In Taking the F Train, a New York City poet rides the F Train through the final years of the 20th century into the 21st; both gentrification and technology are rapidly transforming life as she has known it. Her old haunts…cafés, bookstores, diners, are being replaced by luxury co-ops. There are also losses due to illness and aging…those of others as well her own. And it's not ok she cries out! At the same time, for every push forward into the future, she’s witnessing an opposite push back into the past by the so-called leader of the free world. Nothing makes sense to her anymore. There's only what can be salvaged by art...the act of creation. |
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Linda Lerner is a streetwise poet who has the rare ability to make you feel like you are walking in her shoes or sitting with her on a subway train on its way to a new adventure. Take a trip with her on the "F" train, but don't stop there, there are other cities and states where equal pleasure awaits you. These are poems planted like seeds in the fertile garden of the mind. The poet writes in the language of the common man and woman with no pretense at academic deceit or treachery. If poems were food, you'd put down the book feeling like you had just eaten at a 4-Star diner.
—A. D. Winans, poet
Linda Lerner's poems from her chapbook, When Death Is a Red Balloon, [now reprised in the section Left Unfinished,] deftly explore one of the most intense feelings in life: deep grieving. Her loss of the closest of friends, her rock in life, is devastating beyond words. Yet she manages to find a voice to her mourning and gifts us these poems which are both deeply personal and universally recognizable. Anyone who has experienced the loss of someone they loved needs to read this book.
—Alan Catlin poet, editor Misfit Magazine
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