Laurie Kunz reviews Judy Kronenfeld's chapbook Oh Memory, You Unlocked Cabinet of Amazements!

Memory is history’s great anchor, and that sturdy, reliable anchor to the past is what Judy Kronenfeld’s poems are affixed in. They are anchored in a mix of nostalgia, wisdom, truth, and loyalty--a summation of familial love. However, all families’ intricate tapestries of love can be bordered by a child’s ambivalence.  For the most part, this collection is comprised of loving, reminiscent poems, but at times, the poet does take us on some side roads where resentment and doubt linger.

The nostalgic detailing in this collection stuns, for who among us will not be moved by the image of a Good Humor truck and the coins in a child's sweaty palms reaching up to pay the man in white for a popsicle. And, we can all relate to those Saturday breakfasts in bed as portrayed in “A-Tisket, A Tasket”:

Oh, when the weeks spun like a glassy
ornament, this way and
that way, and this way
and that way, and I swung
back to yellow Wednesday
 and went flying
whee to Saturday
breakfast brought to bed
scrambled eggs and
red onions…

These details bring us home, to the sweet spot of memory.

The first poem in the book, “The Fedora,” opens with these lines:

Sometimes, to put myself to sleep
when I am troubled,
I walk slowly, in memory—
as if on a moving sidewalk—through
the three rooms in the Bronx where I lived
with my parents as a child.

Here lies the rich stage filled with history. This book is dedicated to the memory of Kronenfeld's immigrant parents. The operative words in this dedication are memory and immigrant.  Part of the definition of immigrant means ‘coming into a country,’ and these poems come into a land of their own, carrying the strength of a daughter’s love and respect for a family who found peace and gained security in a new land. Kronenfeld’s immigrant parents gave that gift to their daughter, who in turn created a collection of poetry that strikes every chord of connection between parent and child.

 This family's history showers the readers with an in-depth view of lives lived by a tender force of earned gratitude. Kronenfeld is a grateful heir to lessons and wisdom passed down to her by immigrant parents.  The poet's gentle and generous childhood is evident in most of these poems, taking the reader on a lyrical and often magical journey into her present life, lived with an understanding of hardships and traumas her parents and their generation suffered. These poems are the gift given back to parents who worked hard, taught well, and bestowed joy in the shape of coins gently placed in hand for the white coated Good Humor man as well as lessons in how to appreciate a mother's work and how it translates to love:

…bringing back mother, in house-dress and babushka, rising from scrubbing the linoleum with ammonia, wiping her hands on a clean rag, mopping the sweat off my brow with her palm, saying “Ask nicely!” 

Kronenfeld’s work documents growing up not poor in spirit, but perhaps poorer in comparison to the privileged who lived in places that were greener and had fresher air than the tenements of the Bronx. But, even amidst the cramped existence there is a strength passed down via compassion and acceptance and the quest for joy, which the poet learned about from growing up in a city that housed immigrants securely until they felt at home:

Green and Easy in the Ancient City:                                            
On weekends, we were the city
cousins, hats in hand, who visited
 our richer kin—in “garden apartments”
 or “private homes” on Long Island
 or in Westchester—then returned
 from that foreign culture
 to greenhouse-muggy heat,
 or ice-glazed sidewalks…

Kronenfeld takes lessons from a loving family and translates them into appreciation of her present-day life, knit from a rich history, stitched with the strength of familial love. She has carried these lessons to bring a perspective on the present day broken world; history is a teacher, a reminder that hope and trust can prevail:

Trust
Seven decades ago, and I can’t reclaim the warm shivers of refuge and thrill
as I whooshed through the air on your back,
Dad, though I know I felt them—my trust so whole,
I barely knew the word…
Oh, Dad, even when—after my Age of Deification—I thought
you had faults—how paltry they were...
You’ve left me a lived example of simple goodness,
patient and reliable as crocuses
unfolding even in the snow of early spring.
You’ve gifted me the memory of your face radiant
with joy whenever I entered a room you were in.

But what personal history is without parental criticism, even belittling of the younger generation by the older? This is exemplified so well in “Exile and Solidarity”.  The Yiddish expression “Feh” has myriad meanings, all negative, all contrasted with the less severe bleah, yuck, or blech. “Feh” relays a disgust that only a parent can feel toward a child’s misdoings, often cultural misdoings or errors in judgment. It is a word every first generation child dreads hearing. The poet’s coming of age in America, in a household she so wanted to love being a part of, is occasionally made painful by the use of this word.  It is in this poem we see the cultural gap between generations, the harsh parental judgment that every child tries to avoid.

…Feh cut through layers
of joy----like a warmed knife through
ice cream cake…
Feh! was far wose than tsk-tsk, than rolling eyes,
than a heavy sigh; it left nothing to discuss…

A similarly toned poem, Adolescent Passage to England, depicts the poet’s wish at times to escape the“cramped and hot apartment.” Reading Jane Eyre set in England’s “bracing gloom,” brings a reprieve from that hot and muggy existence, those parental rules and scoldings. It is in this poem we get a glimpse of the poet’s desire to break away from the heavy responsibility of being the dutiful daughter, and her desire to be elsewhere.

The themes of nostalgia, trust, and hope are coupled with a personal journey to find one’s own identity; the parents offer love and an old world culture, the child needs to assimilate and grow.  This life journey is evident in every poem in this book.  It is a book that is so relevant in these broken times, times where we need to remember from where we came and where we need to venture. Kronenfeld’s wise and generous poems certainly bring us home.