By Jennifer Fusco

Members of the campus and local community gathered for a reading of poems from the anthology Wicked Times: Selected Poems, by the late Aaron Kramer (1921-1997), the father of Laura Kramer of Sociology. Mr. Kramer was a versatile American poet passionately engaged with both public history and personal experience from the Holocaust and the Spanish Civil War to his love for New York City and his family.

Kramer says it's her responsibility to share her father's poetry with the public though she wasn't always involved in his work. “Growing up it was just in the background of my life," she said. "It wasn't until I team-taught a class with Jim Nash of English in the late '80s. He gave me a much greater appreciation of poetry and the times that my father worked in as a poet. Teaching with Jim moved me to talk to my father more about what it was like to do his work."

The campus reading was the second of Wicked Times, which includes previously unpublished poems and the first detailed account of Mr. Kramer's life by editors Cary Nelson and Donald Gilzinger Jr. A reading was held in the fall at Watchung Booksellers in Montclair. Bringing awareness to Mr. Kramer's works is important on many levels, said Gregory Waters of English, who participated in the readings. "I think he is quite relevant today as an engaged poet, one who writes about the impact of power on the lives of regular citizens. He does this in poems that are quite accessible, using rhymed, metered verse in regular stanzas to provide social criticism as well as personal witness," he said. "He wrote with passion, courage and deep conviction, and his words ring with as much truth today as they did when they first appeared."

Reading selections from Wicked Times were, standing, from left, Tom Benedicktsson of English and Lenore Smith-Aman, local community member; seated, from left, Art Simon of English; Laura Kramer of Sociology and Gregory Waters of English.

With this newfound publicity, Kramer hopes a broader public will become familiar with her father's work. "I would like people to come away knowing that he was very involved in his times, that he was a romantic and that he loved language."

Mr. Kramer wrote 1,000 poems and translated 500 poems written by other poets, all while holding down day jobs. His works focused on fundamental social issues--labor, racism and class struggle. He first gained national prominence with "Seven Poets in Search of an Answer" and "The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine." Mr. Kramer was a leading resistance poet throughout the McCarthy era, with "Denmark Vesey," a 26-part poem that pays homage to an unsuccessful slave rebellion, being one of his best-known works. One of his poems was recorded by Judy Collins on "Whales and Nightingales" and it is the epigraph to Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. Pete Seeger, who recorded some of Mr. Kramer's work called him "the revolutionary angel of American poetry."

But Mr. Kramer's politics (he was a member of the Communist Party of the United States) and his style of metered rhyme rather than free verse hindered him from garnering the kind of attention many critics say he truly deserved. "My father's poetry was very lyrical, which was not fashionable at the time," said Kramer. "He was also quite Leftist, which did not work in his favor either."

While Mr. Kramer will never know of his newfound fame, his daugther has no doubt in her mind how he would feel. "He would be ecstatic. When I was a little girl he would tell me about great composers and poets who died penniless. He always had that secret hope that he would be discovered," she said. "This attention to his works now gives me immense satisfaction."

Dogs
Looking foolish next to the tree in a one o'clock rain:
umbrella aloft, the leash in my other hand--
I wanted my late-coming neighbor to understand
that dogs are worth the expense, inconvenience, and pain:

their tails are truthful, no coiled rebellion beneath
a loving look; they are quick to kiss you, and quick
to fetch for you, and--should you raise a stick
threateningly--they are quick to show their teeth;

and better still (but this I never revealed),
when you bring downfall home, the death of a hope,
their nonchalant manner does more for you than a drink;
and best of all, when triumph's to be unsealed,
such lack of respect they show for the envelope,
--your fingers halt, the brain cools, and you think.

For more information on Wicked Times, visit www.aaronkramer.com