Dear Stranger / The Wayfarer

Dear Stranger / The Wayfarer, by Ralph C Hamm III, is powerful collection of poems reissued and still as fresh and raw as the day they were originally published in 1979. It is said that the more things change the more they stay the same; thus, it is in the reading of Dear Stranger/The Wayfarer. Although written in the nineteen-seventies, when Ralph was in his twenties and fighting for his very survival in the then touted most dangerous prison (per capita) in America-Walpole State Prison in South Walpole, Massachusetts-the reflections and socio-political/economic realities of that bygone era depicted within the poetry linger on today at the reprinting (new edition) of this collection in 2014. Ralph is no longer twenty years old, but in many instances the circumstances expressed within the 1979 edition as foreboding have exacerbated, and are more vivid than ever today at the age of sixty-two.