The North End

Judith Robbins’ poems are vivid, funny, sometimes shocking, always moving. Reading these poems, you find yourself in hardscrabble working class Worcester of the post-war era, the dark places between the tripledeckers; or you’re plopped down into the unpredictable weather of inland Maine. Wherever the poems take you, the light gets in. Family, place, heritage, language: these poems bring all those things together in moments and memories that again and again give us glimpses of haven (and heaven). Jane Costlow, Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies at Bates College