suspended and feel weightless even as their subjects are weighty and, at times, dark.

Joan Larkin’s fifth book of poems, Blue Hanuman, was published by Hanging Loose Press in 2014. A teacher for many decades (at Brooklyn College and Sarah Lawrence, among many others) she recently served as Conkling Writer in Residence at Smith College. Her honors include the Shelley Memorial Award and the Academy of American Poets Fellowship.