Bedbug Press - In a Stone's Hollow

In a Stone's Hollow
by Freddy Frankel

Praise for In a Stone's Hollow:

In his contest award statement, Vern Rutsala said.“The language is spare and under control and has a genuine immediacy. It follows the experiences of a young South African recruit in World War II from enlistment through combat and to demob. There are evocative lines such as these from “7 October, 1944, Italy”: “A crystal voice…sings O Sole Mio/ out there somewhere in the dark…” and on the effects of war: “[A man] swings his half leg/back and forth, a pendulum…” The South African poems follow the speaker into adulthood with a number that center on the Sharpville massacre which are given solidity by pointing up one victim he knew and by citing whites and their fears after the massacre while other poems emphasize the brutal exploitation of the blacks. The poems never preach but are lined out with a cool and therefore devastating effect.”

Freddy Frankel was born in 1924 and educated in the Transvaal, South Africa. He served in World War II as a corporal in the South African Medical Corps. Returning to South Africa after the war, he completed his medical education and practiced as a physician. In 1962, he migrated to the US where he continued his medical practice. His poems have appeared in CapeCodder, ConchoRiver Review, Ibbetson Street, Moment, Passager, Senior Times, The Iconoclast, The Larcom Review, The Oak, and three anthologies. His chapbook, Hottentot Venus: Poems of Apartheid was published in 2003 by Pudding House Publications. In 2003, he won the New England Writers Robert Penn Warren First Award. A retired physician, he lives in Boston, MA.