BLACK PAPER ALBUM - Karen Schulte - Bog

BLACK PAPER ALBUM is the story in poetic form of a young girl growing up in the 1940's and 50's absorbing her grandparent's immigration to America and their hardscrabble life in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains and her parent's struggles to make a life for themselves and their family in the hustle of New York City. Captured in family photographs dating back to turn of the 20th century in a crumbling "black paper album," the family story emerges like "the driving spokes of a wheel always turning..." From the old bonds in the Catskill community of family, friends, and tradition where the past continues among the elderly men in the village synagogue chanting their prayers "as if they first heard it" and a NYC dance class where the dancers gather all they can of speed and desire, inhale deeply, glide through thin air until grounded...centered...still." Each of these poems follow a time line of change and discovery from post World War II to the beginning of a new era leading into the future and decisions to choose what to hold on to and what, by necessity to let go.