FOUND IN A LETTER 1959: A MEMOIR IN POEMS
SHARON CUMBERLAND
Ex Ophidia Press
107 pages
$25.00

If you're a regular reader of the SGN, you're already familiar with Sharon Cumberland's thoughtful, informative arts & entertainment reviews, but you might not be aware that she is a well-respected poet and scholar and professor emerita at Seattle University. Her newly published book, Found in a Letter 1959, also establishes her as a first-rate memoirist who isn't afraid to experiment with formal innovation.

When Cumberland's mother Ree died and her father Jack moved into assisted living, she came into possession of many boxes of the latter's letters. Although he had no literary training or interest, Jack had a gift for letter-writing, turning everyday events of family life into interesting stories. Most of the letters Cumberland used for this book were written by Jack in 1959 to his father, who was then in the hospital with prostate cancer. For six months, Jack sent his father a letter every day.

Rather than compiling a book directly from these letters, Cumberland used excerpts of selected ones and interpolated lines of her own poetry, written from the point of view of her father at age 95. The result is one of the most self-effacing memoirs I've ever read, because Cumberland remains faithful to her father's point of view and makes herself a minor character, seen through her father's eyes.

Both of Cumberland's parents came from blue-collar backgrounds. Jack pulled himself up into a white-collar job by attending the Naval Academy, serving in World War II, and then working for the Navy as a civilian engineer. His pride in this accomplishment is obvious, for he wrote his letters on Naval Academy stationery. A photograph of one such letter is included in the book, and all those excerpted in Cumberland's poems are included in full as a sort of appendix.

The letters and poems provide a vivid picture of life in a white, middle-class family in the 1950s, exemplified by the casual sexism that imbues Jack's letters. Cumberland's selections of lines from those letters and her poetic interpolations offer a sly critique of that sexism. For example, the poem "Girls" describes the competition Jack imagines among the wives of his colleagues, and goes on to comment on the gendered expectations for his son John and his daughters Linda and Sharon:

...each wife trying to outdo the other with her pies
and sweets. Linda will be like that — she'll make some man
a loyal wife, and John will be as good a provider as a Scout. Sharon
can't seem to get with the program, though, using John's microscope.

Jack seems to think that Ree does nothing but play bridge with her friends, but Cumberland's interpolations show that her intelligent, frustrated mother ran a household, put together dinner parties on a shoestring, and played bridge, when she could have had a career if the times had permitted it.

However, in a particularly touching poem, "Babies," Jack's letter describes a random phone call from a girl overwhelmed by babysitting. His kindness to this stranger is remarkable:

I told her not to make the baby eat the spinach
and to just give her the bottle
and put her to bed,
...
She called back a little later to say
that the baby went right to sleep.
I congratulated her, said she was a big girl,
a good sitter, the mother would never know.

(The italicized portion of the poem comes from the original letter; the plain text is Cumberland's interpolation.)

If you decide to read Found in a Letter 1959 — and I recommend that you do — be sure to read the explanatory front matter first. This book requires special attention from the reader and would be confusing without the introduction. Don't be dissuaded by this caveat; the pleasure of reading fine narrative poetry will reward your effort.

The book's design is beautiful and appropriate. Kudos to Ex Ophidia Press for publishing this unusual work and doing it right.

To order the book, go to https://www.exophidiapress.org/.