{"id":25524,"date":"2020-01-13T12:59:15","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T18:59:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=25524"},"modified":"2020-01-13T10:02:04","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T16:02:04","slug":"book-report-the-heart-in-hiding-by-jane-daley-kraus-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/13\/book-report-the-heart-in-hiding-by-jane-daley-kraus-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>The Heart in Hiding<\/i> by Jane Daley Kraus (1981)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/theheartinhiding.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">This comb-bound book has a 1981 copyright date, but the author&#8217;s autograph on the title page is dated 1990, so nine years later, she&#8217;s still signing them for people.  At poetry readings\/open mics?  For friends?  For the little bookstore down the block?  I cannot tell, as it&#8217;s just a signature and the date, but that makes it seem like it was a less personal occasion and something more formal.  Still, working it nine years later.  I wonder if she printed that many of them in 1981 or was reprinting them as needed.  It&#8217;s a lot to speculate about on a simple chapbook.<\/p>\n<p>At any rate, it was a pleasant read after <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/28\/book-report-collections-of-madness-by-jane-smith-asil-nottarts-and-nod-nihill2-2005\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em><strike>At the Mountains<\/strike> Collections of Madness<\/em><\/a>.  As you might recall, I didn&#8217;t care for that previous volume very much.  It&#8217;s too modern, where the poems are mainly free verse which, at their worst, are inscrutible verbiage (sometimes) and, at their best, are brain dumps with little apparent craftsmanship.  I also saw that the editor of the <em>Marshfield Mail<\/em>, the current Missouri Poet Laureate, posted a piece of free verse in the paper and defended it a bit as poetry a week or so back, and I thought, &#8220;Meh.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So some better-than-average Grandma poetry was in order.  Well, some Grandma poetry, which I am taking to calling the poetry written by housewives in the middle of the 20th century.  The sort that filled <em>Ideals<\/em> magazine.  The kind of thing <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/11\/book-report-the-best-of-wheat-and-a-little-chaff-by-leah-lathrom\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Leah Lathrop<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/30\/24193\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bobbie J. Lawson<\/a>, amongst many other examples scattered over this blog, wrote.  Formal, rhythmic, and sometimes with an insight or two into the human condition.<\/p>\n<p>This collection was written by a Long Island housewife and deals with tending to children, continuing to be in love with your spouse (and working at it), and other mid-life (that is, the bulk of life) concerns.  Some are quick little hits, bits of humor about phone use back when the family only had a single phone connected to the wall and family members contended to talk on it.  Some are longer reflections about family and long-term romantic relationships.  Some drop contemporary references to movies and soap operas whose titles and players are forgotten in the 21st century.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, a better than average collection of Grandma poetry.  Some workmanship and some insight, but it doesn&#8217;t rise to the level of high art.  But better than most of the dreck produced by professionals, who will also be forgotten in the ages, wherein &#8220;ages&#8221; might mean &#8220;couple of years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This comb-bound book has a 1981 copyright date, but the author&#8217;s autograph on the title page is dated 1990, so nine years later, she&#8217;s still signing them for people. At poetry readings\/open mics? For friends? For the little bookstore down the block? I cannot tell, as it&#8217;s just a signature and the date, but that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25525,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25524\/revisions\/25525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}